Welcome,

This week, we offer a customer survey that will actually help your marketing and break down some of the top emerging trends in brand and ad design. Have a fantastic long weekend.

Up and to the right,

Luke & The Astronaut Party Team

The Magic Customer Survey That Will Actually Change Your Marketing

By Lukas B. Snelling

Talk to Customers & Stop Asking Dumb Questions

As marketers, we have a bad habit of getting caught up in our tactics. Our “always be testing” culture keeps us focused on quick wins rather than larger strategy pivots. As a result, we don’t talk to customers enough. And when we do, we rarely ask them questions that will change our actions. 

One of the best ways to get to know our customers and update our strategy is to conduct a customer survey. The problem is most often customer surveys are built by committee, and end up with endless questions, most of which you won’t actually learn something from, and cause substantial drop-off, leaving you with a poor data set.

The best customer survey is one that is quick to take and gives you real, actionable insights on how to update your product and your marketing. At a minimum, every single question should be highly actionable. For some reason, we all love putting questions into surveys that aren’t actionable or have little benefit to us in the long run. 

A great example of a common but mostly useless question is anything related to demographics. They’re tedious to answer. We have sources of this data elsewhere thanks to website analytics, so much of our targeting is unlikely to be based on it, or if it is, you already know your brand is specifically targeting that group.

Much more interesting questions directly relate to actions you can take on the product or marketing strategy. Below is my “Magic 5 Question Customer Survey To Improve Your Marketing,” which has proven to have low drop-off and actually gives you insights you can use. 

Magic 5-Question Customer Survey To Improve Your Marketing

Question #1: What are the top benefits you're looking for by using PRODUCT NAME?

The purpose here is to understand the biggest draws to the product. This will tell us what customers are most interested in, and once you find out, this can become content for ads or landing pages. This question could be multiple-choice if you really know a lot about your product and it has clearly defined benefits, or for earlier-stage products, it could be a short-answer open-text question.

Question #2: What similar products have you purchased before this one? Type "none" if none.

Assuming you aren’t the only product in your field, this is a fantastic question to understand what other brands or products customers use before trying yours. This allows you to do direct comparisons to brands they may already be aware of in ads or on landing pages. This is your moment to understand what differentiates you from your competitors and use to get more attention at the top of the funnel. This is often a multiple-choice question, or if you leave it open-ended, you might be surprised by finding a brand on the margins of your offering or a new competitor. 

Question #3: Is there anything that nearly stopped you from buying the PRODUCT NAME?

This question helps you understand where you need to reduce hesitancy. The most common response here will be related to trust or value. For instance, if they come back saying “price”, you know your marketing materials need to address the product's value proposition specifically. If they come back with concerns about efficiency or quality, you know you need to build up authority or testimonials. Regardless of the response, the path to stronger marketing is clear here.

Question #4: What could be improved about PRODUCT NAME?

This one is obvious. We’re fishing for product shortcomings and opportunities for improvement. Often, the source of shortcomings is a lack of consumer education. This will expose whether we have the opportunity to educate consumers to make them happier with the product. Alternatively, it’ll show us what we can change about the product to make them happier. 

Question #5: How likely is it that you would recommend the PRODUCT to a friend or colleague? Rating 1-10

This is the classic Net Promoter Score question. This is insanely helpful at illuminating if you have a product problem or a marketing problem. In my experience for consumer products, if you score sub ~40 on this, you have a product problem. In that situation, you can iterate on marketing all day long, but you will struggle to increase retention and customer value. And if you need those two things for your business model, you will continue to struggle. If you score well here and are struggling with acquisition, you know there is an opportunity to implement what you learn in this survey to improve your overall performance dramatically.

Some Alternates That Can Be Helpful

Depending on your brand or where you are in your marketing optimization journey, there are some questions that you could include to be helpful. Note, whatever you do, do not go over 7 questions. 

Alternate #1: What do you love about PRODUCT NAME?

This can be helpful to understand what about your product really stands out in customers' minds and then can be highlighted in marketing. Often, using this question or Question #1 above in the same survey doesn’t make sense. Use this if you want to learn about product features. Use Question #1 if you want to learn about product benefits. Typically, benefits are better for marketing purposes, but for complex products or competitive industries and for people early in their marketing journey, this can be a very helpful question.

Alternate #2: How did the PRODUCT NAME meet your expectations? What results have you seen since using this PRODUCT NAME?

If your product takes a while to work or has a question of efficacy inherent to it, this can be a great question. It does two things, first it identifies the main benefits of the product you can use in your marketing, and second it can be an excellent source of testimonials. This is particularly useful for products where the benefits might not always be clear (think supplements, skincare, etc.)

Alternate #3: How did you hear about us?

This is the classic question designed to help you understand where you are acquiring customers from. Unfortunately, typically it’s done as a multiple choice question with an other option. It’s rare you get a true surprise here. However, I include this because if you are already deep into attribution and want to compare these numbers to what your attribution model says, you might find something a bit more represented here than elsewhere. This can be helpful, especially in the world where top-of-the-funnel campaigns can have opaque attribution. 

How to Execute This Survey

Incentivize, But Not With Your Products

When you are ready to get your customers to take your survey, offer them something, but make sure it is unrelated to your brand. Many make the mistake of offering a gift card to their brand, but this is only relevant to people who already like your brand and will skew the data. You want even the unhappy customers to take this survey. My go-to tends to be offering the chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. Everyone can use it, and it is agnostic enough.

Tell Them How Long The Survey Will Take

Wherever you promote the survey, tell them how long it will take to complete it. For instance, your CTAs could be, “Take the 3 minute survey.” Generally, people will opt into a survey if they know it will be short and quick. 

Not More Than Twice A Year to The Same Customers

Don’t go and run this survey over and over again. But you should update it regularly. Twice a year is optimal. More than that, and it’s annoying. 

Now that’s it. Let me know how the Magic Customer Survey serves you. What do you learn? What would you change? Email me here.

Brand & Ad Design Trends: Part 1

By Rosa Lorena Duzett

We’re constantly tracking the emerging trends in design for both brands and ads. Here, we recap those trends and discuss how they can best be leveraged.

1. Pops of Color

The modern take of Pop Art in the design world—Commonly seen in brands that target the young and the young-at-heart, color-popping visuals with large fonts are a go-to. Although this trend is not new in graphic design, it has garnered popularity in the past year. This trend is hard to miss as it uses clashing high-contrast, vibrant colors with large bold fonts and outlined colorful shapes, which truly catches anyone’s attention. This approach is great for ads or brands that want to pop out of the mix and capture attention. However, it also doesn’t come across as super formal or professional. Best for fun products - not as great for products that desire finesse, elegance, or science.

2. Gradient + Grain + Geometry

This is a spin-off of minimalism set to look futuristic. Even if the main text visuals are simple, usually in black or white thin geometrical lines, it is made striking by using a gradient background in a grainy texture. This design provides a modern, tech-focused look with an occasional retro or scientific feeling. This type of design can be great for science-based products or for those looking to display their innovation. The downside of this type of design is it may not pop or stand out as much, as it requires the use to be invested and dig deeper.

3. Kinetic Typography

This trend mimics movement. It breaks the traditional typography rule by using a different range of width, font style, and colors in each letter. If you want your visuals to give the impression of movement or rule-breaking fun, you can experiment with this technique with your design. This provides a unique approach that makes people look twice but can be confusing and difficult to read. This is best deployed for copy looking to make a point beyond the text - leveraging the movement to maximize the communication of the copy.

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