February 2004

The Marketing Dialog

Join The Marketing Dialog

Polaris Marketing Research has launched a new blog: The Marketing Dialog. The Marketing Dialog is a blog discussion with respected executives, educators and opinion leaders in the field of marketing regarding how they have used marketing research to make decisions. Each month, we’ll share the thoughts and experiences of these marketing professionals and invite you to participate in the dialog with your own ideas and comments. The discussion will be short but hopefully you’ll find a real nugget or two in participating a few minutes each month.

Polaris POV

Join Polaris POV

Polaris POV (Point Of View) offers free-flowing discusssions on marketing research trends, thoughts on social media, subjective reviews of the latest gadgets or cool iPhone apps, business commentary, topical opinions and societal rants - you never know what might be the subject of the latest post on our interesting, fun and sometime controversial blog.

New Product Announcement

SurveyTrac™ is the only complete online survey package that includes detailed, personal and professional assistance. SurveyTrac provides everything you need to execute a successful research project from start to finish, quickly, affordably and worry free. Click here to check out Polaris’ newest offering.

Five Common Errors Small Businesses Make In Marketing Research

Not leveraging secondary research.

Understand the difference between primary and secondary research and fully leverage your secondary research before moving onto primary research.

Inaccurate questionnaires.

Improper survey instrument design is the most common of all small business mistakes. The best survey brings in unknown and needed information for decision-making purposes. The worst leads to strategic decisions based on inaccurate or incorrect information.

Incomplete questionnaire.

Small businesses projects we revise often miss questioning on key strategic areas, either because they were not thought of or because the survey designer did not know particular survey capabilities were available to them (i.e., question type, online reporting). Discuss your project with as many leaders as possible for ideas and understand what survey tools are available to you!

Surveying the wrong people.

To survey only potential customers of a new product, and not talk with existing customers, can be a mistake. Make sure you are surveying the right group of people.

Missing key groups.

If you are trying to establish a 360 degree view of customer satisfaction and loyalty, don't just survey existing customers, consider the entire lifecycle -- new customers, current customers and lost customers.

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