Asking the right question (or wording it right)
This morning, Denise Michaels pointed out that I didn't exactly word the question correctly in my one-question survey last week: What is the most important question about marketing for your business.
Here are her observations:
Actually Mark - I would've preferred it if you'd asked:
"What's your most important question about marketing your business?"
Slightly different question - but the difference is palpable. Why? Because in your version of the question above it's like they're supposed to guess the most important question they SHOULD have about marketing - in almost a textbook kind of way. The second question (as I gave it to you on the phone) is the question that's nagging on them the most - the one THEY most need the answer to - it's a little more personal. See the difference?I'll give you a pertinent example of why the specific wording - in even casual marketing research like this - is important. Authors always want to test titles to come up with the right title for their book. Most will come up with a list of titles (say 6 to 8 of 'em) and ask their list:
"Which book title do you like the best?"
Wrong question!
Why?
Because the people asked start looking for which one is the cutest and the most clever title. Which one is the linguistic tour de force or something.
A much better question to ask about book titles is: "Which book title would you be most likely to buy?"
See the difference? After all - isn't that the action you want? Sales - rather than a "Gee, that's a cute title" response.
So back to your question - the idea is to discern what's the most pressing question about marketing that's rambling around in their brain that they're hot to get an
answer on. "What's your most important question about marketing"
How many times did you send it out? If you only sent it out once - I suggest that you send it out again tomorrow (Monday) and on Thursday morning. You may pull in more responses. Also, send it in the wording I originally gave you above. Stuff gets caught in spam filters or people delete it out of hand. It takes a few repetitions to get a true response."
Here is another interesting article on asking the right question(s) in marketing surveys. I link you to the Google cached version of this story so you won't need to register with anyone else to read this article.
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