Quick polls may be small in size, but they can undoubtedly pack punch in terms of research impact potential. These bite-sized surveys deviate from the typical 15-30 minute survey and generally consist of one basic question. Quick polls forgo lengthy and sophisticated research designs in order to provide an easy, fun, and streamlined research experience that doesn’t require too much time or bandwidth from the respondent.
There are so many use cases for quick polls, but here are just a few to get your wheels churning:
Refresh Profile Data
Market segmentation has become a research necessity as it allows you to reach a precise subset of your consumers who have specific wants and needs. But there are certain areas of segmentation that can change over time. Demographics like family size, household income, or location are flexible. Using a quick poll to update profile points like these will help you make sure you’re always delivering surveys to the right customers.
For example:
Drive Engagement
When it comes to running research with an online community, the possibilities can sometimes feel overwhelming. You may have some general ideas about how you’d like to run a project, but don’t know exactly what will inspire the most engagement among your members. Using a quick poll as a first touchpoint can help you understand which topics are most pertinent to your customers or which research methods would be most interesting and accessible to them. When your customers feel involved in the process, they’re more likely to participate and bond with your brand.
For example:
Make Smart Snap Decisions
Your business moves fast in order to keep pace with your competitors and a constantly shifting landscape of user needs and expectations. An online community is an ideal space to capture fast customer opinion on last-minute business questions, because you already have members regularly logging in to participate. Your questions won’t always require a full research project and can be answered with a simple temperature check. If you decide later that the topic requires a bit more depth, you can easily follow up with a more detailed activity for streamlined continuous research.
For example:
Quick polls are fantastic tools for engaging your community and learning more about your customers because they are:
- Fast – Quick polls are simple one-off questions that members won’t need to carve out a huge chunk of time or expend a ton of brainpower to answer.
- Easy – They’re comprised of a short set of simple and related questions, which creates a fast, fluid and cohesive experience for members, allowing them to answer more instinctively and therefore, more authentically.
- Engaging – Disrupting the normal community cadence with a quick poll keeps things interesting for members, inspiring them to keep checking in and contributing.
Quick polls are the perfect bridge between various portions of research because they can help you navigate a path with clarity, purpose, and efficiency. They foster a bond between your business and your customers by inviting them to provide feedback on something that may immediately impact their experience within the community or with your brand. Perhaps best of all, they can speed up the research process by awarding quick answers to your most time-sensitive inquiries.
