Come with me on a journey.
Way way way back to an ancient time.
A time before social media was what it is now. I’m talking about the mid-2000’s.
Okay, that’s not THAT long ago, but in terms of the internet it feels like an age.
The birth of social media was a great thing for businesses. It allowed small businesses to connect more easily with potential clients and existing clients.
But over the past 10 years it seems that because social media has played such a huge part in marketing, a lot of really amazing marketing strategies have been forgotten about.
Strategies that work just as well today (sometimes better because they are now rare and unique).
Today I want to share with you one of these strategies, the Feedback Survey. I’ll show you why it’s so valuable and how you can easily run one yourself.
Why Isn’t It Working?
Ever heard the saying, ‘You can’t read the label from inside the jar.’?
Getting perspective on why a business is doing well or poorly is really difficult when it’s your business. The quickest and easiest (and even fun-est) way to find out what people really think about what you’re doing is to just ask them.
Instead of spending time scratching your head and doubling down on strategies that aren’t working, you can get real answers.
Feedback forms and customer satisfaction survey’s are also really helpful in 2 other ways:
- They can supercharge your marketing. By finding out where you’re already doing well, you can double down your efforts in those areas. They also give you lots of language around how your clients feel about training with you.
- Launching new services. Instead of guessing what else you can do to help your clients, simply ask them with some well thought out questions.
5 Steps to Your Feedback Survey
To run your own feedback survey and get these powerful insights into your clients and soon-to-be clients you’ll need to follow these three simple steps:
- Answer this question: What is the main goal of your survey?
- Assemble the best questions to ask.
- Put those questions on something like Typeform or SurveyMonkey.
- Promote your survey.
- Analyse and use the results.
In this article I’ll guide you through each of these steps.
What Is The Main Goal Of Your Survey?
Start by working out why you want to run your survey. This will help with the next step, choosing your questions.
Here are some reasons you might send out a feedback survey:
- General Satisfaction Survey: For understanding how your brand is doing on a whole, both with customers and people who might just follow you.
- Specific Satisfaction Survey: For getting details on how you’re doing with one specific service.
- Future Service Survey: For identifying where your clients are still needing help and how you might be able to offer something new to help them.
The Best Questions To Ask Your Clients
You probably already know about open and closed questions, but just so we’re on the same page let me go over them quickly.
- Close-ended questions are questions that only have a short answer like yes or no. Eg. Do you like chicken?
- Open-ended questions are questions that can have a longer, more detailed answer. Eg. Why do you like chicken?
To get the best information from your survey you want to ask really good questions and a mixture of openi and closed-ended questions.
Here are some I recommend for general feedback:
- What is something you think we do really well? (You can offer some answers multiple choice or a text box for them to leave an answer in their own words)
- What is something you think we do poorly? (Text box)
- How do you rate the following part of my service? (Provide a sliding scale for them to answer like Not Good, OK, Great).
- Coaching – Personality
- Coaching – Skills
- Variety of Sessions
- Feeling of Safety
- Consistency
- What is something you really like about the sessions you attend?
- Would you be interested in any of these activities if we ran them at [insert your business name]? Select all that apply.
- Exercise Workshops
- Fun Runs
- Day Hikes
- Retreats
- Cooking Classes
- etc.
- How do you prefer to pay for things?
- All up front
- Payment plans (like Afterpay)
- Subscriptions
- etc.
- How much money do you spend each year on health related services?
- Less than $100
- $100 to $500
- $500 to $1,000
- etc.
- How did you hear about us? (multiple choice)
- What is something positive that’s changed since you began training with me? (Text box)
- What was the thing that tipped you over the edge and made you reach out me/us in the first place? (Text box)
The main thing is to get clear about what would be most helpful for you to know and include some good questions around that.
Another piece of advice I have is to make the survey easy to fill out. Include lots of multiple choice questions and only a few open ended questions.
Platforms For Hosting Your Survey
There are a variety of ways to send out your survey from printing it out on a piece of paper and having clients fill it out on the spot to high-end survey software that costs $100s per month.
Personally, I recommend paying for something – even if it’s just for a month or two – because it makes it easier to see at a glance your results.
Below I’ve put together some different options for you. Typeform is my favourite as it’s super mobile friendly and very interactive.
Free (only if you’ve got a small number of clients to survey)
- Physical Printed Feedback Forms
- Google Forms (if you’re savvy with spreadsheets you can then turn this into your own tables and graphs)
Paid:
- Typeform (limited free plan available)
- SurveyMonkey (limited free plan available)
- VideoAsk (for a unique kind of survey)
Promote Your Survey
One of the hardest things about running a feedback survey is getting people to do them! That’s why when I used to run workshops I would get the participants to fill out a feedback survey on the spot before they went home.
Of course, as I mentioned above when you’re getting feedback from a lot of people it can be tricky to analyze it if everything is written down.
Here’s how I recommend promoting your survey:
- Pick a start and end date for people to fill out the survey.
- Email them at the start. Keep it short and let them know how long it will take to complete the survey.
- Remind them to fill out the survey at your classes, on social media and anywhere else you interact with your clients.
- You might even DM some of your Ideal Clients if they haven’t filled it out yet because their responses are extra important.
- Email everyone again with 24 hours left to fill out the survey. Thank those who’ve already filled it out.
Get More Responses
One way you can supercharge the number of your responses is to run a giveaway. You might giveaway a free month of bootcamp to one random person who fills out the survey (make sure you’re capturing their name and/or email). Or buy a voucher for a local masseuse and use offer that as the main prize.
In addition to the giveaway you might offer a small thank you to everyone who takes the time to fill out the survey. It doesn’t have to be anything big, perhaps 10% off their next month/pack/session or a coupon for a free coffee at a local cafe.
Make sure you give lots and lots of reminders. You might feel annoying but people are busy and will forget. You need to remind them again and again.
If you only have a few clients (less than 10) this might mean sending people individual messages asking them.
Go Forth And Survey
Now you know how to create a feedback survey, put aside some time this week to do it!
Don’t just add it to your someday to-do list, take action and get it out there.
If you do take the time to get a feedback survey up and running, let me know. Leave a comment below with the link if you’d like me to take a look.
Kyle Wood created Bootcamp Ideas in 2010 when he was hunting around on the internet for workout ideas. He ran a successful bootcamp in Victoria, Australia and spends his spare time managing this site, adventuring (or lazying) with his wife and find new ways to make bootcamps even better.
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