One of the challenges facing anyone trying to do measurement right is the cost. Too often clients have “Raise awareness,” or “Increase trust,” or “Increase preference” as their goal, but they don’t have the survey budget to actually measure awareness, trust, or preference.
Of late, the fallback position has been to use social media conversations as a proxy for awareness or even preference, but this is a bad substitute. For most companies, only a fraction of their target audience is even on social media, so whatever data they get is not projectable.
Survata may be the solution to this measurement dilemma. Started in 2012, Survata partners with online publishers to create a deep well of potential survey respondents. People agree to take a survey in exchange for getting free access to the content they want. As a result they have a very large population of potential responders. Read more here.
Survata walks you through creating a survey. (And before all you academics and professionals freak out about amateurs creating surveys, they have a research expert on staff who double checks your questions to make sure you get the answers you want.) You select your sample size based on your needs and budget: $100 for a “quick read” with 100 respondents; $1500 for “deep read.” Need bigger? You can ask for a custom quote. For $1 a respondent, or $2 for international respondents, Survata customers can segment their population by age, gender, geography, or technology used. Additionally, they can ask a couple of custom screening questions to narrow the population even further.
Survata is clearly aiming for Survey Monkey’s market. Survey Monkey’s new monthly pricing model takes it out of the “free” category, since doing just about anything requires a paid monthly subscription. Survata argues that their respondent pool is better and deeper than whatever panels you can purchase from Survey Monkey.
But, cost aside, we’re naming Survata this month’s Best New Thing in the World for the simplicity of the approach. In an age where everything happens instantly, the concept of commissioning big, time-consuming research projects is daunting even to experts. And, in the endless news cycle and constantly changing environment, waiting four months to get results from a survey seems downright antediluvian. So we’re hoping that Survata’s simple approach will encourage more people to measure right. ∞
