The most effective way to find the best PR survey company is to know exactly what you're looking for.
Not all PR survey companies are created equal. When looking for the best of the best, consider these five factors. Doing so ensures your team receives high-quality data to fuel press releases and other marketing efforts.
And to understand what you're looking for, you first need to know what a PR survey company is, what they do, and how they do it.
We cover each of these components in the blog post below.
What Is a PR Survey Company?
The function of a PR survey company is simple to understand. This type of company, at its most basic level, conducts surveys as a service to provide answers to customers'/clients' PR-related questions.
This means the company has a deep understanding of various ways to carry out custom PR surveys, such as online, over the phone, in-person, social media, and other types of methodologies.
For your business, this translates into not having to figure out how to get ahold of the right team at the right time to find answers to your questions.
Why? Because a PR survey company collects the information and data you need, making it easier for you to form decisions on pertinent business matters.
Ultimately, this results in being able to place an enhanced focus on other core pertinent business functions, which is essential to expanding growth.
How to Find the Best PR Survey Company
Now that you know what a PR survey company is, you are more likely to find one that meets your needs.
During your search, make sure to keep the following five factors in mind.
1. Case studies and credentials
The public relations survey company you choose to partner with should provide you with several case studies relating to the clients it has served.
PR survey companies of all service providers know better than anyone that surveys and case studies are important, so asking to see a few should provide no worrisome to you during your search.
The market research company should also be more than willing to show you any credentials it holds relating to the services and products it provides and will likely have the credentials displayed on one of its website pages.
2. Responsiveness to inquiries
Make sure to take note of how quickly a PR survey company responds to your inquiries. The faster the response, the faster service you are likely to receive.
You should make several forms of contact (video, email, phone, in-person, etc) with the company before you hire one, but regardless of the method of inquiry, you should still receive a fast response time.
3. Willingness to share information and data
A PR survey company worth partnering with will be exactly that -- a partner in all that relates to the services it provides and the various ways providing those services impacts your company.
Even for those companies that have partnered with PR survey companies before, each survey is different, so you should expect things to go differently each time, but this doesn't mean they have to go downhill ... ever.
With a willingness to share information and data, the best PR survey company will always work hand-in-hand with your team to ensure the implementation of out-of-box strategies that propel your business forward and not backward.
3. Questionnaire design and usability
If you can't understand the questions being asked of you during the consultation process, how can you expect the people the PR survey company conducts surveys on to understand the survey questions?
This is why it's so important to check out the questionnaire design of each survey created for you before the surveys are actually conducted.
To create surveys that are perfectly understood by the respondents, you need a PR survey company that has highly qualified skills in the art and science of survey writing. This doesn't mean, however, that you yourself have to be a wizard with words.
In fact, the PR polling company should instinctively be able to know what you want to learn, how you want to get your research, and what you expect to do with that research.
Furthermore, your partner of choice should be able to answer any questions you have along the way about the creation and art, and science of the surveys taking place.
4. High-quality standards for data
Not all PR survey companies are one and the same, particularly when it comes to standards for data.
You need a vendor that has high-quality standards for data, and you should be able to notice them from the first time you come into contact with the company.
When analyzing the quality standards of a service provider, make sure to ask about the auditing process it conducts.
This auditing process should always help the service provider do the following:
- Provide fast survey takers while also pinpointing speeders (those who finish surveys much faster than expected).
- Verify the IP address of survey respondents (is the company receiving 20 responses to the same survey from the same IP address?).
- Uses a red herring question to ensure the blocking of bad respondents (choose any "10" on this question only).
- Use of open-end questions to check the quality of each respondent.
Consider your search over. Drive Research is an industry-leading market research company that specializes in custom PR surveys. Our team understands the power of exclusive research and its ability to improve public relations outreach.
To learn more about our services, or to get a quote for a public relations survey, contact Drive Research today.
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Carroll
A SUNY Cortland graduate, Emily has taken her passion for social and content marketing to Drive Research as the Marketing Coordinator. She has earned certificates for both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Learn more about Emily, here.
