How to Create a Newsworthy Survey for Your Business

People believe in data. There is something robust and irrefutable about a statistic, placed in the correct context, to which mere words fail to compare. That is because anyone can write anything they please, and doing so doesn’t make it credible. Don’t take our word for it; a study from 2011 found that hard numbers in news articles increase the perception of credibility among readers by up to 17%. 

The good news, of course, is that businesses can use this to their advantage. By capturing their existing knowledge in an honest statistic or two, marketers can land their companies in top-level publications and convey the value they offer more clearly than ever. But where would such bespoke numbers come from?

The answer lies with surveys. Plenty of surveys are conducted on a myriad of topics each day, but the most useful and newsworthy kind is conducted for the business specifically. Surveys that are tailored to a narrative yield numbers that are tailored to that narrative, too. Below is a brief overview on why and how an effective survey can be used to invigorate a company’s marketing efforts.  

Why Create Your Own Survey?

The benefits of conducting a survey are threefold: they establish thought leadership, they raise visibility, and they validate the company’s value proposition. It is not uncommon for a business to be at the forefront of their industry’s intellectual landscape and yet struggle to make themselves known. Quantifying their knowledge into the kind of citable survey result that fits in a headline is a surefire way to overcome that hurdle. The company is then featured in the news alongside their statistics—recall that news agencies love numbers—increasing their visibility. And, finally, the results provide the business with firm standing upon which to base their value offering.

How to Design a Custom Survey

The first question to answer when designing a survey is who will be surveyed. This varies based on the specific goals that the company has in mind. An automobile manufacturer may want to survey owners of SUVs to highlight a need which the company is prepared to meet, for instance, but would not benefit from surveying schoolteachers to the same end. 

After the target demographic has been identified, the company must ensure that the sample is large enough in relation to the whole population to be representative. The requirements for a representative sample depends on the size of the population—and can be worked out via a calculator—but it is important to keep the confidence level and margin of error at a minimum of 95% and 5%, respectively.

The next step is to draft the questionnaire. In order to maximize the amount of useful metrics, it is advisable to build each survey question around a well-founded hypothesis. The results should be more-or-less certain before the survey is conducted, in other words, so that each number is likely to support some aspect of the company’s thought leadership. 

It is also very helpful to include at least a few newsworthy, ‘trending’ questions that will help to capture media attention, as long as they do not undermine the validation of the product offering. There is no ideal survey length, but longer surveys require higher incentives and tend to be more expensive.

Conclusion

For a business that knows about what it does, hard numbers are an invaluable ally. Citing a bespoke survey is perhaps the single most effective way to elevate a genuine value proposition above the general din of the marketplace. Creating and conducting a survey that yields high return-on-investment is both a science and an art, however, and attempting the task blindly is far from advisable. But when the fundamentals in this overview are combined with research, practice, and due diligence, grounded and newsworthy thought leadership is just a survey away.

Enjoy this blog on designing a survey? Be sure to check out our other blogs on useful and interesting public relations topics, like how to communicate empathy without risking litigation.

While we may employ generative artificial intelligence for research purposes, all content published by Razor Sharp Public Relations is written directly by our team.

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