6 types of market research surveys and how to create one

Continuous improvement is what makes you stand out from other players in your respective industry and helps you engage your target audience.

The preferences of your customers change over time, along with their buying behaviors and market dynamics. To survive the cutthroat competition, it’s vital to constantly improve your solutions.

But how do you identify the changes that need to be made or find where there’s room for improvement? Conducting a market research survey may help.

When it comes to improving your solutions, the best source of information is your current or potential customers. So, reaching out to them will help you access relevant insights that steer you in the right direction.

Market research surveys enable you to collect extensive feedback from your customers. They allow you to explore behavioral dynamics and extract actionable insights from customer experiences.

This makes it easier for you to improve your products and promote them to the right audience in an efficient way.

There are different types of market research surveys. You can go with one or several that pique your interest.

In this article, we’ll explore different types of market research surveys and discuss a step-by-step process to create one.

So, without further ado, let’s get started.

6 types of market research surveys

There are a variety of market research surveys that you can leverage to collect useful information and make data-driven decisions when it comes to improving your products and offering seamless experiences. We’ll be discussing the six of the best.

Online surveys

Online surveys enable you to reach out to your target audience or customers anywhere in the world and collect the required information from them. People only need an internet connection to participate in the survey and share their experiences or preferences with you.

There are a number of solutions that you can leverage to create an online survey. You can either choose to go with free solutions such as Google Forms for simple surveys, or a Google Forms alternative, as well as other premium form builders for more advanced design features.

The tools will generate a survey link for you, which can be easily accessed by the chosen participants.

This survey type is ideal for exploring the changing preferences of your target audience, collecting feedback about your products, and assessing customer satisfaction.

Telephone/virtual call surveys

If you want to access in-depth insights and detailed feedback from your audience, conducting a market research survey via telephone or virtual calls may be your best bet.

Telephone surveys are generally preferred to reach out to participants who are a little less tech-savvy and not acquainted with modern communication methods.

For example, if your audience comprises elderly individuals, reaching out to them via phone may be the best strategy to get useful information. However, you can choose to conduct a survey through a virtual call if the participants prefer using modern communication solutions.

This survey method is best suited when you ask open-ended questions, facilitating your access to detailed responses and valuable insights for decision-making.

Face-to-face surveys

Conducting telephone or virtual call surveys is an effective way to gather useful information by asking open-ended questions. However, you may come across problems like a low response rate.

This is the reason why many resort to face-to-face surveys and personally reach out to the participants. Plus, interacting with the participants face-to-face ensures a high response rate, especially when your survey is lengthy and requires more time to complete.

Face-to-face surveys provide you with the opportunity to connect with your audience on a deeper level. The method enables you to probe for more detailed answers that can help you devise efficient business strategies.

Mobile surveys

Mobile surveys encourage participants to submit their responses using mobile devices. People can respond to your questions using their smartphones or tablets.

Nowadays, people are always on-the-go and use mobile devices to access useful information or interact with their preferred brands.

So, optimizing your surveys with mobile-first experience in mind is an efficient way of collecting relevant insights and required information from your current or potential customers.

Mail/email surveys

People may have diverse preferences when it comes to contacting their preferred brands. However, 60% of people prefer to be contacted by businesses via email.

Hence, conducting email surveys may be an efficient way to engage the intended audience and collect the required information from the participants.

You can ask questions directly in the email sent to the recipients or add a survey link in the email body. It’s one of the most cost-effective ways to gather insightful data at a mass level.

Polls

Leveraging social media is one of the most efficient strategies to explore the changing behavioral dynamics of your audience and market trends.

There are over 5 billion social media users worldwide, enabling you to cast a wider net and reach out to your target audience anywhere in the world.

Polls are one of the most common types of market research surveys that brands use to collect useful information from their respective audiences through social media.

They generally comprise a single question paired with a variety of responses to choose from.

Polls are best suited to find out what the majority of your audience wants or to know their opinion. For example, you can ask your audience about a particular feature they would like your solution to offer or identify areas for improvement.

You can leverage polls to engage your target audience with ease and gather useful insights from them in no time.

How to create a market research survey

Now that we have discussed different types of market research surveys, let’s dive into the process of creating one that can help you access relevant insights.

Define your objectives

The first step to creating a market research survey is to clearly define your objectives. The goal here is to collect useful data. So, it’s best that you know what to do with it.

For example, you are planning to launch an online project management solution and want to conduct a market research survey to make informed decisions.

In this case, your survey objective may be to know what your target audience expects from an ideal online project management solution.

They must have come across different alternatives in the industry. So, they can share meaningful insights with you that can help you outmaneuver the competition by offering better project management features or capabilities.

Know your audience

Once you have set clear goals for the survey, the next step is to identify an audience best suited to participate in the survey.

Carrying forward the aforementioned example, if your goal is to launch a feature-rich project management solution, your target audience may comprise project managers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners.

Encouraging them to participate in your survey will help you get acquainted with their needs or preferences. As a result, you may be able to design a project management solution that offers a seamless user experience and helps you establish lasting customer relationships.

Craft engaging questions

After identifying your target audience, you should move on to the next step, which is designing the market research survey.

If your goal is to launch a feature-rich online project management solution, you should ask questions that pave the way for you to come up with capabilities superior to the competing products.

Your questions should be clear, concise, relevant, and easy to understand. Your objective is to collect useful information from the participants, not confuse them.

Furthermore, you should refrain from designing lengthy surveys with unending questions, as it will severely affect participation or response rates.

Choose the right survey method

It’s not necessary to stick to a single survey method when it comes to collecting information from your participants. You can leverage different types of surveys to gather relevant insights.

To see which method works for you, you can test them all and go with the one that gives you the best results.

Let’s say your audience comprises project managers, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. These people are less likely to respond to polls, telephone surveys, and emails. Furthermore, you may have to make an appointment to meet with them face-to-face.

Similarly, if you're conducting ux research to design successful products, you'll probably need to schedule user interviews or card sorting sessions to find out what makes sense to your users.

So, online or mobile surveys may help you engage the intended audience. However, the selection of the right survey method may vary from one scenario to another.

Analyze and interpret data

Once you’ve gathered responses from your participants, the next step is to analyze and interpret the data collected. There are a variety of data analysis solutions that you can leverage to analyze the data and draw conclusions.

The software you choose to go with and the analysis technique depend on the complexity of your potential findings.

If you simply want to discover the most sought-after project management software features by participants, you can simply choose to go with Excel. However, if you want to run complex analysis, you may want to consider solutions like Python, SPSS, Minitab, R, SAS, and more.

Once you’ve analyzed the data, the next step is to interpret the results and make data-driven decisions.

Final thoughts

In this article, we discussed different market research survey types and how you can create a market research survey to gather useful information from your target audience.

Conducting a market research survey helps you get acquainted with the preferences of your current or potential customers and stay tuned to market trends.

The findings from these surveys pave the way for you to make smart decisions and stand out in the competitive landscape.

So, if you’ve been planning to conduct a market research survey, the information laid out in this article may help.

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