Internet Marketing Tools – Fitting Surveys Into Your Overall Business Plan

Surveys can be awesome internet marketing tools to use to your advantage no matter what stage of business you are at. For this article I’m going to presume you are pretty new at internet marketing, so I’ll talk about the real basics and how you can fit a survey into your overall business plan.

Pick your niche

The very first thing you have to do is select the niche you are going to be working in. Take a little time, pick a topic you are interested in and other people are interested in too.

Build your list

Now you are going to start building your list in your niche. You will create your squeeze page with an opt-in box so you gather their names and email addresses…plug that information in your autoresponder data base.

Survey your list

Once you have started your list it is time to conduct your first survey. My favorite first survey is a very basic…really simple…survey in the form of “what is your biggest question in the topic of…” and of course the topic is something in your niche. Get information from your list about what products or services they are interested in. What are the areas where they need information?

Create your product

You don’t ever create your product first because you don’t know what people want first…but now that you have surveyed your list and let them tell you what you are interested in it is time to create your first product.
Don’t panic when I say create your first product…you can literally create the product or you can take the information you learned from your survey to find an appropriate affiliate product. The point is really that you have gathered information FIRST and then you create or select a product that answers the questions or addresses the needs of the people on your list.

Grow your list

Your list will continue to grow because you are providing good content that people are interested in. By using the data you gathered in your initial survey you know you are giving them what they really want. You can use all sorts of traffic tools to help build your list.

Survey your list again

Continue to survey your list periodically. Since you put your initial survey in your autoresponder series you will keep getting data from it as new people subscribe to your list. You can further refine the data you are getting by taking the initial survey question and drilling down deeper… what is the biggest question within that narrower topic?

Respond to survey data

Whether you are providing product recommendations or giving information, let your subscribers know this is a result of the survey. That way they know you are actually listening to them! They will like knowing that you really paid attention to the results…even if it wasn’t what they personally asked for, if you say “75% of the survey takers wanted information of ___”, of course using the real percentages…they know that you are listening and therefore their question is likely to be answered, too!

People love to feel heard…by giving them information that they actually want to hear you are creating a relationship with the people on your list. That is one of the best ways to use surveys as internet marketing tools-to build relationships in addition to building a list. When you look at your list that way then you have a long-term business that will benefit you and the people on your list.