Jason Miller's blog

 You might be asking yourself, how could an online survey be so fabulous that someone would take the time to write a success story about it? If so, odds are you’re not capitalizing on all the awesome opportunities that free online surveys provide to engage with your customers and employees. Fortunately, our forward-thinking, successful survey-makers have some stories that can help steer you in the right direction.

Reset San Francisco — Improving San Francisco, One Survey at a Time

Using online surveys to tap the wisdom of San Franciscans for city-wide good? That’s exactly what Reset San Francisco had in mind when they approached Zoomerang with their idea to create surveys to bridge the communication gap between government and constituents.

We’ve all heard that integrating social media is an important business strategy in the new media economy.  As a small or medium sized business owner, it can be hard to find the time to write a blog, tweet about your product, or generate conversation around it.  On top of that, it’s not always obvious what to write or where to start. 

Make sure your business stays top of mind by being current, relevant and MEMORABLE to your customers through online content.  If you need help generating regular, compelling content that your customers want to read then join Zoomerang and PR Newswire for our upcoming FREE webinar.  We’ll help make sure your business doesn’t get lost in the online marketing shouting match.

Zoomerang surveyed decision-makers in U.S. businesses with less than 1,000 employees as well as consumers to understand their use of social media, particularly Facebook as a means to interact.

A Zoomerang online survey was used to collect and analyze the data and the results were published: Marketing in a Digital World SMB & Consumer Survey Results, 2011. In total, 1180 small and medium-sized business (SMB) decision makers and 500 consumers completed the survey providing insight into their social media use, Facebook preferences and how each segment uses these tools to interact for business purposes.

With over 500 million users, Facebook is the largest social media platform and a potential goldmine for gathering feedback. We are excited to announce that you can now create, take, and share surveys and polls inside of Facebook with the new Zoomerang app. You can then post your surveys directly into your newsfeed and invite friends to participate.

One of the best features of our new Facebook app is the ability for a survey or poll to spread virally to a whole new potential audience. If a user leaves a comment or “Likes” your survey or poll, it then goes on his or her wall for that person’s friends to see.

What happens within Facebook, stays within Facebook. Our new app operates completely inside of Facebook so there is no need for your survey respondents to leave Facebook to submit and share their answers.

Here’s a quick recap of what you can do with the Zoomerang Application for Facebook:

It’s nice to see that nearly half of the small and medium sized businesses who were surveyed are adopting the new kid on the block into their traditional marketing strategies. And why wouldn’t they? Social media provides SMBs with an opportunity to level the playing field against much larger companies by engaging directly with their customers in a cost effective manner.

In a recent Zoomerang survey, 1180 SMB decision makers provided insight into how they use social media tools to interact for business purposes. The results provide surprising statistics and highlight several opportunities for those SMBs who may still be on the fence about embracing social platforms to enhance their marketing efforts.

Here are the key takeaways from the survey:

Do you think about colors when creating your online survey? You should.

Research has found that different colors provoke very different reactions in people. Adding color is a great way to dress up your survey, but using too much can be distracting and possibly send the wrong message. You should never underestimate the effect of color on personality or mood.

Even a brief understanding of how colors affect people can really make a difference in your survey results. I found a great article from Entrepreneur that briefly describes each color and the associated emotions that they can evoke.

Small business researcher and educator Marc Compeau recently posted a fantastic article about customer expectations. He tells a story about him and his wife visiting a local bakery and walking away with very different levels of satisfaction, even though they shared the same experience. How did this happen, you ask? Compeau and his wife had different expectations.

Compaeau’s situation is not a unique one and it probably happens more times than many entrepreneurs know. As a small business owner, you need to understand your customers’ expectations in order to deliver a good experience. While small business owners tend to focus mainly on customer service, it is just as important to be aware of your customers’ expectations.

Compeau mentions three ways that customers set an expectation:

My fiancée is obsessed with Living Social and the vast array of competitors who’ve entered the social promotions space in the past two years. Dinners, hair cuts, mani pedis (her term, not mine), even the photobooth for our wedding. The model is simple – you attract new customers at a reduced rate, in many cases below break even, in the hope that a certain percentage of these frugal couponers will eventually become repeat customers, or that you can upsell them into spending beyond the coupon’s face value. It got me thinking, how successful are these restaurants, salons and other small businesses, at converting new clients and ultimately achieving a positive return on their investment?

According to a study conducted by Rice University, only 66% of companies who participated in Groupon promotions did so profitably. How can you make sure that your small business lands in the lucky two thirds?