Use surveys for on-demand decision making

Surveys seem to always show up as some kind of afterthought -- something like this: "We're thinking about launching a new product -- let's do a survey!"  I know, that's a bit of an over-simplification, but that's sort of how it goes.

Surveys can be SO MUCH more than that!  

Your surveys can be super social engagement tools - if you'd only give them the chance.
QuestionPro gives you these options from the send tab -- where you can share and send your survey via social media:
survey share
Then you can also share your results via social media --
tweet survey

Use surveys to establish yourself as an industry expert

The mistake I'm talking about here is taking your survey tool and survey capability for granted.  Your online survey tool is like the "Arm and Hammer" baking soda of marketing tools.  There is so much more you can do with it.
If you engage with your audience and run frequent and short surveys, you can easily establish yourself as an industry expert.  Do frequent - even weekly surveys and publish and share the results.  Before you know it -- people will start counting on you to deliver these insights.
And soon -- you will be recognized as an expert in your field or your niche.
Granted -- it will take some thinking and focusing on subject matter and you may even have to create a sort of research plan or research calendar.  This is certainly a terrific way to use your online survey as an additional tool inside your marketing toolbox.

Surveys are your on-demand decision maker

Here's another crazy powerful way to use your surveys that will not only help you make better, faster decisions, but will stop a lot of in-fighting in meetings.
Have you ever been to a meeting where everyone gets into what I call the "I think" conversation.  "I think our customers want X" and then someone else says "No WAY -- our customers want Y" -- this should be your trigger to do a quick online survey.  You can literally have this pulled together, launched to a customer email list and get some decent results to guide your decision-making inside of an hour.
I'm astounded at how frequently I think that doing a survey will be "too hard" or "take too long" -- when in reality, we could have had some preliminary results within the hour and not had to waste any time in arguing about it.

Wake UP

The point of this entire article was to tell you to wake up!  You already have access to a tool that will help you make better decisions, become an expert in your industry and do it all in less time for less money.

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