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Ask HN: What survey services do you use for customer development?

2 points by hkyeti ↗ HN
So far am checking out Google Surveys which seems powerful but a bit expensive. Doing ads and landing pages is also very expensive.

Any alternatives to get access to a target audience and ask them questions?

6 comments

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mindcrime
Surveys are an incredibly crappy tool to use for Customer Development, even more so in the early stages. You need to be talking to people, not having them feel out forms. Work your network of connections, get some introductions to people, or cold call, cold email people, whatever. Get out of the building and go talk to them.

If you're talking a B2C thing, go hit the streets and cold approach people and talk to them. See the earlier HN post about "operation starbucks" for an example.

hkyeti
Hi Mindcrime, two points:

1/ I'm targeting a particular demographic of user, not mass market 2/ I'm in Asia, my target users are in the USA

Any suggestions?

mindcrime
That's a tough situation. It's always best when you can talk to actual people. Of course, you could use Skype or a Google Hangout or something. Without knowing more, I'd say try looking for sub-reddits or G+ communities that cater to the kind of people you think you're targeting, and try to connect with some people there to do a Skype/Hangout session with you.

As for surveys, I guess they are better than nothing if it's all you can do due to logistics. I haven't done a lot of that, but if I were going to do a survey, I think SurveyMonkey at least has TOMA with me, so I'd probably lean towards them.

If you can find a way to phrase your questions appropriately, you may also get some useful input from posting questions on Quora.

hkyeti
SurveyMonkey doesn't let you find the audience to ask. Askyourtargetmarket is quite expensive. My demographic wouldn't hang out on Quora. Thanks though.
maximgsaini
Don't worry!! I know of a lot of Asian companies which successfully hacked the US market while being based in Asia. It is pretty much an open world these days.

Are you a B2B business or a B2C?? I would highly recommend being active on twitter. Interacting with people on twitter is easy because they are usually more welcoming on twitter. You can target a particular demographic and even target owners of corporations. Another must-do is to list yourself on one of the app stores.

Whatever you do, don't forget the Golden Rule. You won't get any answers without building relationships. Others will help you achieve what you want if you help them get what they want!! Its very easy to build relationships on the other side of the world these days.

hkyeti
Thanks Max, good advice!