Using surveys to stir market demand.
Laura Ramos of Forrester Research transformed her recent interview with Eric Rogge, VP of Marketing at Exalead, into Part III in her series, B2B Marketing, Obsolete, Really? Laura’s blog highlighted 3 points to help marketing and sales shift from “obnoxious bullhorn to respectful partner.” Coming from the sales rank at Gartner, I often touted their Dataquest offering as a way to garner “user wants and needs,” a listening post so to speak. I couldn’t agree more with Eric’s 1st point:
“For marketing to evolve, we need to learn to listen more than we talk. We need to create listening posts throughout the Web that reveal what the market wants, prospects find interesting, and which problems are worth solving. Technology can help us do this, but not without human brains behind it to filter out the noise and tell us what’s important.”
No doubt, thorough knowledge of clients and their needs is the most valuable information any business can have. One way to “create listening posts” to gather useful and timely information is a survey. Surveys and subsequent detailed data analysis can provide important knowledge about and for your clients. They can help a company diagnose problems that are plaguing it by seeing that other companies in the same or similar sectors are experiencing certain issues and what they are doing to solve them. Surveys can also help bring understanding to new trends, providing the tangible proof that many people need before implementing change. They even provide data a company needs to make sure it reacts to changes in the market place as they arise.
In today’s economy B2B marketers have to look for creative ways to generate market demand. Survey’s offer valuable, timely and accurate information that B2B marketers can use through press releases, articles, podcasts and other media that strengthen credibility, increase demand for service and build a loyal following.
As you build your carefully constructed surveys to glean the information that will help your customers do their business better, there are several things to keep in mind. Make sure the information you are gathering helps to shed light on some trend that is relatively new, but not well understood. Focus on neglected aspects or the fine details of certain issues that have been around for a while, but are still not perfected. Regardless of the survey content, your data analysis must be very detailed and subdivided into sectors, so companies can see how issues and trends affect their particular industry or role more clearly.
By including these aspects throughout the process of designing, administering and reporting on surveys, your not only listening more, you will have a fountain of relevant, timely data to share with clients and potential clients.
Tags: B2B marketing, Exalead, Laura, Ramos, surveys