5 Options for Quick Research Projects

Quick research projects are a crucial aspect of any business’s development and growth. They offer useful insights into customer needs, highlight gaps, facilitate comparative studies with competitors, uncover new business opportunities, and help reduce potential losses. 

This article will explore the significance of quick research projects and provide practical tips for their effective implementation. And by understanding the benefits and strategies behind quick research projects, businesses can make informed decisions and optimize their operations for success in a competitive market.

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Importance of Quick Research Projects

As we have briefly stated earlier, research projects are crucial for your business’s evolution and further development. Let’s look at the importance of quick research projects: 

To Better Understand Your Customers: Using social media polls, for example, brands can collect data from many customers, which would help your business better understand their customers. You can send out a survey asking questions about their demography to determine who benefits from your goods and services. This step helps you cater to the right customers, improve customer satisfaction, and make your business customer-centric. 

Identify Problem Areas: Identifying problem areas is another benefit of quick research projects. You can see what factors of your products and services need improvement through social media surveys and email newsletter questions. Also, doing these surveys internally can help you see the gaps within your business that need to be improved on. 

Helps in Comparative Studies: Comparative studies keep you a step ahead of your competition. Your competitors may be getting more sales or engagement than yours, which could be for several reasons. And to find out why this is, you can compare the data you received from your market research with the growth of your competitors. Compare the differences between your products and services to see what makes theirs appealing to customers, then make the required adjustments to your present company procedures. 

Helps to Create New Business Opportunities: Not only can research be used to create new possibilities for companies, but it can also be used to create profitable ones. You can quickly ask your customers for other information that they need help with using online surveys. If you notice a trend in your customer desires, you can make this benefit you in the form of business opportunities. 

Reduce losses: You save your business lots of money when sending out customer surveys. This is because you discover the areas that may have potential issues before launching a new product. And as a result, increase the chance of a product’s success. Now that we know the benefits of this research let’s look at how to implement research for your business.

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1. Single Question Polls

Single-question polls help brands get data from their customers quickly. They could range from yes/no to multiple choice to open-ended questions. What’s more, these kinds of surveys reduce the unwillingness of recipients to participate. Examples of these surveys include CSAT surveys, NPS surveys, Customer effort  (CES) surveys, Feedback on products, Feedback on customer service, Feedback on agents and sales reports, Feedback on marketing content, Smile screen surveys, Employee pulse surveys, and Post-event surveys.

Optimonk says, “the average popup conversion rate is 11.09%.” While these numbers may be better, as most of us skip pop-ups, there are some strategies companies can use for one-question surveys.

  • Keep your objective in mind, as this would help influence how you word your question and your choice of question.
  • Know your audience: Consider if they know a lot about your product and understand the words you might use.
  • Make every word count: The more concise your question is, the higher the chance of people responding to your survey. 
  • Avoid bias: You want to be as objective as possible when writing your surveys, as this would give you accurate answers. Here’s a guide.
  • Choose the appropriate question type: The question type determines your response rate. You should pick between dichotomous, Likert, and rating scales as they tend to produce the highest response rates.
  • Be very clear and specific: Ensure your questions make sense straight away. Remove anything that isn’t entirely relevant.
  • Test and iterate: Testing should be a core element of your one-question polls as they help you see what’s working and what should be improved.

2. Social Media Polls

Social media polls are a great way to improve engagement and get customer data with minimal effort. Some of the most popular examples of social media polls used are to get feedback on existing products or services, conduct market research, and ask for preferences on certain aspects of your business. Here are some tips for using polls effectively:

  • Ask your audience to Retweet after votes have been cast, as this would increase the reach of your poll.
  • Create polls around trending social media topics.
  • Twitter is the better option for more sensitive topics as it lets voters remain anonymous.

3. Email Newsletter Questions

Email newsletter surveys or questionnaires are some of the oldest online data collection methods and remain among the most efficient survey data collection methods. Most people use email often, and many individuals check their accounts on their phones, tablets, or other mobile devices daily. Some tips for creating an effective email survey include: 

Use a Straightforward subject line, increasing the chances of your respondents opening your emails.

Add an incentive: Incentives are a great way to improve engagement rates. SurveyMonkey says incentives boost response rates by 50%. However, you want to be careful around giving heavy discounts as an incentive as they can easily get manipulated. 

Simplify the form: The more simplistic your form is, the more likely your respondents are to fill the form. Also, a 1-click response further simplifies the engagement rate. 

Design a mobile responsive survey email: Most subscribers on your list will likely use mobile devices, so your surveys must suit them. 

Abide by all anti-spam guidelines: Anti-spam guidelines like CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CCPA. Also, you must send your emails using an active email address and an authentic sender name. Lastly, sending the survey email from a no-reply email address can also send your emails to the spam folder. 

Track clicks in your email software: Tracking your email click-through rates determines what’s working and needs to be changed.

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4. A/B Test a Product Feature/Marketing Message

A/B testing helps you see which option works better out of two variables. And in using this technique for your product feature/marketing message, you see which area your customers lean towards, thus helping you make informed business decisions, increase website traffic, improve conversion rates, lower bounce rate, and lower cart abandonment.  

One crucial rule for doing A/B tests is to test one variable at a time, as multiple changes at once will make it difficult to spot which factor has made the most impact. 

Also, prioritize the pages on your website where your A/B testing will significantly affect conversion rates. You can find these areas by examining the pages with the highest traffic and lowest conversion rates. If you cannot optimize the page to increase conversions, think about redirecting it to a page with a high conversion rate or adding CTAs to organically guide users to such sites.

Lastly, you should highlight the areas in your website that need testing, (Some elements commonly tested in marketing include subject lines, CTAs, headers, titles, fonts and colors, product images, blog graphics, body copy, navigation, and opt-in forms). After this is done, you want to put them to test one after the other. And then, analyze the results to find a winner before publishing them on your website. 

Some tools for website A/B testing include VWO, Crazy Egg, and Google Optimize.

5. “Borrow” Other Research

Sometimes, you don’t need to go through the stress of doing an entirely new project research since you can ethically borrow from the research of other brands within your niche. The goal is to find out what areas your business can improve on, and you can achieve a little bit of this through this means. 

Wrapping Up

Research projects are crucial for helping you take your business to the next level.  If you need help with your digital marketing needs, get in touch here.

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