A well-designed questionnaire is the first step in obtaining high-quality responses to help you design or improve your product or service. But if you don’t have access to people who will respond to the survey promptly, it can be a huge setback in your market research efforts.

As a result, companies buy survey responses to determine what their target audience wants. Here’s a guide to buying responses and the implications.

What Does It Mean to Buy Survey Responses?

Purchasing survey responses entails paying a market research company for access to respondents and their opinions. 

These market research organizations develop questionnaires to collect the opinions of screened participants on various topics. The survey questions are designed to collect information about what different people need from a brand or product. 

Respondents are typically classified by demographics so that companies purchasing the responses know who their target audience is and can use the data to meet their needs.

Market research companies have pre-screened panel members who take surveys on demand. When a company needs a survey about its products or services, the market research agency sends the survey to its panel members who fit the required demographic.

Why Is Buying Survey Responses Beneficial

Launching a product or service without proper market research is equivalent to flying blind; there is a high risk of failure. So, conducting surveys allows you to gather feedback from your target audience to make important product and service decisions.

However, if you don’t have a platform to help you collect these responses, it may take some time. Purchasing surveys enable you to gather responses quickly, allowing you to tailor your products and services to the needs of your target audience.

Here are some of the reasons buying surveys is beneficial to companies:

Limited Survey Pool

Purchasing survey responses is a great option when your study sample size is lower than what you need. It allows you to quickly reach a large survey pool and collect responses from them.

Also, if the number of people who fit the category of respondents you need for a study isn’t available in your database, purchasing survey responses is an excellent solution.

Product Launch Studies

Product launch studies help you determine who needs the product or service you’re providing. It helps you gather information about what your target audience wants from the product, including the name, design, and packaging.

Identifying your target audience and their preferences also allows you to create a product that they not only need but also desire. For example, name testing and product design surveys enable you to pick the name, design, and packaging that customers find attractive and reflect your brand values.

You can also conduct pricing surveys as part of your product launch research to determine how much your target audience is willing to pay for a product or service.

For example, you’re about to start a scented candle company in Newark. The first step is to determine the number of people in Newark who love scented candles.

Next, find out the scented candle fragrances your target audience likes and the names that suit each fragrance. Then, figure out the price that allows you to make a profit while remaining affordable to your target audience.

Customer Satisfaction

Conducting customer satisfaction surveys allows you to learn exactly what your customers like or dislike about your company or product. 

Understanding your customers’ pain points enables you to tweak your products and services for higher customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers mean a high retention rate, which translates to more sales.

Customer satisfaction surveys can also help you identify new features or products to launch. Incorporating open responses into your customer satisfaction surveys helps you figure out what to improve and what to add to increase your customers’ satisfaction level.

For instance, you conducted a routine customer satisfaction survey and discovered that the majority of your customers are dissatisfied with your customer service. Regardless of how good a product or service is, retaining customers will be difficult if the customer service is poor.

Implementing the survey results will help you improve your customer service to give your customers a better experience and increase your chances of converting them into long-term customers.

Competitor Analysis

You can learn why your customers prefer your competitor’s product over yours by conducting a competitor analysis. If you want to remain the first choice for your customers, you have to do competitor analysis frequently.

This can help you decide which features and products to improve or add. It also helps you determine whether your products and services are reasonably priced.

It also helps you gain more customers from your target market when they see you offer superior products and services to your competitors.

How to Buy Survey Respondents for Online Research?

• Panel Providers

When you need to conduct a survey, panel providers give you access to registered respondents on their platform who meet the criteria for your survey.

Panel providers have a large database of pre-screened respondents who have signed up for the platform. So, it’s the quickest way to get a sufficient number of respondents to take your survey.

Most businesses prefer this method because it is timely and employs a significant number of survey participants, increasing the likelihood of drawing valid conclusions. However, it can be quite pricey.

• APIs

Using a survey API is another effective way to collect responses for your survey. It integrates the panel provider’s platform with yours, giving you access to gather data from respondents directly from your platform.

