A few weeks ago I read about how Larry King made a point to ask short direct question, because the best questions were the simplest, and usually lead to the most candid responses.
The reason I bring this up:
While reading about King, something occurred to me that might sound very amateurish, but it may help you wean off those IG and Facebook ads.
I call it the “DMV school” of survey design.
Because while it abides by Larry’s less-is-more philosophy, it’s about counting “boring facts.”
…. like, say, the number of people who were woken up last night by a bedmate snoring.
Why do “boring facts” matter?
For one, they ensure the problem your brand claims to solve exists.
If you’re selling white noise machines as a solution to snoring, you’d want to know whether there’s a large enough market of people affected by snoring.
And if that market is bigger or smaller than the market for:
• Urbanites woken up by street noise.
• Parents struggling to keep an infant asleep at night.
• People who simply like ambient noise while they sleep.
I know that solving real problems is business 101. Yet the question I most frequently hear from clients is, “Are we solving a problem people actually need help with?”
The good news about “boring facts” is that they’re easy to measure – so long as you abide by Larry’s less-is-more philosophy.
For instance last week I wrote this long-winded mess before taking an ax to it. The edits made it pithier and helped my client align their product to a real problem.
Before
”At any point today, before you took this survey, did you think about somebody in your household falling ill and the potential negative impacts of that?”
After
”Last night, did a respiratory illness prevent you from falling asleep?”
Anyways, I’ll leave you with this.
If you’re looking for the technical ‘dos’ and ‘don'ts’ of survey design, or seeking revelatory ‘beneath-the-surface’ shopper motives, then you probably shouldn’t book a Roast, or take anything I say seriously.
But if you want blunt, to-the-point questions that yield the cold-hard-facts – the kind that you can use to turn a “vitamin” product into a painkiller – then book a Roast.
That, and a number of useful hacks, are one of the many things I can help you out with.
