Mobile Surveys: It’s time for brands to know what customers really want or vanish

A UN Report recently stated that 6 out of the world’s 7 billion people have mobile phones. Hand-held devices are certainly outselling PCs and laptops.

Now, this has some serious implications for brand marketers. Mobile Marketing is something that has now become an integral part of any brand’s promotion strategy.

Brands, can, however ignore the mobile space but only at their own peril.

Your competitors are constantly seeking new ways to reach more customers and retain existing ones. And, there’s no better way than being present on their mobile devices to catch their attention.

Infact, 35% of market retailers feel that they can differentiate their position in the consumer marketplace using mobile.

So, going mobile is just not a choice but mandatory if you want your brand to be alive.

Mobile surveys, have, recently seen a lot of interest from marketers. And, why not! These allow you to get rich insights about customers including how they behave, what kind of products and services they like and what’s the best time to send promotional messages to them.

These surveys aren’t just about answering a few questions on mobile devices. There’s a lot more to these. How are these actually conducted? What’s the kind of technology that’s used to make these surveys more impactful?

Let’s explore!!

Geo-Fencing: Taking your mobile surveys to a new level

Geo-fencing, if you think about it, is self-explanatory. Forget the word geo for a second and think what fence means. It means a boundary.

So, as a marketer, you can create virtual fences (in terms of longitude & latitude) in specific areas depending on your requirements. Once a customer (having your brand’s mobile app installed in his/her own device) enters that fence, a push notification/message gets triggered on his/her device.

Acting as a virtual barrier, Geofence is a feature in your application that uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) for defining geographical boundaries.

The geo-fencing feature is mainly used by marketers to send alerts on promotions like discount schemes to deliver highly targeted, personalized messages. These messages/alerts are sent by native messaging services.

Why implement these surveys?

Geo-Fencing based Mobile Surveys offer many advantages like:

• Get feedback in real-time from your customers. This is especially helpful in restaurants and cafés. The feedback helps you improve on product offerings and services.
• When you are able to get a customer’s shopping insight you are able to gauge their preferences better. This helps tailor your marketing messages in accordance with your customers’ liking.
• Moreover, the kind of data that you get in real-time is simply a gold mine. It helps you make better business decisions too.

How do the surveys work?

You can easily create location aware surveys to conduct advanced research studies on your customers.

As an administrator, you can define a geographical boundary from the back-end of the application and trigger proximity-specific alerts when customers enter the pre-defined venue or area.

These surveys can be activated and deactivated depending on your need. You can even tag locations as customers move around a specific area/region.

Real World Examples

A major sporting organization used TolunaMobile™ Diary app (App by Toluna, a leading market research panel technology provider) to conduct real-time polling for gauging audience’s interest and preference in the midst of a sporting event’s interval time.

A food outlet conducted a similar survey to gather menu board feedback from customers once they are in-store. Customers could comment on their offerings, all in real-time and even upload photos for validating menu presentation and pricing.

Tips for success

Implementing geo-fencing based mobile surveys can be tricky. Keep in mind these points before planning such surveys.

• Make sure that the virtual fence you create for your survey is between 50-100 feet for best results.
• Considering the length of the survey is equally important. Too lengthy survey can dissuade your customers to complete the entire survey. Keep maximum 10 questions in your survey. Also, give no more than 7 answers to choose from.
• Keep the size of your question to the size of a tweet (140 characters).
• Don’t forget to reward your customers for their valuable time. Give reward points or similar another incentive for participation.
• Respect their privacy and ask for their consent before the survey starts. Don’t divulge personal information and keep it safe and protected.

Conclusion

Research studies state that consumer expectations increase on an average 20% every year. However, brands fulfill these only upto 5%. This implies a huge gap but equally presents an opportunity also for every brand. Geo-fencing based mobile surveys can help you bridge this gap phenomenally with real-time insights and rich data.

Incorporate mobile surveys in your market research activities to understand your customers better and deliver an awesome experience to them.