The API distributes the survey to panel members and filters the panel provider’s respondents database based on your specified criteria, such as location, age, maximum survey responses, and more. It also notifies you when there is a submission and automatically closes the survey when the specified number of responses is reached.

You can also add survey trigger conditions with APIs. For example, you want to conduct customer satisfaction surveys after a customer receives their order. When their order is complete, the tool will automatically send them a survey.

If a customer hasn’t reviewed their order within a certain time frame, survey APIs send them a reminder to rate their satisfaction with your service. For example, if the time frame is 3 days, the API will automatically send the customer a notification to review the product through your preferred channel 3 days after the order is completed.

• Website/ Blog

Incorporating surveys on websites or blogs allows you to collect responses from people who are likely to be very interested in the survey. The majority of people who read a blog either searched for something that led them to that page or subscribed to the blog because the content of the blog posts piqued their interest.

So, to buy responses on a website or blog, you’d add links that direct people to the survey and give them incentives for participating. 

Although this method allows you to collect responses from interested participants, it can take a long time to gather enough responses.

• Email Lists

This method allows you to leverage your company’s customer database. All you have to do is send the survey to customers at various touchpoints to collect their feedback.

Many companies employ this method because it allows them to collect feedback from people who are already familiar with their products. It also helps companies collect information from people who are directly impacted by product and service changes.

Another advantage of using this method is that it helps increase revenue. For example, you could offer survey participants 10% off an item for taking the survey to increase sales of that item.

• Social Media

Social media is a gold mine for gathering opinions; it’s highly effective for knowing customers’ preferences. Using social media polls helps you obtain suggestions to improve your product and shows much you value customer feedback.

If you would like to conduct a more in-depth study and reach people who aren’t already following you, you can promote your survey as a sponsored ad, which will show the post to people who fit your target audience.

Possible Implications of Buying Survey Responses

• Obtaining Responses from the Wrong Audience

The biggest problem with buying survey responses, whether from panel providers, APIs, or even your email list, is that they are mostly incentivized. These incentives may attract the wrong audience to participate in the survey.

Respondents often lie to fit into the demographic you’re looking for because of incentives. These respondents’ submissions cannot help you draw valid conclusions and may even mislead you to make misguided product decisions.

When reviewing the data collected from respondents, researchers use a 10% margin of error to account for incorrect responses. Another good way to avoid surveying the wrong audience is to use demographics to screen participants before telling them what the survey is about.

• Non-insightful Responses

Panel members are sometimes so accustomed to taking surveys that they rush through them to complete them and fail to answer questions objectively. They are so used to the rinse-and-repeat routine of taking surveys that they do not fully engage with the survey when taking it.

Collecting responses in this manner can be detrimental to your study because it does not provide you with quality data to work with. Rather, respondents give you responses based on their past experiences.

To avoid non-insightful responses, include quality control questions to ensure participants are paying attention during the survey. If they answer incorrectly, the survey closes.

• It’s Difficult to Conduct Continuous Surveys

Buying responses can be a deterrent to getting quality responses when you need to conduct continuous surveys about your product or brand. Most respondents, particularly panel members, prefer to do one-time studies and receive their rewards immediately rather than taking continuous studies.

Instead of rewarding survey participants at each stage, have the reward come at the end of all stages of the research. It will discourage quick reward hunters from participating.

• Biased Submissions

Providing incentives when purchasing responses can also lead to biased responses. If you offer rewards that respondents do not want or need, they may not take the survey.

As a result, when you conduct the survey, only those who want the reward you’re offering will participate, instead of your target audience.

You won’t have the feedback you need to improve your services if you only get responses from people who already like your product and service. 

For example, if you offer 24/7 customer support to survey participants, people who had a terrible experience with your support staff are unlikely to want this reward and will ignore the survey. This prevents you from discovering where your customer support needs to improve to provide a better experience for your customers.

Conclusion

Buying survey responses is a cost-effective method for obtaining quality responses from a large pool of respondents in a short time, but it has pros and cons.

When buying survey responses, you must apply quality control measures such as applying accuracy margins and quality control questions to ensure you are receiving high-quality submissions that will help you improve your product and services.