Too many firms specializing in community surveys use the same boilerplate survey for all of their clients or with just a few adjustments.
But you’re not like Buffalo, NY. Your community has its own unique strengths, challenges, opportunities, and brand identity.
We understand that communities and cities are concerned about understanding the needs of their minority and disadvantaged residents. They want to be confident that they are included in their city satisfaction surveys; thus, including their responses in surveys is important.
It used to be very hard to find these residents in survey research. We had to take special care and use different methods to capture their opinions.
Those days are gone.
According to Pew Research, as reported by Statista, the penetration of smartphone usage in 2021 was similar across different ethnic and minority groups. Even the older population adopts smartphones at an increasing rate. A separate Statista report shows that in 2021, 61% of people over the age of 65 were using smartphones – and increasing at a rate of 7 to 8 percentage points a year. In addition, Pew Research also reports that in 2021, 76% of those making less than $30,000 per year have smartphones – and this increases 4% to 5% per year.
These figures suggest that mobile surveys are not only a valid option for capturing opinions from a broader, more representative audience; they may be the best way.
Of course, there is some common sense with this as well. Who do you know who enjoys sitting down to take a paper survey? Who even does that anyway? Yet, we are all on our phones. Even these typically hard-to-reach residents are on their phones.
In short, we need to go where they are and use the communication tools they use.
Unfortunately, many government agencies and city governments still use telephone and mail surveys to find these respondents due to a mistaken belief that these modes are required to find these hard-to-find respondents. When, in fact, these modes make it more difficult to capture a representative sample of these hard-to-reach respondents. And, of course, these modes have a number of methodological problems that we won’t go into here.
No one wants to take a monotonous, boring survey (which describes most paper surveys). And we know our audience has many more distractions than just a few years ago. Therefore, designing even online surveys as we did just a few years ago won’t work. We need to design them specifically for a smartphone.
Most online and even mobile surveys are still designed for a computer, not a smartphone. If we want smartphone users to take surveys, we must consider the layout and design the survey specifically for a smartphone.
Also, those with smartphones tend to have much higher expectations for an easy and intuitive user interface. Lots of grids of 5-point scales are not the most fun surveys to take. Many options exist beyond these batteries of scales. Besides, humans don’t make decisions on 5-point scales. They make choices. See our video on the 5 Biggest Problems with Scales.
A good smartphone design requires simplifying the user interface and avoiding overly complicated layouts. A good rule of thumb is to keep the survey brief, with clear questions that are genuinely engaging, understandable, and easy to answer.
Is your community still relying primarily on mail surveys? Are you relying on vendors who still execute their surveys the same way as back in the 1990’s? The good news is that utilizing smartphones in combination with additional methods will provide better data faster and at a lower cost. What’s not to like?
The use of benchmarks within a City Satisfaction Survey can be very useful. Benchmarks are an excellent method of comparing your city to those similarly situated, capturing and tracking data over time, and ensuring your government properly functions in a way that the evolving public demands of its residents.
What you do NOT want to do is simply use the “off the shelf” bencmarks provided by your research vendor.
Bad benchmarks mean bad data, and we must have good data to make representative public policy.
If your city is a college town, then you should compare yourself to other college towns. If you are a larger mid-west city, you should compare yourself to other larger mid-west cities. You get the idea.
The problem is that most “benchmarking data” comingles of all types of cities. It represents this “average” city that does not exist. If you are a small coastal town, do you really want to be compared to Phoenix? That is what you get with most off-the shelf benchmarking results. To make it worse, this data may be several years old.
Bad benchmarks can result in bad decisions. they can lead to the wrong indicators of performance measurement and create situations in which government officials are held to unreasonable and inaccurate standards.
Consider the following questions:
A much-improved benchmark is one that . . .
This is what we do at True North. We execute your City Satisfaction Survey in like markets at the exact same time. This data becomes your true apples-to-apples comparison point — the gold standard. From there, we track results over time, enabling you to get robust answers showing how data moves against benchmarks over time.
And this process does not need to cost much more. Most of the study costs are already covered (fixed study costs including questionnaire design, programming, survey methodology, and more).
This is just one more reason why True North has been named a “Most Trusted” Market Research Company. You can trust us to deliver true insights to you – not just data.
It’s always a challenge to get insights to the top of the company. But here’s a sure-fire way. Get in the annual planning meeting. Offer to share the top 3-4 insights from the last year.
