There are four main directions on a compass, four seasons in a year and, yes, four is also in our company’s name. So, this time we are narrowing it down to four points you should consider when planning your public relations survey.

There is so much to consider when planning a PR survey, like making sure you are asking the correct questions of the correct people in the correct ways. That struggle to get it as perfect as possible can be frustrating, we know. That’s why we want to help!

TIMELINE FOR DELIVERABLES

We don’t conduct PR surveys for no reason, and we bet you don’t either. The resulting data is used in deliverables, so it’s important to take those into consideration when initially planning the survey.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

  • Which team members are handling each part of the process?
  • Are you using the data in a news release?
  • When will that release need to be sent out to journalists?
  • How many pieces of content will you be creating from this data, and when will those pieces be published?
  • Will the data be recent enough for the dates you are publishing those pieces?
  • How long will it take to get through the back and forth with your client about the questionnaire draft?
  • How long will it take you to analyze the data?
  • How much time will you need for any programing purposes? Will you need questions that have logic mapping?
  • Based on your sample being more general or more niche, how long will the survey need to run? If your sample is more niche it will need to run longer, and it will be more expensive.

Make sure to ask yourself these questions to help set yourself up for a successful timeline. And don’t forget to use tools that will help you to quickly craft your questionnaire and work in unison with your team members. A couple good tools for this are Google Docs and Microsoft Teams.

WHO TO SURVEY

If you have ever written a piece for public consumption, you have probably been asked about or had to think about who your audience is.

Here are some questions to help you formulate that audience in your mind:

  • Who is the target audience for the content in which the data from the survey will be used?
  • Is your survey audience supposed to be general population? If so, think about setting quotas for age, gender and geographic region so the breakdown within 1,000 or 2,000 participants looks similar to the overall U.S. population according to the most recent census. This reduces sample bias.
  • Are you working with more niche samples? Think about targeting the right type of participants by writing the best segmentation to filter out participants you don’t want.

WHEN TO PUT THE SURVEY INTO THE FIELD

The shelf lives of surveys aren’t as long as they used to be because we constantly have new information coming out. For example, if we are doing a survey about masks, what happens if a vaccine comes out next week? People could change their minds about masks, making the data form the survey no longer relevant.

Here are some questions to consider:

  • Is there anything that has happened recently that could skew the data?
  • Are there any events or holidays coming up that could impact the survey?
  • How soon do you need the data?
  • When does your client need the data? The survey will take longer the more niche it is.

THINK ABOUT THE AFTER

Does the topic in your survey have an end date, like an event, something being built or the COVID-19 pandemic? If the topic of the survey has an end date, it will also have an after.

Here are some points to keep in mind:

  • Try to ask questions that last after, like, “Do you plan to meet up with friends after the pandemic is over?”
  • But then again, you still have to take in account that people don’t live in a vacuum. People’s answers are always influenced by what is happening in the moment.
  • What’s the purpose of your survey? How are you using the data? For example, will the data be used in a news article or will it be used in a business report? Does the after matter for the purpose of your survey?