I am a part of a Whatsapp group of marketers and someone posted this –
“My client is looking to build a product so I want you people to fill the survey. Can you all please fill out this form?”
My first reaction was – Yikees! 🙄
First problem – That group was not at all the target audience. The survey was about some female skin care products.
Even if that client gets a bunch of “survey answers” from us, that will just inflate numbers. Will it really help the business objective? I don’t think so.
Second problem – Nobody, almost nobody fills an honest survey when they know they are being watched.
This is called the Hawthorne Effect in psychology.
Let me give some real examples.
👉 Employees give more positive feedback about company culture and managers when they know the survey results will be reviewed by higher-ups
Probable Reality – Same employees might be feeling disconnected from the company’s vision and demotivated about their roles.
👉 Customers mostly provide positive feedback on products when the founders personally request their opinions
Probable Reality – Same customers might be facing some issues but they got used to it and want to avoid acknowledging them to avoid hard talks with the founder directly.
👉 Your friends and family follow you on social media, double-tap your content and leave some comments
Probable Reality – They have zero interest in your content but they are reacting because you are sharing your content links with them.
👉 People almost never give real feedback to the influential people in the society but keep sugarcoating them.
Probable Reality – Those people do not even consider that influential person as ‘one-of-them’ because they simply cannot relate to him.
👉 Clients provide favorable reviews and high ratings for a service when the business owner personally requests feedback
Probable Reality – They might have experienced several minor issues but overlook them to avoid conflict or out of courtesy
👉 Attendees of a voluntary workshop provide more positive feedback when the organizer asks for their opinions directly
Probable Reality – Many attendees might feel the workshop was only somewhat beneficial but feel obliged to give positive feedback due to the direct request.
There are endless examples like this.
Most surveys and feedback do not make sense to me.
✍ TODAY’S ACTION ITEM
Instead of forcing surveys or feedback, observe the behavior.
Observe if your friends and family members really consuming your content without you it sharing with them
Leaders can engage more with team members and notice some patterns
Companies can observe how their target customers are actually using their products
🌐 RELATED RESOURCES
If psychology interests you, there’s a course on Udemy named “Diploma Course in Modern Applied Psychology” by Kain Ramsay.
I have not personally pursued this but my team member recommended me. I highly trust his words so I might enroll soon 🙂
✔ WHAT I DID THIS WEEK
Started running FB ads for the client because I wanted to polish my performance marketing skills and test one of our company products 💰
Most importantly to overcome the fear of FB ads. Took nice time out of my Sunday for that.
Honestly, I hate FB ads. Not running ads, actually. The whole setup, unnecessarily complicated UI and lack of support. I can rant endlessly about Meta.
Then I updated my email course about building side projects. Now some of those complicated lessons have video lessons 🤩
Talking about videos – published 2 videos this week and one social post. Social post was about BBNow vs BigBasket. Reply to this email if you are interested to read it.
Watched 2 new episodes of Black Mirror.
Completed reading “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck” this week. I love reading this series to relax but I need to catch up with some real books soon. LOL
I planned to create more videos this week but here I am – with some lame excuses – didn’t get sufficient time, got extra tired on some days and delayed because I couldn’t make the perfect notes for those topics.
Good realization of what could be improved this week 😅
How was your week ?