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Client Survey as Marketing Tool

Guest post by: Keith Thirgood

Article Overview: A client survey can be an important part of your Marketing Action Plan. By getting a sense of how you’re perceived by your current clients and prospects, you can improve your service and enhance your image in the market.

Client Survey as Marketing Tool

by Keith Thirgood

It’s true. A client survey can be an important part of your Marketing Action Plan. By getting a sense of how you’re perceived by your current clients and prospects, you can improve your service and enhance your image in the market. Perceptions even include views on what your business is, what aspects you execute well and what you can improve. It’s all part of building your brand.

We use a client survey as part of our own Marketing Action Plan. The following is one of the surveys we use to find out our clients’, and prospects’, perceptions of our industry, and of our service to them. Use it as an example of the sort of questions you might ask. (There are only eleven questions, as it’s important to keep it short, if you want a good response rate.)

We’ve included our preamble to the survey, so you can see how we introduce it to our market. The items in brackets are replaced in the survey with the correct information, depending upon the particular person receiving the survey.

======================================

Dear (name),

As (a valued client / someone who has indicated interest in our services), we want to be able to do the best we can for you. We’re interested in your perceptions and ideas, and if we can take ten minutes of your time, we’d appreciate it if you could respond briefly to the eleven questions listed below.

What do you consider to be the role of a marketing firm?

What do you consider to be the role of a graphic designer?

What do you consider to be the role of an advertising agency?

What services do you think Capstone Communications Group provides?

Do you see Capstone as an advertising company, a marketing firm, or would you describe us as something else?

What are the drawbacks of dealing with a marketing firm?

What are the drawbacks of dealing with a graphic designer?

What are the drawbacks of dealing with an advertising agency?

What are the drawbacks of dealing with Capstone Communications?

Describe your impressions of Capstone Communications Group.

What image does Capstone portray? Please visit our website at < capstonecomm.com> before you answer.

Thank you for helping us, help you better.

==============================

The questions we’ve used questions revolve around market perceptions. This is because our target market “seems” unclear on what a marketing company does, and what other related companies do, and don’t do. Our survey tries to help us “see” through our prospects’ eyes.

Think of the issues your target market seems to have with your company, and/or your industry, and build from there.

You’ll not only learn valuable marketing/customer service/product/service delivery lessons from the survey, you’ll also likely find that existing clients will discover more to buy from you, and prospects will be much more receptive to your offerings.

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Article Tags: action plan, client survey, marketing tool, prospects



Related Forum Posts
Survey the Landlord - Terry, my suggestion is simple but powerful - Survey. Survey Landlords and find out what is important to them. By doing this it does two things: 1. You will find out trends/under-operated services that Landlords are currently unsatisfied with = your client will be able to fulfill 2. You are infact Marketing your clients services by doign this because when you are approaching your landlords it not a sales pitch and they have someone to clear their frustrations with. Then when you approach them after a month (when you've put your numbers together and identified services that are most important) you can remind them of the survey and share with them the results. At this point you can end with an offer to use your clients services to manage their property. I use this method with my clients who are looking for new services to develop in thier markets. It's simple but powerful.
Survey Monkey - Hi ltrahan - interesting concept - how have you found Survey Monkey? Is it a good service?
Re: What is your Business? - We are running a Online Marketing Firm and we have some good clients to which we are offering a complete Digital Marketing strategy like Search, Mobile Marketing, Branding and Design. I think in Online Marketing company online presence can be a wining factor for the success of the company.
Re: Let’s talk about the ways of marketing your products, servic - I agree with some of the others who responded it depends on what your selling... but to answer your questions here are some of the methods I use. Forum Marketing Yahoo Answers (I need to use more of) SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Bum Marketing or Article marketing P-P-C (Pay Per Click) Marketing Online Directories Hope this helps.
Survey Monkey - I found Survey Monkey to be a good service as well, it was useful and got the job done. Like Itrahan was saying though, the basic "free" services are a bit limiting though.


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