Why Google Consumer Surveys Are Beneficial

By Author: Jonathan Stepnitz
Total Articles: 2
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Would you like to give consumers unlimited access to your online content without sacrificing circulation revenue? Do you prefer input from everyday people who patronize your business and from a targeted market instead of responses from people paid to take your costly and time-consuming survey? How valuable would it be to see aggregated results within hours and analyzed charts and graphs within a few days instead of compiling and analyzing the data yourself? Google Consumer Surveys provides a way to give and get what you both want with no cost to clients and almost none to you.

What They Are
Launched in March 2012, this online marketing tool provides targeted consumer feedback relevant to the publisher's interests. Companies can then make more informed business decisions. Google's product makes it possible for consumers to continue accessing quality online content, while giving online publishers some insight to their customers likes and dislikes.

Who’s using them?
Marketing firms, research companies, and ad agencies use online surveys to collect data about market trends and brand tracking for product ...
... concepts and development. Entrepreneurs, PR firms, and market analysts use them to narrow their target markets and form business strategies. All companies could benefit from using Google Consumer Surveys to measure customer satisfaction.

Responses Remain Anonymous
The product infers demographics based on the browsing history and IP address, but Google uses no cookies to build a personal profile or track anyone. Information from the IP address and browser history are combined with data collected from the census for that area. From this information, inferences are drawn about location, age, gender, population density and income. Should customers feel uncomfortable participating in the survey, website owners can select options to allow a client to continue reading.

Easy Set up
Google Support walks you through every step and quickly responds to issues or questions that arise. According to Hitched publisher Steve Cooper, in a 2013 article for Forbes about his company's invited participation in a trial phase, it was easy to get set up and running within a few hours using a code snippet provided by a Google engineer for him to paste into his website's source code. Cooper's long term outlook for the potential gains was highly optimistic.

How Much They Cost
The only cost to the consumer is a few minutes of their time to answer questions and not every time they visit your site, but only once in a while. Mobile users can get Google Play credits for books, apps, and music for giving a few demographics up front. Publishers can set up a default website satisfaction survey for free, or create custom surveys for pennies per question.

Every answered question translates into revenue to the publisher. Who pays this revenue to the publisher is unclear to the general public, but out of pocket costs to companies are as little as one cent per response for default website satisfaction questions. Costs will vary if you want to create a custom survey or use a standard survey.

Once surveys are active, results can be viewed in an interactive online format as they come in. You will receive aggregated and analyzed data in the forms of graphs, charts, and other reports. Results can be exported and shared. Google Consumer Surveys helps consumers and businesses transact affordably, and exchange meaningful information without sacrificing privacy.

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