5 ways to use surveys to growth hack your startup

Leela was one of our speakers at SUS18. She came all the way from Silicon Valley and we loved hearing her thoughts on marketing, community building and company culture!

Maybe you were in the room when she conducted a survey and shared the results live on the Business Builder Stage? You too can have fun with surveys and, more importantly, they can be an invaluable tool to help you grow your business. Want to know more? Today, Leela and her team at SurveyMonkey share some insider tips...

Building a startup is like sprinting a marathon. But if you can pull it off, the payoff is immeasurable. Along the way, surveys can help. Here are 5 thought-starters to help you unlock startup growth through powerful survey feedback.

When it comes to raising venture capital, numbers speak louder than words. But numbers aren’t always easy to come by early on when impressive success metrics are still a few funding rounds away. Surveys can provide powerful validation that your addressable market represents a compelling opportunity.

One of the entrepreneurs that caught Zoe’s attention? Jamee Herbert, founder of BridgeCare Finance, a startup that provides employer programs which give parents more flexible and innovative ways to pay for childcare.

Like many startups, Jamee’s company couldn’t point to a precedent to justify the market demand, because she was trying something new. And innovation comes with risk. So what did she give investors to put their minds at ease? Survey data.

Here’s how to use surveys from early on to establish your market, according to investors from Draper Associates, 500 Startups, and TechStars:

• Confirm that the problem you’re solving really exists: Jamee asked parents about how much they were paying for childcare, how they were paying, and how childcare costs affected mothers’ ability to work.
• Purchase intent and frequency: Would people be truly interested in buying a product like yours? If so, how often?
• Willingness to pay: Early survey research gives investors a reasonable benchmark for the cost of your product or service that consumers would accept. You can also combine this information with their purchase intent response and start to calculate potential revenue from there, depending on the size of the population.
• Demographics: Adding demographics questions to market research surveys can provide insight into whether different groups have different responses to your potential offerings, and whether there’s a niche that you can own. Gender, age, geographical location, and occupation can all provide key strategy indicators and help you identify your ideal customer.

Want to learn more and get started with SurveyMonkey? Keep on reading and start using SurveyMonkey Audience and Enterprise to grow your business.