Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Hi mgredu,

Thanks for asking such specific questions!

There are various companies that sell lists of people in your target audience that include email addresses. Of course, another way is to have people register on your site - just name and email address - and compile a database that way. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to provide you with that information. However, by purchasing a list, you will probably get a broader and more representative reach of your target audience.

I am assuming these are online courses, and if so, the easiest way (and least expensive) to do this would be an online survey. Before you even go out in the field with your survey, I strongly suggest you do some internal brainstorming -

- what do we think people will say?
- what actions would we take based on these responses?

Ideally, you can run some online focus groups, or bulletin board groups with both previous purchasers and nonpurchasers (separate groups for each). This will help to give you direction and guidance for your questionnaire. A good idea is to hire someone objective to moderate these groups.

Here are some things to keep in mind when developing your actual survey:

1) Send out an email invitation to your target. Give them 1-2 weeks to respond. Since it is a B2B survey, you want to make sure you are in the field every day over the course of at least one week, so that if people are travelling on business, you will give them opportunity to see and respond to your survey. Your invitation should be brief, communicate the benefit to them (e.g., you are trying to develop courses that will benefit them in one or two specific ways), and be friendly, yet professional.

2) Your survey should have a flow to it - ask the easiest questions first. Essentially you want to build a relationship with the respondent so that they are more inclined to ask your more difficult or complex questions later.

3) Some qs to include:

- have they enrolled in these courses before
- important attributes they look for in a course (you should list these with a radio button or other technique to make it easy to answer).
- likelihood of taking one of your courses
- barriers to purchase (again, list those that you hypothesize are there, and have them rank them)
- you also might want to include a concept statement of a "new and improved" course (assuming it is that) that would remove those barriers and then ask them to again rate their likelihood of purchasing

4) Follow up with nonresponders after a week. Better yet, use a different mode to do this (e.g., automated phone message) as this can help to increase response rate.

I hope this helps. Good luck!!

- Joy

Thank you for the elaborate answer, Joy.

Is collecting website visitors's info. a common practice? Not sure why my organization has never thought of this.

Can you suggest some leads as to where I can find stats on people who work in certain positions? I would like to find out the size of the market of potential students for my courses. Is there a government agency that collects these stats?