Derek OverbeyDiscovering valuable information about your customers has always been coveted in the business world. The reasoning behind this is logical. If you understand who your customers are, you can strengthen your relationship with them, build trust and credibility. You can also collect the information needed to make the right decisions for your company. A business demographic survey is a great tool to unearth and collect this kind of insight.
Choosing The Right Questions
When conducting a survey, you first need to decide the type of questions to ask based on the goal of your survey. When looking to understand your market, use a business demographics survey. This data can help you widen your customer base. Or, use the information collected to tailor your product or service to better serve your customers.
Here are 10 sample questions to consider:
- How long has your company been in business?
- In which industry is your business?
- What is your title at your company?
- How long have you been in your current position?
- How many people are employed at your company?
- What was the annual revenue for your company last year?
- Does your company have more than one location?
- Does your company do business online?
- Does your company serve consumers, businesses, or both?
- Which marketing channels do you use to promote your business?
Number Of Questions
While we’d all like to ask our customers 100 questions, that’s not realistic. So how many questions should you ask? According to SurveyMonkey, “the relationship between the number of questions in a survey and the time spent answering each question is not linear.”
Chart via SurveyMonkey
What this means is the more questions you ask, the less time people devote to each individual question. While there are no hard and fast rules on how many questions to ask, keep the question count low to receive higher quality data.
Tips To Increase Response Rate
Not only will you receive more reliable responses by asking fewer questions but also higher participation. No one likes to click through pages of questions so this is one way to boost the rate of response. Additionally, make it easy to answer your survey from any device. A questionnaire that is mobile-friendly prevents people from abandoning the process simply because the interface is funky.
Don’t be shy about throwing in a little extra for devoting time to your survey. Everyone likes to be rewarded. Give your survey recipients some motivation and thank them for filling out your survey. This can be done on an individual basis, or as a drawing for all who participate. It doesn’t take much more effort and it’s an easy way to increase response rates.
That said, expect an average response rate of about 10 percent. You’ll want to send your survey to a large enough pool of recipients in order to make it statistically relevant and meaningful.
Survey Tool
Finally, to conduct your survey, use a simple tool like SurveyMonkey or GetFeedback. This will ensure your questionnaire is mobile-friendly. SurveyMonkey offers a free option that allows you to send 10 questions and receive 100 responses, and VerticalResponse has an integration with Survey Monkey so every time you get a new survey response, it creates a new contact in your VerticalResponse account.
These business demographic survey questions and tips should get you on your way to collecting the information you need to grow your business. For more tips, check out The 4 Questions to Ask Yourself When Creating a Survey, and see the survey category of our blog to learn more.
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