Surveying Your AdWords Traffic.

Occasionally, you may be entering a market where you know little about it.  You have an idea for a product or service, but you're not sure if it will fly.  Alternatively, you already have a product you put a lot of time and effort into, but it's not going like you hope.

This is where AdWords can come in handy.  

A simple trick you can use is to set-up a survey landing page and drive traffic to it with an AdWords campaign.

Rather than guess what your customers want, you can ask.  

An example might be that we came-up with a great idea for a software product that helps you bet on baseball with much better odds.

We're just a fan and don't bet much on it.   On the other hand, the folks we're selling this too do bet on it on a regular basis. We want to find-out what they want.... and what's going on in their minds when they will soon hit our salespage for the software.

Your survey may then ask questions, such as:

• What's your biggest frustration with betting on baseball?
• Do you already use a tool or spreadsheet to place your bets or do you make it on the fly? 
• How much do you normally bet each month?
• And so on to get an idea of current habits, problems, and frustrations. 

To make this work, it's important that you explain the purpose of the survey and offer something in exchange for taking the time to do it.

For instance, we'd likely explain, "We're developing a new tool using a proven formula to dramatically improve your odds for your baseball betting... it's almost ready, but before we release it we want to make sure it's the best it can be.  If you answer just the 1 (or 5) questions below, we'll give you a FREE copy when it's released."

You also might give a bonus report or sports betting tips in exchange for their response.

In addition, don't overload it it with questions.  You may just ask 1 open-ended question that your visitors can respond to.

Once it's set-up, you just let it run and your visitors give you key insight into your market. 

Keep in mind, that each market is different.  When you're running this survey and you don't get the quality of responses you want, then this likely tells you something about the market.  It may not be the best one to enter.  It may mean you need to ask different questions.

Simply put, this technique is a great research tool when you don't have existing customers or a mailing list you can turn to.  Plus, an added benefit of this technique is that your respondents might be ideal folks to give your product to in order to beta test it.  You can then get permission to use their results or feedback in your marketing material.

You also might use this technique in combination with in-person interviews with those in your market.