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Not just the dollars that are spent but the huge amount of internal time it swallows up. In spite of management enthusiasm, most products fail. But this failure rate can be reduced simply by following a sound New Product Development system.
Perhaps the biggest error we see in developing new products is the lack of a process. But if you don’t have one, don’t worry. Few firms have one. But that is also an opportunity. If few have a good process, think of how your organization can beat the competition by getting better and faster with developing new products.
A good process may not be what you think. It is not a way to make all of your ideas successful. In fact, a key component of the process is to quickly identify those ideas that should not be pursued. We want to quickly abandon those poor opportunities to focus resources on those ideas that have a good probability of success. A good process will help you recognize the difference.
So how do you manage those crazy ideas that sometimes come from senior management? [If you have been involved in new product development for any time, you no doubt have run across this]. If you are not brave enough to tell the senior leader what you really think, you can place their idea into the process and let the objective process reveal its opportunity.
Take control of your New Product efforts by creating a process. Of course, there is no one ideal process; you can start with one and modify it to fit your organization.
Click here to download our New Product Development process diagram. Our treat.
Wait—don’t click away! That’s not an insult; it’s just a fact. My brain is lazy (especially before coffee), your brain is lazy, and the brains of your consumers are lazy. That’s not just me saying that, either. That’s the assertion of Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman… so if you’re going to be mad at anyone, be mad at him. Beyond being an excellent hook for this article (if I say so myself), this fact has wide-reaching implications for how we communicate with our audiences; how we create effective messages. (And how we research customers).
Sometimes, your copy and marketing will have to pick up the slack for this lazy brain. It doesn’t like to work. Our brain does not analyze all the choices. And it is certainly not rational. We have to connect the dots between features and benefits for our audience. Even though the connection between a feature and a benefit might seem obvious – you are relying on a lazy brain to make that connection.
Make that connection for them.
Check out our newsletter titled “How To Create Effective Messages” for more on connecting the dots between features and benefits.
Here’s an example. Which do you think is more motivating?
“Earn 1.26 APR up to $25,000 balances”
Or
“We will give you up to $315 for purchases up to $25,000 that you can use however you’d like.”
The first is standard financial industry language and focuses on the feature. The second makes the connection for the reader as to why they should care.
I’m frequently met with pushback. “But the benefit is obvious,” they’ll remind me. Usually, I agree with them… but it doesn’t matter. In addition to a lazy brain, we are cursed.
I know, I know. I’m probably on thin ice right now. I began this piece by acknowledging the psychological laziness of your brain, and now I’m once again the bearer of bad news. As a marketer, you’re cursed.
In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath outline a phenomenon known as “the curse of knowledge.” Its lore goes something like this.
As a marketer, advertiser, or entrepreneur, you know everything there is to know about the product you’re promoting. You’re keenly aware of its benefits, why it’s incredible, and what value it could bring to consumers. You’re already fully convinced of the quality you deliver; that’s why you do what you do.
Unfortunately, this wealth of knowledge can often create a blind spot as we create our messaging. We lose perspective of how much your audience would understand about our products, services, or industries. The result? We’re not telling the consumers nearly enough of the information they need to know. We are assuming too much.
This means we need to understand how your audience might view a message. It may be harder than you think to put ourselves into the shoes of our audience. Here are a few rules to consider when creating messages:
Here’s another example. Notice how the second option connects the dots between features and benefits and does so in a way that adds more clarity and meaning. (Hopefully, this makes up for the earlier roasts.)
“We are fee-based advisers.”
Or
“We don’t make money unless you make money—that means we’re always working hard for you!”
Alright, now give your lazy brain a break.
Have you ever noticed how vastly dialects differ here in America? Not only do different parts of the country have different manners of speaking (“Howdy, y’all!” as opposed to “Wassup!”), but each corner of the nation can even have its own terminology. In really rural places, you might ask, Is that even English?
Guess what?
Other countries are the same way!
The US, Canada, and Britain all speak English, but if you asked someone in the US, “Do you have a tire in your boot?” people might wonder what you mean.
Deivy is a friend of mine from the Dominican Republic who greets close friends with “Que lo que.” Our True North Hispanic lead, Alejandra, on the other hand, is from Mexico and is not familiar with this colloquialism.
And then there’s Yarima, our Operations Manager. If Alejandra said “¡Qué padre!” Yarima might tilt her head to the side, brow wrinkled, pondering what Alejandra could mean.
