Did you ever wish you could read the mind of your target customer? Google Consumer Surveys is the next best thing. It allows you to survey the web with a tool so precise, it predicted the 2012 presidential election. And it’s affordable and easy to use. How does it work? You start the process using the simple three-step creator, which will walk you through targeting your audience. You can choose to get a representative sample of your country’s population, or target a more specific customer base by age, gender, geography, and a screening question to help further narrow your target clientele. You also have your choice of ten different question formats, including multiple choices, star-rating, image selection and more. So when your survey goes out into the world, where is it going, exactly? That’s your choice. You can choose to distribute your survey through Google’s network of online publishers, or via the Google Opinion Rewards mobile app. The Google Opinion Rewards app gives its users regular opportunities to participate in surveys that are relevant to them. The incentive? They can earn credits to spend with Google Play. For those of you unfamiliar with Google Play, it’s essentially a digital store where one can purchase music, movies, TV shows, books, magazines and more. Google Consumer Surveys can be used in a number of ways, such as:

Concept & Product Development – Before you launch that product or service, ask consumers how much they’d be willing to spend. Give them a peek at two or more design options and find out which one your target audience responds to the most. You can even test-drive a name or logo. Avoid product or service launch flops forevermore.

Market Trends – What does your market really want now? Here’s a way to ask. Find out what they care about today, and what their concerns are for the future. Then use that intelligence to give them what they want – or perhaps what they didn’t know they absolutely needed until you showed it to them.

Marketing Design – Here’s a great way to test the effectiveness of your copy before you send it out into the world. For example, you can find out which e-mail heading is most likely to get the attention of your target audience by surveying them first. Get feedback on banner ad designs, types of promotions and more. How affordable is it? If you send out a single-question survey, you’ll pay just 10 cents per complete survey. For surveys of between two and ten questions, you’ll pay between $1.10 – $3.50 per complete survey. And you’ll benefit from all of these features:

  • Choice of your respondent source, from Google’s network of online publishers, or via the Google Opinion Rewards mobile app
  • Representative sample
  • Results segmented by gender, age, geography, urban city and income
  • Interactive charts and data visualizations
  • Automatic discovery of demographic insights
  • Downloadable charts and data sets
  • Demographic targeting by gender, age, and geographic region, including state-level targeting
  • Custom targeting with screening questions (incidence rate needs to be above 20%)

Google will let you know when the results are ready – sometimes in as little as 24 hours. You might be the captain of a still growing entity, but that doesn’t mean you have to play small. Google Consumer Surveys puts the power of affordable market research at your fingertips, so you can strategize as well as the big guys.