Don’t ask more questions. Ask the right ones.
The average consumer is drowning in digital noise. Create an account. Accept cookies. Confirm your email. Opt out (again). Algorithms track every click while curated ads chase us across platforms. For all the talk about data, many organizations still fail at the most essential task—actually understanding the people they’re trying to reach.
And that’s when carefully focused, strategically planned research really counts.
To be clear, there are many kinds of research, from mystery shopper to opinion surveys. All can be quite useful depending on your situation, budget, purpose, and so on. But today, let’s talk about survey research. Done well, it can unlock unseen opportunities. Done poorly, it generates noise.
Beyond surfacing opinions and top-of-mind-answers, what we’ve often done with clients is identify and then focus on understanding underlying motivations. Especially when one’s operating environment frequently changes and feels unpredictable, asking a regular battery of questions to see shifts over time can feel counterproductive.
First, people get tired of answering questions they’ve seen before. Second, it becomes very difficult to discern why responses might shift. Is it caused by a change in opinion or in context?
So instead of falling down this rabbit hole, one underlying motivation we’ve explored for clients is risk.
But you can’t just ask someone, “Are you risk-averse?” and expect a useful answer. Most people don’t think that way. So we design questions to reveal something deeper—having tested, refined, and fielded surveys with a variety of clients. And guess what? It works.
Understanding how different groups perceive and respond to risk can become the scaffolding for how we shape communications. We obviously never advise a client to say, "Hey, risk-averse people, here's a message just for you!" But knowing how different stakeholder groups think about risk can enable more nuanced, more engaging, and more effective messaging—and even help anticipate and fully engage stakeholders in the future.
With tools like SurveyMonkey, anyone can run a poll. But that doesn’t make everyone a researcher—just like having a camera doesn’t make someone a photojournalist. A good survey isn’t just a string of questions. It’s a strategic research tool designed to illuminate what your stakeholders really think, so you can make decisions that actually align with reality.
Yet time and again, even smart, effective leaders start in the wrong place. They begin by writing questions instead of asking, “What are we trying to accomplish? How will we use what we learn? What problem are we actually solving for?”
Without that clarity, survey results can mislead more than they help.
