Google Surveys 360 – Webinar Q&A

In our latest webinar with Google, we were joined by Surveys 360 product lead Michael Cumberbatch to share some of the powerful ways that organizations are prioritizing Voice of Customer and tapping into Google’s powerful enterprise survey tool. Judging by the great questions posed, marketers are recognizing the advantages of bolstering their data and analytics with online market research, and are seeking ways to accelerate user insights.

Check out the following recap of questions raised and responses from our experts.

Q: What’s the difference between Surveys 360 and other tools on the market like Survey Monkey or Survey Gizmo?

A: Starting out with Survey Monkey and Survey Gizmo, some of the main differences include the types of channels that they support. Survey Monkey can support emails. They are more oriented to owning and surveying your audiences. When we launched Surveys, that wasn’t our initial focus. We were very focused on high quality representative sampling and that hasn’t changed. As we look ahead to 2018, we are starting to look into how we can fit more into your typical marketing tech or marketing orchestration workflow and how can we position the product to be more audience-first. For example, if you have an email list, you’d be able to target them and deliver a survey to them.

One of the biggest strengths against tools like Survey Monkey and Survey Gizmo is really the power of remarketing. If you’re spending on any Google media, having the ability for every single campaign to actually target the users that saw that ad, to better understand the effectiveness of that ad, and design and ask your own questions related to that ad experience, is something that most platforms can’t offer. We really do see that as a key differentiator, along with some of our location targeting capabilities, and we are looking at how we can extend that going into next year. One example is being able to set up zip codes, if you’re opening a new location, and measure awareness of that brand in that zip code region. This is a key and important use case.

The other things that differentiate us are our media formats. We have many movie studios and creative agencies that use our video format to upload an unlisted private video of a movie trailer or creative when it’s  in the design phase, to get user opinion on how well that message is resonating with their target audience in order to take that back to the creative or editing team to make new cuts and survey again.

Q: What should we expect to pay for Surveys and Surveys 360?

A: Per-respondant costs starts at 10 cents per completion for a single-question survey. For 2 to 10 questions, it is typically $1 to $3 per completion, with remarketing at $10 per completion.

The costs for Surveys 360 come in three options of annual commitment tiers, starting at $36,000 (monthly billing at $3,000.) This includes running one or two brand trackers targeted to the U.S and 500 responses each occurrence each month. This is usually enough to get you toward the monthly $3k spend.

Q: Is there any integration of the reporting in Surveys 360 with Google Analytics?

A: The Google Analytics and Surveys teams are currently discussing ways to deliver tighter integrations between both UI’s. When we launched Surveys 360, there was a strong focus on redesigning some of the core user journeys and flows and core functionality. Going into 2018, it’ll be easier to customize key user journeys between both products. Imagine having the ability to design your segment within Google Analytics, observe any quantitative metric, for example shopping cart abandonment. There may be some automatic triggering to access Surveys or AdWords, without leaving the Analytics experience. These are some key features being looked at, along with expanding key markets where you can conduct research. You are able to target 11 different markets currently. Going into 2018, the plan is to expand the number of survey-able countries significantly.

Q: Is it possible to integrate answers from Google Surveys as custom dimensions in Google Analytics?

A: Currently, there is no integration however Google does have a site survey solution today called Website Satisfaction. There’s a javascript snippet that you can embed on your website and depending on specific user journeys on your site, it can be set up to pop up to survey users on the level of satisfaction with their experience.

Q: How do Surveys appear for users when you’re targeting specific audiences? What are common ways that Surveys show up on sites?

A: There are two main ways, the first way being through the app. Unlike other survey platforms, Google prioritizes preserving a native respondent experience, ie, owning the UI. On the app side, respondents are within the Google Surveys app, answer the questions there and receive their incentives within the app.

On the publisher side, Surveys does not show up in any sort of website display or YouTube video ad units. There is a survey prompt that publishers can embed with javascript on their website. This survey paywall can be used as the monetization or the content gate for articles and video content. When users come to the site, instead of seeing a banner for a subscription prompt, they’ll instead see the Google Surveys prompt or paywall. As soon as the user is done interacting with the survey, the prompt disappears to reveal the article content. More and more publishers are using surveys as a paywall monetization tool.

Q: Can you give us insight into what other plans Google has for Voice of Customer?

A: There is a lot in the pipeline. There is currently a lot of focus on being audience-first and really enabling the survey of any user across any channel. There will be an expansion of survey-able countries from 11 to over 40. There are plans to expand the footprint of the mobile panel, both Android and iOS, aligning with the goal to survey anyone, anywhere. There will also be additional location targeting capabilities. That’s the current vision of Google Surveys.