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It may seem fairly straightforward, but compiling a survey which will bring you useful information and which will elicit and healthy response rate requires a little thought.

1. Before you put pen to paper (or probably more aptly these days, finger to keyboard!), be clear about what you want to achieve from the survey. It sounds obvious, but many people forget to clearly state their objective before they design their survey and the whole process could be a waste because of that. So think carefully. Is the purpose of your survey to find out if your clients might be interested in a new product, why they chose your product over competitor products, what other activities/products might interest them, how they like to be communicated with etc? Write your objective down and keep referring back to it whilst designing your questionnaire.

2. Write an explanatory paragraph at the start of the questionnaire to explain why you are conducting the service and what this will mean to your future ability to address your clients needs. This means that, as well as encouraging people to respond, you are also demonstrating your commitment to providing relevant products and services for your clients and using the survey as a reason to sell yourself (softly!).

3. Incentivise responses as this always helps to boost numbers. People always like to think they get something back for imparting opinions and views and after all, they are helping make your job easier and that’s worth rewarding! Your incentive doesn’t have to be massive but it’s good to offer a relatively major prize as a result of a draw from all respondents. For example a free treatment or a goody bag with some real value, a book, CD or another package of your products. Remember you will need to inform respondents of the winner of the prize draw and no purchases can be necessary in order to take part. You will need to have a method of announcing the winner. An easy way is to post it on a website or to ask for interested parties to write to you if they want to know who the winner is. You’ll get very few (if any) people requesting this.

In addition, you can use your survey as a sales tool. Your reward to all those who enter can be a discount voucher on future treatments or products to be taken over a given period of time (say 3 months) from the date of the survey. This is good practice, because it is likely to generate additional business as well as having the feel good factor that clients and prospective clients enjoy.

4. Try and keep the number of questions to a manageable number. If the questionnaire is too long and appears daunting, some respondents may be put off. Perhaps at the start of your survey, you give people an indication of how long it will take them to respond, which means you set a relevant expectation. Some people advise that 10 questions should be the maximum, but it depends on the style of the questionnaire and how much detail you need from your respondents. In some instances it may simply be a case of asking something like ‘What is your number one concern relating to xxxx and why?’

5. Phrase your questions clearly and give them multiple options where possible, e.g. Often Sometimes Rarely Never and give opportunities to expand on their answers where this would be useful to you, for example, ‘If you responded Never, please explain why below’ and give them a couple of lines in which to respond. Remember questionnaire results are never an exact science, but they do give a fair indication of what your respondents are feeling and how they might respond to future marketing.

6. Give recipients the opportunity to encourage friends and colleagues to answer your survey and ask them to pass it on.

7. Think about how you are going to distribute the survey. Are you going to leave copies in your reception, will you send it by e-mail, have it on your website, work with a publication who may share your interest in the results and who have a relevant target audience, post it to your clients, distribute it with a local free paper or push it through letterboxes in your target area? Or will it be a combination of a number of these? Think of your target audience and the easiest and most cost-efficient method of distributing them.

8. Do not be disappointed if you only receive a small number of questionnaires back. This is quite common and most surveys receive somewhere between 1 and 3% of the questionnaires they receive back. Even a small number can give you an indication of what is likely to be happening in a wider group.

9. Don’t forget to use the survey to collect any additional data you may not have from the respondents. Ask for name, address, telephone number, e-mail address and even ask them to indicate areas of specific interest. This helps make your questionnaire become as valuable a piece of marketing as possible and maximizes the benefit.

10. Offer the opportunity for respondents to be added or removed from your subscriber list as this also allows you to ensure you have fulfilled your duties under the data protection ask, whilst also offering the opportunity to expand your database.

11. Analyse the data you receive back and prepare a short report, which you can also report back to your clients via the website, e-mailing programme, mailing programme or post up on your practice noticeboard etc. Having contributed to the survey, people will be interested to read the results and may even find it useful to them.

12. Having collated and analysed the data, use it to develop your marketing messages, to package future products and treatments and so on, so that respondents can see you are taking their views on board. You are far more likely to sell treatments and products which address a specific need or target, so using your information is a crucial part of the process.

Generally speaking, keeping it simple but carefully thought out is probably the best advice in preparing a survey. The information you glean can be a real boon to your future business, so it’s an activity worth investing in.

I hope this article is thought provoking and helpful and welcome your views and ideas if you want to share them on annie@breathingspacetherapies.co.uk

Until the next time, best of luck and take care of yourselves!

Annie

About Breathing Space Therapies

Having worked in competitive business environments for over 20 years, I established my company, Breathing Space Therapies and its corporate division, Breathing Space for Business. Through a mixture of one-to-one coaching and counselling sessions, seminars and workshops, I am able to help people make positive changes in their personal and working lives so that they can perform better and enjoy every aspect of their lives more fully.