When it comes to gathering information surveys are the way to go. There are several different ways to perform surveys; phone, internet, written, and focus groups are great options. Some of these surveys focus on visiting a specific store, customer service, a product, brand, marketing strategy, demographic information, etc. One piece of advise we give to smaller companies who are preparing their marketing plan is to perform surveys before they finish their plan to help give them a greater understanding of what the market is looking for to guide them. With this huge array of survey options companies, governments, schools, and other entities can really gain a lot of worthwhile information.

One of the troubles with surveys is getting enough information from people. Lots of times people don’t want to participate in the surveys that would be most beneficial to those companies because they take up so much time. Sometimes they’ll take up to 20 or 30 minutes. This is why lots of retail stores keep surveys short and sweet at the checkout counter or else offer some sort of incentive for taking the survey. A lot of incentives will include $5 off your next shopping trip or being entered into a drawing for a $500 gift card, etc. Consumers use directories to find top paid survey companies where they can get perks for taking surveys. This can help get more people motivated to take your survey.

These incentives still don’t always get the companies the information that they need and so often the longer surveys are paid surveys. No incentives, just flat out paid. Some sources claim that you can make anywhere from $5 to $75 on paid surveys (the latter price being less likely of course) that average out to be about 20-30 minutes in length.

Phone surveys are quite normal for political campaigns as well as retail chains or companies that come to visit your home to sell you something. This is how they gather information for each of the areas. Often the person calling will inform you that they are calling to do a survey and could you spare so many minutes of your time. They will either offer an incentive or not. They also might ask if there is a better time for them to contact you. Sometimes companies call and claim to be performing a survey, but in fact end up trying to sell you something.

Internet surveys are a great way for customers to participate in incentive surveys. Often on the bottom of receipts there will be a link to a survey site where they can enter their code and redeem their incentive. A lot of times when visiting websites there will be customer satisfaction surveys. These surveys pop up randomly when people visit and are a great way for the company to know how to improve the layout of their website. The internet is also the easiest way to perform paid surveys. Paid surveys are two fold – you can complete traditional surveys or else you can participate in mystery shopping and complete a survey online, after the fact.

Written surveys are found in stores every once in while. These surveys are most often found in doctors offices, dentists offices, eye doctors offices, and other medical and research arenas. They are often in schools as well. This is because these professionals want to know what you feel on a personal level and for your own benefit and not so much on a more general scale when compared to other people. They often have more specific and personal questions than other entities.

Finally focus groups are a great way for companies to star a conversation about their concerns. Generally 6-8 people will come in, and get paid, to sit and chat about a specific topic of concern for the company. They might discuss a brand, product, or marketing strategy.

Surveys are incredibly important to the overall understanding of companies and how they choose to improve and move forward.

Are you having a hard time ramping up visitors to your website? For those who want to make some progress with their site without hiring an internet marketing agency, here are four key tips for updating your website to draw more attention and results:

1. Refresh the Copy
Has it been a months since you’ve read your own content pages? Most of us tend to publish content then move on to other things. Stop and take a close look at the content on your site. Look for terminology that may be outdated, updates in your product or service offering, etc. Even if you do some basic re-wording with your content it will show the search engines that your site is alive and well.

2. Add Images
People are often visual creatures and enjoy seeing more life and color on a web page. One fundamental tip for updating your website is to add more photos, graphics, and illustrations. For additional value with the search engines, which will drive more traffic for you, be sure to name the image files with descriptive text and use the “alt” attribute for the image. By adding these two “keyword signals” to the search engines, your site will clearly communicate what these images are and will attract more visitors.

3. Add New Pages and a Blog
Another solid tip for updating your website is to add more pages or expand the ones you have. Ask yourself what search terms you wish people would find your site for when they are looking for information on Google. Do you have a page of content that matches up with that search? Try to come up with one new page each month, or add a few new pages each quarter.

Another great way to add fresh content to your site without worrying about adding new pages and how they’ll fit in the navigation structure is to add a blog. Search engines love to see a steady stream of content on a domain. A blog is the easiest way to manage that content. You can talk about a broad variety of topics that relate to your business that your target market might find interesting.

4. Free Download to Build a List
As you get more visitors to your website, the next step will be to engage them and get more out of them. Since you have expertise in your subject area, why not write an ebook or guide that thoroughly discusses or explains an aspect of your business or industry? By offering a digital product of value, you can capture names and emails from your website visitors for follow up. Deliver great content to them for free to build trust with them and follow up with special offers and more great content.

If you apply any of these tips for updating your website, it will make a difference. When applied together, you’ll see a meaningful improvement to your website’s performance that will impact your business.

For other marketing ideas, be sure to check out our marketing plan template!

Guest Post by on behalf of StruckAxiom, an interactive agency that builds great brands. Learn more at http://struckaxiom.com/about.

If you have a small business, it does not mean that you have to do all your operations on a small scale. You do not need a huge budget to make a big impact if you plan well. Effective marketing is the one activity that will result to the prosperity of your business. Promotions can take up so much of your cash if you do not strategize well. However, there are strategies that can help you create a big impact even when working with a small budget. Social media is one of them.


How To Use The Social Media

The Internet is increasingly become a preferred advertisement medium and is gaining ground on TV and print media. There are millions of people who use various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter daily. These create a perfect platform for any form of advertising. You can engage your customers one-on-one through social media at low costs.
You can use social media to find out what customers say about your brand before you kick off your marketing campaign. Many big companies have succeeded by first determining the image their brands portray before embarking on strengthening or adjusting it. Also, you can find out your customers’ needs and wants and then tailor your marketing activities to meet them.

Thereafter, you can start your campaign by joining the social networking sites. You need to research well first though. Find out the demographics of the site you want to join. Is the population large enough for your marketing efforts? You can create a Google Analytics account for the business to determine what is being said about you and your competitors.
Next, create at least three accounts in different social networking sites and link them. Linking will give you the following advantages:

• You will only have to update one account at a time and have the same message broadcast on the other accounts.
• It saves you time.
• It makes it easier to manage all the accounts.

Forming a Community

Having created the accounts, you should also form an online community where you will be communicating and interacting with the members. This is basically a fan or customer base and should be targeted to your prospective customers. Spend ample time in developing this fan base because a disgruntled community can lead to your down fall.
Here are some of the key things you should do to ensure you succeed in making a big impact with a small marketing budget through an online community:

• Know why you are building the community and what exactly you want to promote.
• Anticipate who will be using the social site to help you make informed decisions.
• Prepare for criticisms and strategize how to deal with them.
• Determine the ideas you will be sharing with the community beforehand then stay consistent and on point always.

If managed well, an online community presents a great marketing opportunity for your business. Besides, since you are the founder, the ideas you share should be of value always.

Online Video Promotion

When using social media to market, you need to s engage your audience or else you will lose them. Creativity is necessary to make a big impact with a small marketing budget. Audio and video promotions are very vital and cost-effective. Take advantage of these.

Create a high quality video or audio broadcast and then post it on your accounts and let the community share it. This will ensure that you have a marketing tool online for a very long time that will be shared by numerous people within and outside your community. If the video or audio broadcast is interesting, you will get a stream of new fans. However, you should first inform your audience that the broadcast is up.

Blog

Creating a blog or guest blog in one of your established websites is another way of creating a big impact at the lowest costs. Just with social networking accounts, you need to stay consistent with the flow of ideas and information you blog about. Choose a topic and stick to it to remain relevant.

Conclusion

Every business can make a big impact with a small marketing budget as long as the strategies employed are viable. All you have to do is define your niche and stay relevant with your social media marketing efforts.