One great question is worth ten statements any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Unfortunately all too often marketing professionals start out with a diatribe of information instead of a single question to better understand who is the audience, what do they need and how do they prefer to be educated, communicated or even motivated.
David Edelman wrote my favorite blog of this subject, which I found on LinkedIn. His blog “The First Commandment: Know Thy Customer” suggests that if there were 10 commandments for marketing professionals then knowing your customer would be the very first (and most important). A very important tool in the marketing professional’s toolbox is the survey.
FloodlightSurveys.com gives a good quick introduction to “What Are Surveys And Why Do Them?” in a blog for those of you complete in the dark on this topic. The most salient statement from this blog is
With surveys, you can learn what your target audience is thinking, what motivates them and what’s important to them. You can communicate with them to find out what they need or want (e.g., a new product or service) and how they feel about something (e.g., product support).”
A well done survey combined with a small contest (i.e. iPad, Starbucks card or movie tickets giveaway) can not only generate invaluable insight into your prospect, customer, partner and marketplace in general, it can also provide the necessary data for a fantastic value exchange item, namely an infographic.
An infographic is a visual representation of information, data or knowledge done is such a way as to educate while entertaining the reader at the same time. It is best to get a design firm involved in the development of your infographic as they will bring the necessary objectivity and creativity to the project for something truly viable, but there are a number of sites that help you develop your own, such as infogr.am. Creating an infographic not only demonstrates that you know your customer, but also creates an empathy for like-minded companies to latch on to and drive inbound to your brand.
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