In marketing we spend a ton of time trying to guess what our customers are interested in and what they want to see from us, but what if you just ask? That’s where polls come in, and here are 10 ways you can use polls to better know what your customers are looking for.
1. Ask What You Should Create Next
If you’re in the business of content creation or building anything for your customers really, there’s always the question of what to make next.
It takes time to build things so if you had an idea of what people are most interested in before you begin that would be super helpful. You can use a quick poll to let people choose the topics they want to see more of.
2. Ask What People Want to See More Of
There are lots of communication channels between you and your customers, and studies show that constencey is key when it comes to staying in touch – but equally important is how you stay in communication, what types of things you send etc.
If you run a poll asking people what they want to see more of then you can send those things that are truly interesting to the customers you want to reach.
3. Ask for opinions
Everyone loves to give an opinion on things, and a poll lets you give your audience a voice so they can tell you theirs.
Once you know people’s opinions it’s much easier to speak the “language” of your customers because you can tailor your messaging and storytelling to align with what they think about things.
4. Give people a choice
Choosing is one of those fun things when the choices are both about yourself.
The example here of a real estate agent creating a poll to see if people would rather live in a house or a condo is a perfect example of how you can use the power of letting people choose to get feedback on what kinds of houses or condos you should be focusing on because after the poll you’ll know where your customers stand
5. Ask about habits and behaviors
A question like the one here of “What’s yor favourite social platform?” provides you invaluable data because you can know where your customers tend to “hang out” online.
If you’re looking to do social media advertising or even just focus on one social network over the others you need to know which one is most important.
6. Ask about what’s difficult
If your business can help people in various ways (which most can), then you want to know what the biggest roadblock is for your customers.
Once you know the biggest struggle then you can tailor your marketing messages around how you can help solve that problem, and if you have a breakdown of the top problems then you can create messaging in accordance with the priority of the issues.
7. Learn what people want to learn about
The example here is from a DIY blog and they are asking what topics people are interested in presumably so they can know what kind of content to create.
This is super useful data, it will help you know exactly what to spend your time on to make the most impact, and as we all know time is the biggest asset any of us possess.
8. Ask People About Themselves
The most difficult thing about getting customer feedback is just getting people to start talking. We’ve all seen and exited out of so many of those survey popups on websites, no one wants to just talk about stuff.
However, we do want to talk about ourselves, and you as a business will be at a huge advantage if you really understand who you are working with and can speak to them on a human level rather than just trying to guess what they might care about.
9. Ask about spending preferences
You want to know why or how people are willing to spend their money. This is pivotal to getting them to buy things from you since they’ll need to spend their money on whatever you are selling.
You can find creative ways to ask how people would be willing to spend their money and then you get a better idea of what is a purchase-worthy decision.
10. Ask what people are thinking
Your idea of the “right answer” to a problem your customers face might not be the same thing they are thinking. The only way to know is to ask, and you can/should ask with a poll.
