Beware of surveys

Dom Portwood: Hi, Peter. What’s happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.

Peter Gibbons: Yeah. The coversheet. I know, I know. Uh, Bill talked to me about it.

Dom Portwood: Yeah. Did you get that memo?

Peter Gibbons: Yeah. I got the memo. And I understand the policy. And the problem is just that I forgot the one time. And I’ve already taken care of it so it’s not even really a problem anymore.

Dom Portwood: Ah! Yeah. It’s just we’re putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports before they go out now. So if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that from now on, that’d be great. All right!

• Office Space

We are well into this book and I haven’t mentioned a survey, poll, form, or questionnaire yet.

IS EVERYTHING OKAY?

The reason why is because they’re deceptive. It feels like you’re working on something.

The reality is they’re going to give you very little information you can use and GET PAID.

Channel your inner ”show the money” energy when thinking about where to focus.

I know they’re tempting.

It avoids talking to actual people.

You can ask 5-10 questions, share the link around with some friends and communities, and get up to 100 responses.

As satisfying as that can be you’re delaying the learning and discomfort you need to go through to get better.

Have you seen a busy retail store that’s absolutely humming. It’s all hands on deck and the business owner is just as comfortable ordering their staff to tidy the unfolded clothes as jumping on the till and asking the customer how their day was.

The really good ones listen. They care about the answer and are always open to learning more about their customers and what makes them tick.

Marketing online puts a lot of layers between you and the customer and it’s important for you to blast away those barriers as frequently and as often as you can. This is critical as you’re starting, and remains crucial as time goes on.

One of my friends is a research strategist.

He is paid to investigate very specific problems. These vary from the effectiveness of a weight-loss program via an app through answering open questions like “how do we increase interest in STEM education amongst First Nations children?”

Pretty cool right?

And even at the globally elite level the researcher still doesn’t start with surveys.

Once the problem is defined and then some solid themes, patterns, or hunches surface up they’re tested and validated against a survey.

If you’ve spent any time in a startup community or a hustling Facebook group you’ll see the survey in the wilderness a lot.

Zealous aspirant asks a question like:

“Which of these 4x logos looks best?”.

Then you a random person on the Internet selects an A, B, C, or D.

Every goddamn time.

Sometimes these posts get a lot of engagement.

I’m not here to help you feel good with engagement (we’ll get to the priority ladder later).

I’m showing you effective and efficient ways to market your business in a way that works and gets better.

There will be a point in time where you’re going to ignore me and do the survey anyway.

That’s fine.

Just don’t lead with it.

Make sure you include an option to capture the respondents details so you can talk to as many as you can face-to-face.

If you do find a way to make it work for you then get in touch and let me know.

My way is by no means the only way.

Another Australian named Ryan Levesque wrote a whole book on it called “The Ask Method”.

Just don’t start with a survey and wonder why you’re not getting customers.

I will die on this hill.