Polls and surveys have been used for decades, maybe centuries, as marketing tools.
Politicians have used them, militaries have used them, the medical field uses them a lot, colleges, Fortune 500, and thousands of hopeful marketers trying to get a few more leads per month.
Our founder gives away a free course called “10,000 Leads a Day” in which he deep dives into a case study for an ad campaign he ran that generated well over 500,000 leads. With his best day being over 17,000 leads in one 24 hour period.
That was done with POLLS!
Ryan Levesque, founder of AskMethod, has spoken all over the world, authored a book, and inspired a whole new category of software because of his work with SURVEYS.
What is it about these two seemingly boring, simple, web forms that make them so effective? Why all the fuss? Why do they work so well and should you get in on the action?
What’s The Difference Between a Poll & a Survey?
Polls are generally single question response forms. They are asking whether you are voting for A or B, true or false, yes or no. It’s possible that a poll cold have more than two answers and it’s possible for them to have multiple questions.
Generally speaking though, a poll is the little brother of surveys. Used for very short, usually single question, data collection.
Surveys on the other hand are often 10+ questions long.
The United States has a census that is delivered to every U.S. citizen every 10 years. It’s roughly a 9 question survey that collect important data for the government about it’s citizens.
It’s common for medical studies to ask dozens of questions on a survey. However, for marketing purposes most people stick to 3-5 questions. Mostly, questions that help the survey publisher learn more about the user and create user profiles for segmented marketing.
When Should You Use a Poll Instead of a Survey?
Polls being shorter than surveys lends them to being better at mass appeal marketing. Since polls usually only have one question with 2-4 possible answers it’s friction-free for the user. Often can be done with just one click of the mouse.
This makes polls great for high converting pages.
Polls are also great for emotional hot buttons, like vegan vs keto diet or Trump vs Biden. If you want to know which side of an argument someone stands on, polls are the best tool to use. If you want a very high converting page to a broad audience, polls are the tool to use.
It’s not that surveys cannot convert high, it’s usually that the marketer has a different agenda. Usually, with a survey quality of data is more important that quantity of data.
Where polls are trying to collect a yes or no response from a broad audience, surveys are trying to decipher who is in that audience. A marketing team might send out a poll trying to find out if the market likes live coaching or recorded courses better. While a sales team would send out a survey trying to find out who likes a specific topic and earns a specific amount.
Polls are great for building large audiences of a broad topic. Surveys are great for reducing a broad audience into laser targeted segments.
Which One is Best To Use; Polls or Surveys?
There isn’t a best to use. It’s more about when to use each of them. It would be like a carpenter asking whether he should own a hammer or a saw. Really he should own both tools as they have different uses.
Polls are better at building large email lists.
While surveys are better at building higher value email lists.
Which would you rather have, a large email list or a high value email list? Why not choose both! That’s what I’m trying to get through to you with this article. Don’t think one or the other, choose both.
In a world of big email lists or high value email lists, the big high value email list is best. Which is exactly what you can get by using both polls and surveys.
How Can You Combine The Use of Polls & Surveys?
Start with a poll.
Think of a hot button topic in your market. Something along the lines of “which is healthier kale or steak?” Or maybe you are in the investing world so it’s “which is better stocks or gold?” Or maybe you are in the relationship market and it’s “should you kiss on the first day, yes or no?”
This is going to get you broad coverage in your market. If you chose the right emotional hot button, you’ll get tons of responses. Then you can send marketing emails to people you know are on one specific side of an argument in your niche.
Now, a few days later you send out a survey to these people who answered your poll. This time you are asking them if they are male, female, or these days other. You’re asking for age data, location data, income data.
Which then lets you send out emails about your kale recipes for women over 60 who live in London. Just an example, but you get the idea. The survey helps you create 4-12 different segments of your email list. Which allows you to send out extremely specific marketing messages.
Imagine these two scenarios…
The old way of building an email list is you have one audience and you send the same message to everyone. Let’s imagine this is an email about weight loss to a weight loss audience. Well, if you send out an email about whole food plant based diet recipes, what about all the people who believe keto is the best way?
You’ve just alienated half of your list, worse, one half is thinking of unsubscribing now.
The new way is by using polls and surveys instead of sending one email to many, you send many emails to everyone. Each segment of your list gets a highly relevant email, your conversions are through the rood, and your earnings per lead triples.
If your earnings per lead triples, then you’re now able to scale your lead acquisition since you can afford the cost per lead much more efficiently.
