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2. Make your pointAn expert-made market research survey template (vetted by our survey research scientists) can help you begin your own market research. You’ll be able to ask your target audience about their demographics, preferences, and more. No matter what you decide to conduct your market research on, these tips will help you make sure your market research survey is on the right track.
1. Define the problem.
When you think about how to create a market research survey, you should reflect on why you’re interested in researching a particular topic in the first place. What problem are you trying to solve with this data? How will it benefit your product, your customers, or your company in general? Asking these questions will allow you to understand the issues and the type of data you’re looking for.
2. Establish research objectives.
Once you’ve identified your problem, you’ll need to set a research objective that focuses on how you’ll complete your study. Essentially, your objective is a goal you’re hoping to reach with your market research survey. You can formulate it as a question. For example, your objective could be: “If we change the functionality of this product, how will customers react to it?”
To come up with direct, thoughtful goals, you’ll need to ask yourself a variety of top-level questions. This page walks you through the different things you should ask yourself.
3. Target the right audience.
Determine why you’re trying to reach your audience. It’s also worth considering how niche your audience is. The more specific your audience criteria gets, the harder it becomes to identify enough respondents. In addition, it gets more expensive. To ensure you have a suitable sample size that fits within your budget, consider loosening your population criteria. Alternatively, you can use screening questions at the beginning of your survey to either qualify or disqualify respondents from taking it. Learn how by reading, “A guide to using screening questions in your survey.”
4. Decide on your margin of error.
This means defining the degree of confidence that your results match up with the opinions and preferences of the entire population (of those who fit your criteria). Learn more about the relationship between your sample size and margin of error here.
5. Set timelines.
When will you send your survey out? How many times will you send it out? When are you hoping to get all your information by?
These questions help you set timelines for your survey. They also impact the quality and quantity of responses you receive. For example, surveys have a higher response rate between the hours of 9-10 am than 10-11pm.
Want to learn more about when to send your survey? Check out this webinar. It features 2 of our survey experts sharing their best practices.
6. Use resources and tools to help you.
SurveyMonkey offers an immense number of market research survey examples. Use them as templates for creating your own survey or as a guide in building one from scratch.
7. Use the right tools to start collecting and analyzing data.
It’s time to send your survey out! Choose from a variety of options when deciding how to send it. And when the responses come back, use SurveyMonkey’s Analyze tools to conduct your data analysis at a high level. You’ll be able to find hidden patterns in your data, and spot insights you’ve never discovered before.
It’s worth noting that you can run market research with your customer base. Sending market research surveys to customer lists is more common in business-to-business (B2B) and eCommerce business-to-consumer (B2C) companies where customer email addresses are more accessible. When companies don’t have direct access to their customers, they will turn to consumer panels to target the people they need to reach.
If you have a choice, you should test on prospects who are likely to purchase in your category. Customers have a higher chance of being biased based on their pre-existing engagement with you. And when you don’t have prospects to target? SurveyMonkey Audience is your best bet.
If you’re set on running market research with your customers, consider these additional tips:
Don’t bug your customers. Make sure you’re sending your survey out to customers a reasonable amount of times.
Let customers know their voice matters. Assure them that what they say in your survey will matter and that their voice can lead to an improved customer experience. 
A good time to share this message is in the survey introduction.
No matter your plan on how to create a market research survey, use online surveys to get quality data fast and easily. They’ll allow you to better understand the market and your consumers.
Ready to get started? Create a market research survey today.
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