More Responses, No Flop Surveys: 8 Tips for Recruiting Survey Takers

How CPA, consulting and other professional service firms can use surveys for lead generation – Part IV

Imagine you've just put a bow on a fantastic survey.

You've gathered input from your business development and sales teams, set goals around what you want to uncover, constructed thoughtful questions, and considered future pieces of content to package from your results. It's pretty and polished, and you pat yourself on the back thinking of the minds that will be blown by the insights revealed.

Weeks later, instead of answering that business reporter's calls about your groundbreaking results, you're wondering why your survey has been completed by a total of four respondents, not including your sister.

Avoid Survey Flop

At this point, your survey is tantamount to a show with no audience. You got the song and dance, the costumes, lights and laughs all planned for a real feel-good, uplifting experience. But you forgot the sandwich boards, the posters and the ads playing snippets of the score.

How can your show be a sensation if no one knows about it? … Guess what? You've got a flop on your hands.

The same goes for your survey. Without respondents, you can't get results, let alone strike lead generation gold.

We've talked about the many benefits that a CPA, consulting or other professional service firm can realize from doing a survey. Now let's consider ways to recruit more people to actually complete your survey.

8 Tips for Securing Survey Respondents 

1. Remind, and then remind again. When you send out an email blast, don't expect to get a response the first time. Use multiple emails. Remember to keep them short and personalized where possible, and tell potential respondents what they'll get for completing the survey.

2. Team up. Create an alliance with a relevant trade association partner who can use their membership to get you additional respondents. One best practice is to offer a “Member's Only” preview of survey results.

3. Get your partners and subject matter experts on the phone. Use this network to start the conversation with clients and prospects. You're more likely to get a response when a real person asks and explains the benefits.

4. Put CTAs on your site. Set up buttons in strategic locations throughout your website to promote your survey.

5. Use paid media. Buy ad space on the sites and social networks your prospects are on, notifying them of the survey and the offer associated with taking it.

6. Use your newsletter. Include a link to your survey when updating your clients, partners and prospects. Make it shareable, and encourage them to it pass along.

7. Pre-publicize the survey. Put out a press release to announce that you're doing a survey and looking for participants, including a link where people can sign up and get more information. 

Number 8 (The Big Enchilada): Make It Worth Their While—By Giving It All Away.

I like to think that most people enjoy taking surveys as much as I do. But for those who aren't under solemn oath to never pass up an opportunity to divulge personal information in the name of marketing research, you'll need a compelling offer.

If you're asking someone to take time out of their day to give you thoughtful responses, be sure to give them something good in return. Why should they care? How will responding benefit them? What will they miss if they don't participate?

For a professional services firm, the best possible offer you can make to encourage response is to give away the results. Those that provide answers get access to ALL of your data. You can still create an executive summary of your results and use that for lead generation, but offering a rich, unique piece of thought leadership exclusively to those who weigh in is a great way to boost your responses.

What is Survey Success?

In other words, how many people should you get to take your survey so that you can feel good about the results?

Technically speaking, the validity of survey results is measured based on 99 respondents from a specific population of one million, where every person in the population was given an equal chance to participate. For example, if there were a million Broadway enthusiasts in Boston and you surveyed 99 of them, your survey results would be valid and applicable to the Boston population of Broadway enthusiasts. Bravo.

But that's not that particularly helpful.

Figuring out how many people you need to take your survey can be a complex process, and it will depend on your audience and goals. Calculating a sample size that will allow you to feel more confident in your end results requires having some knowledge of your population, and making decisions around the margin of error you're willing to accept. Just in case you're not a statistician, SurveyMonkey offers a sample size calculator here. But keep in mind that your sample size is how many people complete your survey—not how many you send it out to. To determine that, you need to think through how likely it is that someone will open and complete it.

In general, more is better. So get to talking—and reminding!—and get more clicks. The more respondents you have, the more valid and reliable your results will be, and the more lead generation success you can bask in.

In other words, stop the flop.