I’m ready to punch out the Toyota execs. It’s time to stop those ridiculous 8-question customer surveys. Or, start filling them out with an inane rant, so they don’t keep coming.

SEO can be BAKED into your customer surveys, to strengthen small business web marketing.

More on that story, later.

This past week the printed Bar Mitzvah invitations I ordered from an online printer came, and soon thereafter, the usual request to fill out an online customer satisfaction survey.

But that is where “business as usual” ended. In fact, the survey had only 2 questions. The first one, as expected, asked the viewer to rate how likely it would be that they recommend this service. It was a fill-in-the-bubble question allowing one answer on a scale of 1 to 10.

I don’t know what would have happened if I rated them low. In my case, I gave them a ‘9.’

The second (and last) question asked this:

What, specifically, would you tell someone to get them to try PrintPlace.com?

(big empty box for a long form answer)

What is happening here?

While they are interested in rating satisfaction and also improving their operations, I intuited that some objective went beyond this, so I called up and spoke with Marketing.

What they did, is to ask what words their internal SEO team should use to improve organic search on their site, what copy to include on landing pages, and potentially, what words to buy for Pay-per-click advertising (if they were to use AdWords, which they don’t).

From what customers write, this small business can learn what words easily spill from your mind plus what could persuade you to take the next step toward forking over your bucks, because those are the words that will bring greatest ROI.

As more and more goods are sold on the internet and as a larger share of purchasing becomes e-commerce (and now f-commerce, or facebook-based sales), it behooves you to learn the language of your prospects and not just their predilections for features. But respect the ever-widening phenomenon of survey fatigue.

So:

1. Keep your customer surveys shorter and sweeter, and
2. Ask what words meaningfully grab consumers, because you need to bond with those precise words to write more persuasive copy.

And let’s have some gladiator-like fun by sending the Toyota corporate execs to the lion’s den, where they can be eaten along with the 4 different in-your-face surveys that come from getting an oil change at the dealer. The surveys that the local franchise owner can’t even scuttle, since it comes from “corporate.”

Photo courtesy of Creative Commons 2.0 ajagendorf25

What is on your Consumer Manifesto? Please share below.