When creating a survey, do you just throw it out into the universe hoping that someone will take it? Or do you become uber-selective and only allow a select few to take it? Well, neither of these strategies will help you or your organization when it comes to surveys. Although you shouldn’t severely limit the number of people who take your survey, you should have some discernment on who you allow to take it as it might not be an accurate representation of the audience you need to hear from.
For example, I am currently working on a campaign for security awareness training that 4it provides. Before automatically going into the campaign, I might want to understand how company decision makers perceive security awareness training as a whole and their willingness to invest in it. Now, I could just throw this survey on LinkedIn and see what answers I get back. However, by doing this, I would get answers from individuals who may not be decision makers or are decision makers in an industry that I’m not targeting or that don’t have enough employees for us to sell to. By being selective, but not too selective, I can get my survey to the people who matter and get the results I need and can report back on to my management team.