Is it time to address the elephant in the room? To paraphrase Marcus Sheridan, businesses globally (even some of the biggest) are guilty of ostrich syndrome. They ignore the difficult issue of price – and refuse to talk about the defects of their products and services. And don’t even get them started on the competition because that conversation is a non-starter too. Businesses like these would rather run a mile than use survey marketing to get better insight into customer behaviour – and that’s precisely why they’ll never change.
Are you ready to embrace the benefits of survey marketing and leapfrog your competitors? If so a world of opportunities awaits.
Read on to find out how:
- polls are different to surveys
- to convert polls into leads
- to find the right tools
Survey marketing vs. poll marketing – what’s the difference?
Survey marketing and poll marketing are used interchangeably but aren’t necessarily the same. So, before we go any further let’s break down the key differences and remove confusion from your market research.
Poll marketing in a nutshell
In its most basic form, a poll is a multiple-choice question. This format has grown in popularity since the advent of social media and shows no sign of slowing down either.
A poll is a data-gathering tool that:
- Lets firms like yours measure customer opinion
- Captures data across a broad range of topics
- Helps businesses understand:
- Customer sentiments
- Customer satisfaction
- Emerging trends
Poll marketing is simple to set up and cost-effective too. Although we’ll delve into market research products later in this article, you may want to take a closer look at Typeform, SurveyMonkey, and Alchemer – each of which doubles up as poll marketing software and include a free option to help you get started.
Survey marketing at its simplest
Survey marketing is more complex than poll marketing. While the latter might seek a simple response to a single question the former is about gathering a range of data spanning several issues.
What do both have in common? In each case, the marketer is drilling deep to understand customer sentiment, satisfaction, and trends – but in this case with the aim of creating several personas.
Used correctly, survey marketing tools
- Where a business’s products or services compete against themselves
- Tell firms how prospects view their offering compared to competitors
- Provide crucial insights into customer buying habits
Converting polls or surveys into tangible ROI – three tips to get you started
#1 Pick a relevant topic
Surveys and polls aren’t all that different from ads, landing pages, or blog content in that your aim is to generate interest by showing the idle browser something relevant to them. This means you need to create a stand-out headline that’ll grab your audience’s attention.
The more you know about your prospects the stronger – and more relevant – your questions will be.
Divorce lawyers might lead with a question like:
- How much do you think it costs to hire a divorce lawyer in the UK?
- When comparing divorce lawyers, what is your first priority?
- What aspect of going through divorce concerns you most?
These responses create opportunities for the firm to follow up:
- So, you thought divorce was expensive – here’s a breakdown of our prices
- Take a look at our case studies which might help you make a decision
- Here’s our free guide which explains what happens in a divorce step-by-step
#2 Create forms that are fun
Poll marketing is time-consuming. And let’s face it, who in their right mind loves filling in forms? To make the experience more palatable for your audience put some thought into the design of your polls.
Tips and tricks you could use include:
- Using buttons to make the experience more interactive
- Using white space to make the form more user-friendly
- Using more icons and less text to remove stress
#3 Don’t overload your audience
What will happen if you put seven questions on a page? That’s right, your audience will be intimated by the sheer scale of the task and exit your poll marketing survey post haste.
To ensure engagement, keep it simple. One question per page is more than enough to minimise participant abandonment. Again, using buttons to move users through the process will help remove friction.
Choosing the best survey marketing and poll marketing tools for your law firms
Presuming you want to make polls and surveys part of your firm’s ongoing marketing plan, which tools should you use?
Here’s a breakdown of a few to whet your appetite…
- Google Forms. Free to use, this tool lets you create multiple choice questions, checkboxes, and text responses. You can also customise Google Forms using your brand logo and images.
- Typeform. Again no cost is needed to use the basic version of this software, which integrates with platforms like Facebook and Mailchimp. Typeform also displays thank you screens and generates email notifications.
- ZohoSurvey. Fees apply for the ZohoSurvey platform which includes different question options, the ability to send links to participants – plus a range of customisation options too.
Some of the above might be biased more toward survey marketing than poll marketing or vice versa. So don’t be afraid to experiment and research options not included in our top-three list.
Don’t forget that platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook have in-built poll marketing features you can use. No expertise is needed and polls can be created in less than a minute in some cases.
Conclusion
Survey marketing and poll marketing could reap great rewards for your law firm – and without eating into your time and bottom line. However, success will only come if you lay the foundation. First, you need to understand your audience’s wants and needs. From this will evolve a series of questions you can incorporate not just into your surveys and polls – but your wider marketing efforts too.
Need a helping hand?
Surveys, polls, blogs, and social media! Marketing can be complex and time-consuming too. So why not drop our team a short message. We’d love to help your law firm stand out from the crowd, generate more engagement, and improve its bottom line.
