Online Marketing Research Survey
An online marketing research survey
could be one of two distinct types: one type measures how well your site
is doing, the other measures how your customers think.
| So... who
do you trust to measure your success? Or your not so
success? |
Online marketing survey firms would
have you believe that they are the ones who can mystically determine how
successful your website really is.
Balderdash.
They don't know a silly thing that you
can't determine for yourself, especially if you are a small company.
For instance, if you have signed up with a strong website provider, and
use the tools provided, you will be able to determine:
- How many people visit your website.
- How many people come back and visit
again.
- How many signups you get for your
ezine.
- Which pages are most popular.
- Which keywords are most popular.
- Which search engines are most likely
to find your site.
- Which keywords work, and which ones
don't.
- All the hundreds, or thousands, of
keywords that people use to find your site.
- Which pages draw visitors, and which
ones don't.
- Your rate of conversion for your
sales.
- Your Alexa ranking.
- Your Google Page Rank.
- What country your visitors come
from.
- What the growth of your site has
been, month by month. Or even day by day if you want it.
That's a lot of information. And
for the very curious, there is even more.
These online marketing surveys are
promoted as a means for you to make your site better, to get more
visitors to your site. The promoters use terms like "SEO", which
looks impressive. In fact, "SEO" means nothing more than "Have you
optimized your page for search engines?" ("SEO" actually means
"Search Engine Optimization".)
With a strong web host, your website
will be fully optimized as you build it. You will be able to
- Identify keywords that will pull
visitors;
- Identify a site concept that will
draw visitors;
- Create strong pages with those
keywords; and
- Analyze and track it all as you work
on it.
And how would you like to have a list
of hundreds of keywords that your prospective visitors will actually use
to find you? A good web host will provide you with that list.
So don't worry about hiring an online
marketing survey company to do any of this for you. It is already
done.
So how about
determining what your clients want?
There are a number of ways of
approaching this issue. One way is to create a short little online
marketing research survey that you ask your visitors to complete -- just
one or two questions. I don't know about you, but I'm not too
likely to take the time to respond to long questionnaires, especially if
they ask personal questions.
Another way is to study the existing
stats that you have. Clients can't hide from these. These
stats are generated automatically when someone visits your site.
And, Yes, they are all part of the information package that your web
host will provide for you.
Perhaps the best way to conduct online
marketing surveys is just to establish communication with your visitors.
Be open to questions, and make it easy for them to reach you. You
will be amazed at what they will tell you if you just let them.
If yours is a large company, you may
indeed want to hire a company to conduct your online marketing research
survey. But for smaller firms, you can do it better (and a lot
cheaper) yourself.