They’ve all told me it’s essential to be careful what you say – and what you print – because some Latin American phrases (that we’ll not print here!) can have multiple meanings depending on the country or origin.
Latin American countries with a native Spanish-speaking tongue are just like their northern counterparts – they also have their own slang and dialects. Some pockets in certain countries even have words that aren’t spoken elsewhere.
If you’re not entirely familiar with Spanish or the various countries’ dialects, Hispanic marketing is challenging – it’s something you have to nail at the very beginning, or you risk alienating the same people you’re trying to reach.
Gauge the quality of your materials by reaching out to Spanish speakers from different regions before you click Send.
Here’s another example of not understanding the language:
When Coors introduced it’s cool ‘Turn It Loose’ campaign to the Spanish market, the translated version of the slogan sounded like ‘Suffer from diarrhea.’ I think I’ll pass on that beer; thanks!
Hopefully, you haven’t found out the hard way that Google Translate returns literal “translations” between languages, not always accounting for the transposition of adjectives and nouns – much less for the distinction between Dominican and Mexican Spanish. Of course, this makes marketing to Spanish speakers difficult. This is also why good Hispanic marketers are worth their weight in gold.
Unfortunately, some marketers learned the importance of proper translation the hard way:
One more?
Here’s why this means something to you:
Well, by now, you know you can’t just use Google Translate to change your materials to Spanish. Qualtrics, the questionnaire programming software, even has a feature to change English materials to Spanish — but if you go down that path, make sure you’re not alone.
At True North, all of our Spanish speaking market research surveys must meet the approval of our native speakers from different countries. Do you have this kind of backup on your marketing team? They proof materials to ensure the language makes sense for all Spanish-speaking audiences. And if they’re stumped? We call Deivy.
As consumers, being selfish can pay off. It’s practically the point! As we browse products and try to decide on a purchase, we’re constantly asking the question, “What’s in it for me?”
As marketers and advertisers, answering that question can pay off. With every piece of promotional copy you put out, communicating the benefits has to be your top priority.
We have tested thousands of messages. Those that leave off the benefit will always score low. And more often than not, messages stop at the feature and never get to the benefit.
Advertising and marketing copy needs to explicitly state the reason why a customer should care about their product. Let’s face it: social media has our attention spans diminishing. No one wants to search through the weeds of wordy copy to know why they should trust your solution to their problem.
With so many options to choose from, and with B2B audiences understaffed and not enough time to do their own job much less read your copy, we need to be upfront and clear about why they should care. And that means going beyond discussing features.
It’s simple: Show them the benefit.
You may be feeling a bit taken aback right now. After all, as advertisers and marketing professionals, it feels like our entire workdays revolve around communicating benefits to consumers.
This is where a critical distinction needs to be made. Many companies that feel like they are effectively conveying benefits to their audience may only be relaying features.
Fortunately, switching your mindset to benefits doesn’t have to be too complicated. And, because this is such a common mistake in advertising, you could even beat a Fortune 500 company to the punch.
Alright, it’s time to distinguish between features and benefits clearly. I hesitated to put these definitions in this article thinking it might be too basic. But I see this so often, it is worth a quick refresher.
A feature is a fact about your product, often relating to its design or unique capabilities.
A benefit is an impact that features have on the consumer. For example, these could include saved time, improved quality of life, or ease of performing a task.
Let’s look at an example. Since this post is about getting our benefits and features ironed out, we’ll talk about… an iron.
Suppose your company is selling an iron that includes an LED temperature display. In that case, that’s a neat feature that you’ll want to highlight. But don’t make the misstep of stopping there!
Consider what this feature will mean for the consumers that use it. A bright temperature display will make it clear when the iron is ready to use or when it’s gotten too hot.
When you’ve identified the feature and its benefit, one more variable will take you to a successful message.
Jim Edwards wrote an excellent book called Copywriting Secrets, and I’m going to spill one of those secrets for you now. He posits that the formula for successful marketing is as follows:
Feature + Benefit + Meaning = Successful Message
That means we’re just one step away from having a successful pitch for our iron. We need the meaning. In other words, why should the consumer care?
To find this, take your thinking one step further. Why, exactly, would it be valuable to know the temperature of your iron?
“The LED display of our iron allows you to easily identify the temperature of the device, eliminating the need to wait around testing it and ensuring that fine fabrics don’t get singed.”
Hopefully, this helps get rid of any wrinkles in your communication strategy!
And if you need help developing and testing messages, we’d like to help. To schedule a call with one of our professionals, click here.
