Simple Ways to Survey Your Webinar Audience by Gihan Perera

Good presenters will survey their audience before a webinar to understand their needs. There are a number of methods you can use for actually doing this survey, depending on your audience and their preferred methods of communication.

First, remember that you don't have to ask the actual people who'll be attending your presentation (though that would be ideal). It's sufficient to survey people in the same sort of market.

Here are some ways to conduct your survey.

Talk to them directly

If you get the chance to talk to your audience members directly, do so! It could be face to face, by e-mail or over the phone. Plan your questions in advance and ask them. If you'll be talking to many of them, prepare the question carefully so you can ask it without stumbling over it.

Conduct an anonymous survey

If you're talking about a controversial topic, it might be difficult to get honest answers from your respondents unless you can assure them of anonymity. In this case, it's difficult to ask your questions by phone or face to face. Ask them to fill in a form and fax it to you, or direct them to a page on your Web site where they complete an anonymous survey.

Conduct a Google survey

If you've got a popular topic and you're willing to spend a small amount of money, you can very quickly get responses from people searching the Internet. You use Google AdWords to create a simple advertisement, which then leads people to a survey page on your Web site.

Run a newsletter survey

If you send a regular e-mail newsletter, use it to survey your readers. Ask your question and ask them to respond to you by hitting the Reply button.

If you have a large newsletter list, you might be overwhelmed by the number of responses. In this case, it might be better for them to click through to a survey page on your Web site. However, for a smaller list, if you think you can handle the replies yourself, just asking them to hit the Reply button makes their life easier - which makes it more likely you'll get a response.

Ask your on-line networks

If you're an active participant in discussions on LinkedIn, Twitter and other on-line communities, ask them for their opinion. This works best if you are an active participant already, because you will have earned the right to ask them for help.

Two Further Tips

It's worth reinforcing the point that you want to send your survey to the people who are like the people who will be attending the webinar. If you send it to the wrong sort of people, you can't rely on the responses, however well-meaning they might be. For example, if you ask a LinkedIn group of colleagues and peers, their responses might not match what your real audience members would say.

Finally, you can increase your response rate by offering an "ethical bribe" - that is, a small gift for people who respond. Some surveys offer only "the chance to win a prize", but it's much better if you can send everybody something - for example, an e-book, special report or MP3 audio program.


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