Surveys are an essential part of any business or organization looking to grow. They are a way of identifying your target audience and what they want. A survey helps you get straight to the point by asking only the question you want to know the answer to, rather than devoting all your time and financial resources to making something for everyone.

While surveys can help with just about anything, this article will focus on how a survey can help you target your market. If you have ever wondered how people find can find your business or learn about a particular product,  here’s your chance to get an answer.

In this post, we’ll walk you through how to create surveys for your audience that’ll help you meet your marketing goals.

Knowing Your Market is the First Step to Success

The first step to effectively targeting your market is knowing who your audience is. A survey is a valuable tool for learning about the demographics of your users and measuring their behavior, but you need to know how to design and administer it correctly.

First, send a survey to a general population sample (the people you’re interested in) to gather a representative sample. If you’re trying to improve the experience for customers or website users, send it to them; if you’re trying to reach out to new customers, send it out on social media or Google. Make sure it’s balanced so that you don’t oversample any group (like only sending it to women or people in one age group).

At Grapedata, we use an audience panel process to automatically collect demographic data so you can focus on adding the most relevant questions to your business. For example, we know what device each respondent uses and whether they are male or female. We also offer options for collecting additional demographic data like age range and household income.

In addition to demographic questions, add relevant behavioral questions so that you can find out about their interests and habits.

A Guide to Using Screening Questions

Screening questions (or “pre-qualification” questions) effectively audience, find respondents who meet specific qualifications and get accurate results.

A screening question is a qualifying question that appears at the beginning of your survey. It helps you get answers from people who have the right demographic profile or expertise for your survey.

You can use the Grapedata survey to find survey respondents with specific demographic characteristics, like age, gender, income level, or location. But sometimes, you need to reach a particular group of people that aren’t easily targeted by demographics alone. For example, people that are active in a specific sport or own a particular pet. In these cases, you can use screening questions to help find respondents who fit your target audience.

Create your custom screening question by asking about the specific attributes you need for this study. If a respondent doesn’t fit the criteria for your research, they won’t qualify and will immediately be disqualified from taking the survey. If they match your target audience, they’ll continue taking the study past the screening question and answer all other questions as usual.

Predicting the Incidence Rate

The incidence rate is the percentage of respondents that will qualify for your survey. For example, if you target people interested in buying a new car, you may find that only 10% of the population qualifies. You should also consider whether your target market lives in a specific geographic area or has certain demographic characteristics.

The incidence rate also helps research platforms like Grapedata determine the number of people we need to screen from our panelist pool. If a survey has a high incidence rate, it may take longer to screen enough respondents to reach completion. In this case, Grapedata will recommend using a higher incentive amount or using more panelists than usual.

In some cases, you can estimate the incidence rate without much work. For example, if you want to target car buyers between 25 and 50, you can look up statistics about how many people fit those criteria. If you know how many people are in this group in your area, you can approximate the number of responses needed for your survey.

Conclusion

Capturing your target market has never been more convenient than it is now. You can now have a well-targeted survey that will give you all the information you need to build your product around your customers. With easy-to-use automated tools like Grapedata, you can be sure of reaching your target market. Contact us to get started today.