How Can You Turn Polls & Surveys Into Leads?
Polls and surveys are just web forms.
In order to turn them into a leads, you need to add a field onto the poll or survey asking the user to enter their contact info. This can sometimes bring your conversion rate to a halt if not done correctly.
If you simply just ask for the email, your conversion rate will be low. People do not want to cough up their contact info to just anyone for any reason.
Instead you need to provide a good reason for needing the contact info.
When our founder uses polls he likes to leverage the natural curiosity in humans, by offering them to see the poll results if they enter their email address. If the poll is an emotional hot button issue, then people are naturally going to want to see how their answer compares to others.
When it comes to surveys, usually there is some kind of incentive for filling out the survey.
Often times you see surveys to access some kind of high value presentation. Coaches and consultants do this all the time. They’ll create a landing page with headline and bullet points for a presentation. The users demand for that information spikes, and the call to action is to answer a few short questions to “see if you qualify.”
There are also companies who just straight up pay for the survey data. There’s whole companies devoted to helping people earn money by filling out surveys. I don’t recommend the later, but I do recommend the method coaches and consultants use. Instead of a presentation it can be a PDF, course, or any other high value item.
3 Tips For High Converting Polls & Survey Opt-in Pages?
Hot Tip #1:
First of all, the biggest needle mover is going to be relevance. The more you know your audience and their hot button issues, the better your page is going to perform.
For example, let’s take our own AdSkills email list into account. We know there are both DIY ad DFY ad buyers on our email list. These are business owners running their own ads and business owners whose business is running ads for others.
Both of these audiences are going to respond to a poll about Facebook vs Google ads. We can then make it more emotional by asking “If you were to wager $1,000,000 on ads would you choose Facebook or Google Ads?
Even better we could say “Watch Us Spend $10,000 Live - Do You Think Facebook or Google Ads Will Win?”
Our audience will not be able to resist that.
Two days later we send a discount coupon to the FB guys for our FB course and another coupon to the Google guys for our Google course.
Hot Tip #2:
Web users have never loved filling out forms online. To remove the friction turn your “forms” into what looks like buttons. People love clicking buttons! Especially when it comes to mobile, they much rather tap something that try to fill out a form.
An example of this is let’s say you have a gender question on your survey. Instead of asking them to write male or female in a box, let them click on the words male or female. Even better version of this is create a little button with a male symbol on it and one with a female symbol on it. Give it some bevels and an outline, make it look clickable.
Now do the same thing for all of your questions. Make it super easy. Remove the friction.
Hot Tip #3:
The longer a survey is the lower your page will convert. Humans are just lazy, most of them. Instead of putting all 7 questions on the page where it looks intimidating, just put one question on the page.
Let them get started, and then load the next question, and the next, and the next. Once they start the process, they will want to feel the sense of closure by answering all the questions.
Combine this tip with the other two, and you’ll have a monster converting page.
What Does It Cost To Acquire Leads With Polls & Surveys?
Cost per acquisition on leads, is mostly left to the skill level of the user. It’s hard to compare someone doing it for their first time versus someone who has done this every day for the last 15 years.
However, the general benchmark is about $1 per form field.
This is why our founder Justin Brooke loves polls. They often only have one question and two answers, which is debatably 1-2 form fields. Which means leads for $1-$2 each. When he was doing 10,000 leads a day his CPL was $1.54 per lead.
Surveys generally have 3-5 questions, so that’s 3-5 form fields or an eCPL of $3-$5 each.
However, it’s still possible to get a $4 cost per lead if you have 7 questions on your survey. It all depends on how well you know your audience (relevance), how easy your form is to complete (remove friction), and how intimidated your web user is by your form (multi-step forms).
The most important thing you should do is split test headlines and call to actions on your page. Your first version will likely be you worst version. With a couple rounds of split testing it’s very possible that you cut your CPL by 30-50%.
Who Can I Hire To Create My Polls or Survey Campaigns?
What if you just want to hire someone who’s already trained to do all of this, who already has all the tools to do all of this?
No worries.
The AdSkills Matchmaker program has got your back.
https://adskills.com/matchmaker
AdSkills Matchmaker is a completely free service (free for now) that pairs you up with our certified ad buyers. These ad buyers have already been trained on how to do everything you’ve just read.
Peace & Love, AdSkills Team P.S. Did you know we have a referral program where you can get paid $14 for every person that signs up to AdSkills from your recommendation? Find out more here.