Saw this article and thought it was an interesting way for schools to use online surveys to better understand their districts.

Monday, the De Soto Board of Education approved 6-1 hiring Ken DeSieghardt from DeSieghardt Strategic Communications to conduct a scientific survey in the district. Board member Randy Johnson dissented. Read the rest of this entry »

Hats off to Dick’s Clicks for detailing how to successfully add a parameter using Microsoft Query. By using MS Excel is it possible to create a database connection to another excel sheet and feed data through. The great thing about Dick’s Clicks solution is that you can use a variable in the spreadsheet to determine which data is imported (rather than have all the data piped through).

The tricky part about querying the data is that adding a parameter is not possible unless you add a criteria from MS Query. Otherwise if you try to do it from excel you are faced with a greyed out parameter button. Dicks solution has saved me again.

Marketing Sherpa in their case study How To Qualify Leads with Targeted Online Surveys highlight how online surveys can prove an extremely successful way to build qualified leads for your sales team.

While the marketer in me is instantly excited by this idea it is the researcher in me that says caution must be taken when choosing this method of driving sales. Read the rest of this entry »

Immi have developed a innovative piece of technology that turns a cellphone into a media surveying device. The IMMI^(SM) phone randomly samples 10 seconds of room audio every 30 seconds. These samples are reduced to digital signatures, which are uploaded continuously to the IMMI servers. IMMI also tracks all local media outlets actively broadcasting in any given designated media area (DMA). To identify media, IMMI^(SM) compares the uploaded audio signatures computed by the phones with audio signatures computed on the IMMI servers monitoring TV and radio broadcasts. IMMI also maintains client-provided content files, such as commercials, promos, movies, and songs. By matching the signatures, IMMI couples media broadcasts with the individuals who are exposed to them. The process takes just a few seconds.

The system relies on audible media so does not pick up for instance a television on mute. Yet the technology is still pretty impressive (if it works). To date most media companies have been reliant on diaries completed by panel members or set top boxes, something that IMMI may be able to send into retirement.

David Taylor and Roger Brooksbank in their article “Strategic marketing in action: A comparison of higher and lower performing manufacturing firms in the UK” highlight the key elements of high performing manufacturing companies in the UK. What I found most interesting is the role that market research has to play in helping organisations become ‘High Performers’ and that high performers make greater use of marketing information systems.

The key findings were:

1. High Performers do more and better marketing research;
2. High Performers carry out a more comprehensive strategic situation analysis;
3. High performers pursue a strategy based on providing superior value to the customer;
4. High performers make greater use of marketing information systems.

When high performers talked about their marketing information systems they tended to focus on customer feedback and how this was managed. Mention was made of how customer advisory panels enabled the high performing organisations to capture effectively and efficiently the opinions of their customers.

Customer advisory panels are ideal for any organisation looking to create a sustainable competitive advantage. While achieving a sustainable competitive advantage can be like looking for the holy grail, one of the easiest ways is to understand your customers better, which is exactly what a Customer Advisory Panel can enable an organisation to do.

After seeing that Lime Survey (formerly PHPSurveyor) have released an upgraded version of their open source survey software I thought I would give it a whirl and see how it runs. Before I get started I should divulge that I do have a vested interest in survey software. Rock Research is a uSuite partner and as such actively promote the uSuite solution. All the same I keep an active interest in the development of survey technology and am always on the look out for something new and interesting and have tried as best as I can to approach Lime Survey with an open mind.

I also like free stuff and am pretty familiar with a number of open source projects and having played around with the following, SugarCRM, PHPFilenavigator, WordPress , Silverstripe I do have something to compare Lime Survey with.

Download

Downloading Lime Survey was pretty straightforward. I downloaded the Lime Survey 1.52. It is not a big file and all happened seamlessly and pretty fast. Read the rest of this entry »

While ‘online panels’ are nothing new, their potential to help organisations to gain a greater understanding of their customers and their markets is enormous. It is most likely that you would of heard of some of pre-existing panels that exist, but rather than borrow someone else’s panel – why not build your own?

Custom online panels can provide a multitude benefits to both profit, non-profit and Government organisations. Just three of the benefits are:

1. BECOME ENGAGED WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS:By creating an ongoing dialogue with a group of existing and potential customers you can strengthen existing relationships. With a panel you create an ongoing dialogue, unlike a survey or focus group you can ask follow-up questions. The panel tells you something, you respond and together you both explore. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous blog titled “Make Money from Home, fire your Boss” I wrote about the large number of scam survey websites that asked for money upfront so you could then earn $1,000′s from online surveys. Thankfully we now have websites like the Survey Police keeping the web safe. And while they do not go as far to hunt down the perpetrators of badly written surveys they do seek to sort out the legitimate online survey panels from the scammers.

Research suggests that having a customer review site will increase websales. It stands to reason that this would be the case. Like the guys at Church of the Customer I know that whenever I am about to make a purchase plugging into Google “[product name]” “review” is the best way to go to figure out whether you are about to purchase a dog or lemon.

Caution has to be taken though. If I had listened to a lot of the chattering I would never have purchased my Dell notebook (I made my purchasing decision just after Dell’s machines started spontaneously combusting) My notebook is now twelve months old and my fingers are singe free.

In addition, it is worthwhile considering that not all review sites are what they appear to be. SurveySoftwareReviews.com has been indentified by MarketResearchTech.com as a sham review site.

After doing a little research they identified the following reasons why they considered SurveySoftwareReviews.com to be a sham review site:

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Save money: – Online surveys are substantially cheaper than traditional research methods like telephone or mail surveys. In fact internet surveys cost only 10% of those conducted by phone and just 20% of what traditional mail surveys cost.

2. Save time: – Online surveys can give you real insights, real quick. Responses can be analysed just minutes after you have launched your survey. This means that organisations can act on relevant information immediately rather than wait for the survey to be finished. The sooner you have the data the sooner you can start putting the information to work.

3. High response rates: – Online surveys are fast becoming the preferred survey method for respondents. The flexibility of online surveys allows them to be completed at the respondent’s leisure. Online surveys are fast, convenient and simple to complete.In a recent survey that Rock Research completed, 90% of respondents said they would prefer to be surveyed online rather than complete a telephone survey.

Read the rest of this entry »