Surveys are a great way to learn more about your audience so that you’re able to create better content (and products) that are highly relevant to them. You can also use them to generate more leads.
Plus, creating your own survey means you’ve got original data that you can use in future content. This adds a touch more credibility to your brand.
But while it’s one thing having a survey that’s designed to grab invaluable data, actually promoting it so that people partake in the said survey can be a tad trickier. Just imagine how it feels when you take the time to build a gold nugget of a survey, only for everyone to just ignore it.
In this article, we’ll be taking a look at 6 creative content marketing ideas to promote your survey. We’ll discuss email marketing, social media marketing, as well as how you can leverage a partner in order to spread the word.
Let’s dive in.
What Is content marketing?
Content marketing is a means of making a connection with your audience via creating and distributing content. You’re not necessarily going for the sale here. Instead, you’re using content – such as blog posts, social media posts and even email – to raise awareness of your brand while educating, informing, engaging and ultimately helping your audience solve specific problems and pain points.
For example, a gym might create content that helps people lose weight, or choose a training program that works for them. Similarly, creating fun and engaging birthday captions for Instagram can keep your audience entertained and connected with your brand on social media, making your content more relatable.
Whatever content you create, it must be relevant to your target audience, and it needs to be extremely valuable, consistent and relevant. Otherwise, they will look to get their information elsewhere.
How to use content marketing to promote your survey
Once your survey has been created, next you need to create an effective content marketing strategy that is based on an understanding of your target audience. Below are 6 ideas to include:
1. Email marketing
Email is perhaps the most direct form of communication between your brand and your customers. When you send out an email to an individual, you’re addressing them on a personal level. This is very different to, say, a blog post that isn’t addressing any one individual specifically.
In 2020, email marketing has advanced to the point where you can now segment your audience so that you only need to send your survey out to a specific group of people (if desired) when you’ve completed the steps to create an email for yourself. For instance, there might be a time when you create a survey that requires new customers to fill it in, or maybe you’ll create one that’s aimed at business owners.
However you do it, email marketing comes with one guarantee: Everyone who’s on your email list opted-in, which means most of your subscribers will be receptive to a survey.
Plus, despite the social media mania that’s swamped the world, there are still more email users (4.0 billion) than social media accounts (3.6 billion). Moreover, email engagement remains high, with the overall open rate for small to medium businesses at 16.2%. In other words, people respond to emails.
That said, there’s no guarantee that everyone will click on your email campaigns once they have opened your email. Click-through rates can be tricky to master, and this is something all brands struggle with. When sending out your survey via email, it’s a good idea to turn the subject line into a special invite of sorts. Try to make the recipient feel special – in other words, you’d really appreciate their thoughts because they can really help you improve the way you operate your business. Make the email hyper-personalized to encourage more opens.
The email itself should be kept as short and succinct as possible because you really just want to get straight to the point, which in this case is the survey itself.
2. Social media marketing
If you’re to keep your social media following engaged, it means that you need to engage and interact with them. And sending out a survey is one of the best ways to do this because you’re literally asking them questions (and thus keeping the conversation going). Moreover, you’re showing your audience that you truly value their thoughts and opinions. You want to hear from them, and you’re willing to listen to what they have to say. In fact, a survey showed that 48% of social media users are more likely to like/share someone else’s content than their own.
Here are some tips for promoting your survey on social media:
- Create a unique hashtag for it
- Perform A/B tests with different images and headlines to see what performs best
- Offer an incentive in the form of a prize to encourage people to get involved
- Share a direct link to your survey
- Take advantage of all your social channels – Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
- Promote your survey via Instagram Stories
- Utilize social media tools to schedule your survey in advance
- Ask engaging social media questions
3. Blog posts
A blog post is an excellent way to a) raise awareness of your survey as well as b) explain why you’re carrying out the survey and what you intend to do with the data.
See, whilst offering an incentive in the form of a prize can definitely encourage more involvement, explaining the purpose of your survey can be just as powerful an incentive.
Of course, you don’t need to go to town and create a lengthy blog post – just write as much content as is needed. Make sure that you cover all bases in regards to why you’re releasing a survey. There are writing tools available to help you create your post.
Here are some more tips:
- Use AI writing tools to overcome writer’s block and generate ideas
- Don’t forget to add a call to action at the end of your blog post
- Include a few links to your survey throughout the blog post
- Embed your survey onto the post
- Share your blog post (and thus survey) via social media and email
4. Website content
Whilst using email marketing is a great way to hear from your current customers, website content is a great way to learn more about your audience who haven’t opted-in to your list yet, and who perhaps don’t know too much about your brand. With these site visitors, you can get a better idea of public perception of your brand. In this way, you can use surveys to generate leads.
Even better, you can create different surveys for different pages in order to target specific customers. For example, you could create a survey about a new product, one about your checkout process, or one about whether a particular page was of use to them.
5. Partner up
Why work by yourself at promoting a survey when you can partner up?
This is exactly what GrooveHQ did. They worked with fellow companies who offered incentives in the form of prizes and promotions. In exchange, GrooveHQ added their logos to their blog.
Why did this work?
Because reach increased. GrooveHQ were able to leverage their own audience, as well as their partner’s audience. This meant more survey sign-ups.
It also created brand alignment and goodwill among different partners. The kind of deal that can prove fruitful for years to come.
6. Referral marketing
Referral marketing is nothing new. Brands have been using it for years to drive more sign-ups.
But have you ever thought about using it to promote your survey?
In a nutshell, referral marketing is when a customer shares a specific referral link with their friend. If their friend then clicks the link and completes the desired action, both of them benefit in the form of some sort of prize, bonus or discount.
For example, brands usually reward referral marketers via a discount or free product. When it comes to your survey, however, you may want to get a bit more creative.
For instance, a smart idea is to create an actual referral program that anyone can join once they’ve finished the survey. Once inside the program, they can then refer the survey to their friends, family and colleagues. Whoever is among – say – the top 20 referrers wins a prize.
As you can see, referral marketing can be a fantastic way of promoting your survey, but the trick is to offer prizes that are relevant to your business and customers.
Wrapping up
Surveys are a great way to learn more about your customers whilst attracting new ones in the process. Use the tips in this article to promote your surveys via a strong content marketing campaign. Leave no stone unturned – from email to social media to referral marketing, every single tactic can be used to get more people involved with your surveys. More people = more data, which itself allows you to better serve your customers.
