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If your company is marketing products or services to a business-to-business (B2B) target audience, then it is key to develop strategies and methodologies to help your business build and maintain a competitive edge. While B2B audiences are a prime target for market research, they are also a challenging audience to capture the attention of. Securing a healthy response to your B2B surveys is made easier if you follow these effective five tips.
1) Send a pre-alert notification. Although sending out a blind B2B survey will likely garner you responses, when preceded by a pre-notice communication that the survey is coming their way, it will do wonders in encouraging more response. Whether your pre-alert is a phone call, email, or snail mail letter, it helps to build an understanding, rapport, relationship, and credibility to you -- and your desire for a survey response.
2) Use online survey software. To design and deploy your B2B survey, it's wise to employ best practices to accomplish this goal. Advanced online survey software is a survey tool that enables advanced logic, customization, personalization, while also offering you the ability to send out mobile surveys and analyze the results via cool reporting features. Online survey software can help you tweak survey length and question response options to provide you with optimal and meaningful results.
3) Engage B2B audience members intelligently. Your B2B clients are experts in their respective fields. Treat them as such in your B2B survey by asking thoughtful, insightful, and meaningful questions that will truly improve your business and its impact on them.
4) Ensure confidentiality. While anonymity and confidentiality does not sway some B2B respondents from providing their opinion, it does for others who are hesitant to have a link made between their opinions and their identity. For best results, either make your B2B survey completely anonymous, or allow respondents to choose to remain anonymous should they so desire. Either way, they need to know that their responses will be held in complete confidence.
5) Offer to provide results. When B2B audience members provide their insights, feedback, and opinions on issues that are near and dear to your business, they often have a stake in the results as well. Show them you respect them and are appreciative of their time and feedback by offering results to your B2B survey. Over time, this helps build trust among your respondents, and can pay off in the long run in respect to better business partnerships, more effective feedback, and hopefully, increased profits.
B2B market research is a strong component of a sound business strategy in today's global, dynamic, and evolving business world. It helps gather valuable insight and feedback. This insight will ideally result in meeting the needs of both business partners and customer better, while fueling a competitive advantage. It is more than that, though. B2B surveys are a valuable relationship building instrument, and a powerful survey tool that should not be overlooked.
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