Small Business Start-Up Idea – Survey Service

Businesses today are extremely interested in finding out what their customers think and factoring their opinions into the decision making process. The importance of knowing your customer in great detail means that nowadays large businesses are prepared to pay specialists to find out more about them.  Your survey service would create online questionnaires and polls for a client in order to research a particular topic and then provide them with the results.  

Skills needed: Experience in writing survey questions or conducting research (such as a dissertation) and also some experience in campaign development.  

Business environment and set-up cost: There are no barriers to your business trading globally, as long as you are able to translate your surveys into other languages. This is potentially a slightly more expensive business to start-up than my previous start-up ideas. A high-end computer will be needed (at least one, possibly more depending on the number of clients) and a printer. You will need administration and survey software that can handle your requirements. The website will also need to be developed and hosted by someone. The overall cost might vary from a few thousand to about £10,000 depending on the scope of the business.  

Marketing Techniques:  

• Add your website to the popular pay-per-click search engines
• Establish mutual links with link directories and web rings
• Become involved in online forums and mailing lists, always providing a link to your website in your signature
• Use OnlineOffice to set up web-site, blog and online shop to promote your business online

Complimentary business ideas: If you wish to expand your business down the line you can extend your market research to incorporate other services such as offering marketing advice.  

Notes: Payment is likely only to be received after the survey has been completed and the results collated. You may have trouble getting people to participate in an online survey so it can be useful to offer some form of prize or reward as an incentive.  

Online examples & resources:  

• Hosted Survey – excellent example of an independent survey service
• QuestionPro – professional survey software
• Polldaddy – a free online alternative
• Onlinesurveys.com – a giant database of surveys with prizes awarded to participants

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