Readership SurveyIn a Readership Survey, you communicate with the readers of a publication to determine whether they remembered an article or ad about your company and, if they did, what they thought of the article or ad. How You Do ItWrite a questionnaire. Contract with the publisher or mailing list manager to mail or email it to the publication's subscriber list (or a subset). Or interview readers by telephone. Or both. Summarize the responses.StrengthsThis tool is both navigational and evaluative – you can use it to learn what your target audience thought and what they did, as a result of your communications.A Readership Survey can be a good way of determining: 1. Awareness and perception – did the readers read and remember the article/ad, and what did they think of it? This is a quick-and-dirty, do-it-yourself
Starch Test.
3. The publication's credibility and "pull" – will the readers buy (or did they already buy) as a result of the article/ad? As with the Editorial Survey, this method can produce beneficial by-products – in this case, the possible benefits are improved visibility, improved good will, and additional sales leads. WeaknessesThis method takes time. And, to be really useful, it should be repeated.If you're looking only for quick-and-dirty guidance numbers, doing it yourself is OK. But if you want more accuracy, you may want to contract the experts for a program of Starch Tests or an equivalent. Another weakness is that this kind of test may produce only very rough accuracy on questions of why people bought. See
Faulty Memory
and
Repression.
It may also be vulnerable to
Nonresponse Bias.
Using expert researchers can partly overcome these barriers to accuracy.
Return from Readership Survey to Measuring What They Did
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