How to strategically gather customer feedback

If you're like me, you want to learn everything you can about your target audience. I firmly believe that the more you know about the people who visit your site, the more opportunities you'll have to spread brand awareness, boost engagement, and skyrocket sales.

Feedback is a valuable tool that can teach you about the goals and pain points of your customers and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Without the people who buy from your online store and read your content, you wouldn't have a business. If you're not listening to their needs, there's a good chance you're missing out on significant opportunities to grow and evolve your company.

My goal is to show you several effective ways to create feedback loops at natural points across your sales funnel. Business owners, marketers, and ambitious entrepreneurs across all industries can use these tips to organically engage with their visitors and learn a little more about their needs, which can lead to more compelling, relatable customer experiences.

Are you ready? Let's begin!

Show an On-Site Feedback Form

On-site feedback forms are an excellent way to quickly gather feedback from a general audience. This format can help you make broad decisions that will affect most of your customers.

For example, you may want to ask visitors if they are interested in more video product demonstrations. It doesn't matter which segment responds to the question. If the general answer is yes, it's safe to assume that video product guides will help the community.

You can also use this space to conduct mini-surveys about new product features. I like using these types of surveys to ask existing customers what feature they want to see added to our product next. All of the choices are in the same development phase, but customer opinions will determine where we shift our attention first.

I suggest keeping your visible feedback forms short and sweet. If you include too many questions, you'll drive away first-time visitors or busy customers. I like to reserve our long-form surveys for some of the other situations I'll cover below.

Ask New Subscribers Optional Questions

I also advise asking new subscribers a few optional questions while they are filling out your contact form or popup email subscription box. This little bit of extra data can help you segment your audience based on their unique interests and goals.

Believe it or not, segmenting is a bigger problem than you might think. A whopping 37% of marketers say they have a severe lack of customer data, which makes segmenting their leads a challenge.

When I include optional questions on our subscription forms, I limit myself to 1-2 questions. In many cases, one question will be multiple-choice, and one will be open-ended. Here's the important part you should remember; both questions are optional.

If you force people to provide you with information, many will choose to leave. However, optional questions are more inviting and can lead to visitors telling you information about their habits and interests that they may have not otherwise readily shared.

For instance, I always ask new subscribers to tell us their biggest email marketing roadblock. I use this information to put each person on an appropriate list where they can get content, advice, and offers that match their needs.

Research shows that this type of personalization can significantly impact your email engagement rate. In fact, personalized emails see 14.31% more opens when compared to generic messages.

Send Surveys to Existing Subscribers

You can also send long-form surveys to existing email subscribers. This strategy is helpful when you need to refine your customer personas, which then determine your segments. These types of surveys require a little more thought and planning.

I suggest creating multiple variations of the same survey so you can make the questions a little more personalized for each customer. This step will help you figure out how the data fits into your overall marketing strategy.

For instance, if you run a pet supply store and want to see what people think of a specific type of cat food, you wouldn't include a question about that food on everyone's survey. Instead, you would target people who did buy that product, or at the very least, fit into the 'cat owner' segment.

One thing to know about long surveys; your audience does not like filling these things out more than twice a year. I suggest sending a feedback form every other quarter so you can see where you stand with your email subscribers.

If you want to ensure more people complete your questionnaire, include a progress bar. A simple progress bar will show users how much longer they need to go before answering the last question.

Start Conversations on Social Media

Social media is another excellent place to gather feedback strategically. Across all platforms, there are over 4.55 billion users, and that number is expected to increase in the coming years. If you couple that statistic with the fact that 76% of U.S. shoppers say they've made a purchase after seeing a relevant product post, it's no surprise that social media is a crucial focal point for customer feedback.

There are two ways to gather actionable feedback from your audience. The first way is with a traditional poll. This type of questionnaire is restrictive because users don't have a chance to explain their points. However, you can simply ask visitors who select an answer to leave their feedback in the comments section of the poll.

Another way to start a conversation on social media is to create a video or text-based post where you ask your audience a specific question. For example, the owner of a gardening supply company might ask their followers to tell them what seeds are always sold out when they are ready to buy.

The owner of this company can use the survey results to bulk up their stock for next season, which could lead to more sales and happier customers.

Develop a Post-Sale Email Campaign

Finally, I think every business should have a post-sale email campaign. Almost every customer will subscribe to your email list while completing the payment process. If they opt-in to receive emails from your company, you can use this as an opportunity to gather feedback.

I have a post-sale survey that we send to every person that buys something from our site. We wait until two weeks after they activate our software before sending their survey. I've found that this gives our users enough time to get to know our software and share their thoughts.

Our questions focus on what they think of our product, what we can do to improve, and what features they would like to see added over time. These three types of questions cover our bases; marketing, sales, and customer education. If not for this type of feedback form, I'm not sure we would have made it to where we are today.

Back to You

Gathering feedback is an essential part of growing a small business. Hopefully, the tips outlined today inspire you to get out there and learn everything you can about the people who are genuinely interested in your products, services, and brand.

Learning from your audience doesn't have a 'completion' date. Your visitors' needs, goals, and interests will change with time. A robust customer feedback strategy can help you stay on top of these trends and boost user satisfaction and engagement.