Surveys Made Simple By iSalient

As a copy­writer, one of the most impor­tant parts of my job is con­duct­ing research. And in fact, when my copy fails, aside from poor tar­get­ing or a poor offer, it’s almost always due to poor research.

As copy­writ­ers, the infor­ma­tion we need may not be as read­ily avail­able as we want it to be, par­tic­u­larly when we’re work­ing with a new com­pany or prod­uct. We have to dig. Or as my friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton says, “We have to put on our sales detec­tive hats and dig deep.”

Sure, we can go through the prod­uct. We can go through the client’s col­lat­eral mate­ri­als. We can con­duct com­pet­i­tive research and per­haps even check out com­peti­tors’ products.

But the most impor­tant and salient research comes from…

… Peo­ple.

Peo­ple, whether they’re actual clients, prospects, or clients of com­pet­ing busi­nesses, peo­ple hold the key to the suc­cess or fail­ure of your copy — and your product.

Know­ing who your cus­tomer is, what’s a day in their life like, what’s their buy­ing motives, what’s their per­son­al­ity style, what are their hot but­tons, and why do they buy from you or some­one else are incred­i­bly important.

The above is just a short list, too. Mar­ket research in gen­eral, whether it’s for copy or not, is with­out a doubt one of the most under­rated and often ignored areas of business.

I remem­ber when I used to teach mar­ket­ing man­age­ment at a local col­lege here in Ottawa, Canada. And in all of the text­books we worked with, the most com­mon denom­i­na­tor in terms of rea­sons for a product’s fail­ure is, quite sim­ply: “mis­judg­ing the market.”

When I’m hired to write copy, I expect my clients to have con­ducted the proper prod­uct and mar­ket via­bil­ity research before­hand. (I never touch any­thing untested.)

In other words, I need to know three key things. I need to know there is a mar­ket, there is a demand for the prod­uct, and the mar­ket is will­ing to pay for it.

Those three key areas are vital to the suc­cess of any prod­uct or piece of copy. If you don’t have these three down pat, your prod­uct may fail, no mat­ter how great your copy is.

But when it comes to writ­ing the copy itself, and when I can, I call up my cus­tomers. I call up their cus­tomers. I call up non-​​customers, if I have to. And I lurk in forums or blogs in spe­cific indus­tries to read what peo­ple have to say.

My friend and another great copy­writer, David Garfinkel, said it best. In copy­writ­ing, you need to know three things:

1. Who’s your market.
2. What’s their problem.
3. How do they talk about it.

You need to know all three. Par­tic­u­larly the third one, since peo­ple don’t nec­es­sar­ily talk about their prob­lem the way a mar­keter, busi­ness owner, or even copy­writer thinks they do.

Research can there­fore become quite revealing.

More­over, how peo­ple talk is not lim­ited to how they talk about the prob­lem your copy solves. What about the ben­e­fits? Some ben­e­fits are unsought, per­haps hid­den, or talked about dif­fer­ently than what many of us may think they are.

That’s why I’m a big fan of research, and par­tic­u­lar sur­veys. Why? Because sur­veys, when they’re done right, can yield a tremen­dous amount of insight­ful infor­ma­tion — and some­times, quite a few sur­prises, too.

So when I was asked to do a paid review of the web­site for web-​​based sur­vey com­pany, iSalient, nat­u­rally, I cheer­fully accepted.

Accord­ing to their web­site, “iSalient is an online soft­ware that allows you to col­lect data through cus­tom forms for infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing, research, and quan­ti­ta­tive analysis.”

After check­ing them out, how­ever, I’ve dis­cov­ered that their forms are not your stan­dard check­box– or form-​​only sur­veys, either, like most other online sur­vey software.

They offer a ton of tools to allow you to com­pletely cus­tomize your sur­veys in a num­ber of ways. For exam­ple, they offer sur­vey tem­plates and even sam­ple sur­vey styles to guide you along the way.

You can ask a vast array of ques­tions, too: from mul­ti­ple choice ques­tions all the way to open-​​ended ones, equa­tions, file uploads, and even graphic-​​based choices.

Their inter­face is incred­i­bly easy to fol­low, with an intu­itive, ajaxy (i.e., drag-​​and-​​drop) inter­face along with auto-​​save so you don’t lose any­thing impor­tant. They even allow users to leave and com­plete the sur­vey at any time, with­out los­ing their place.

Plus, the look and feel is com­pletely cus­tomiz­able, so you can eas­ily and seam­lessly inte­grate the sur­vey within your own web­site. (You can either link to it or add it as a pop-​​up on your website.)

Per­son­ally, the best part is, their com­pil­ing and analy­sis fea­tures are pretty impres­sive. They even allow list-​​building and import/​export fea­tures if you wish to use the data out­side of the software.

Finally, iSalient guides you through the process of con­duct­ing a sur­vey, dis­trib­ut­ing it to recip­i­ents, and inter­pret­ing the results crit­i­cally through detailed reports. (I also noticed they even have online chat capa­bil­ties with their sup­port team.)

I’m a big fan for “ease of use” and “usable analy­sis.” These two com­po­nents are often the mea­sur­ing sticks I use when I am con­sid­er­ing a new soft­ware for my clients — and iSalient cer­tainly seems to cover both.

So check out iSalient web-​​based sur­vey soft­ware today for more information.

About the Author

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