A $1,500 online survey lead to a 34% sales increase for Beer Cartel (and that’s just one of five amazing outcomes) | #422

Tim

So those three things you’ve just mentioned their lead magnets. Their offers from you to encourage people to give you their email. They sound pretty compelling but obviously didn’t get the traction you wanted?

 

Richard

They all worked but to elements of extent. So, we’re a small business. We don’t have a massive marketing budget so they were all things that helped grow our database a little bit but we really wanted something that could then take it to the next level and we knew that the cause was actually something that was really easy to complete and we thought well what happens if we tried to do the same idea but actually turned it into a survey. So that was a starting point for the Australian Craft Beer survey.

 

Tim

I beg to differ your starting point was the fact that you’re in your corporate life prior to escaping the cubicle were a market research consultant. Correct?

 

Richard

Yeah, I was. Going back eight years or so I had about seven years of market research. Doing things for banking. For fmcg see a fast-moving consumer goods for beer right across the whole game.

 

Tim

So, it was just a bit of an epiphany you finally had one day where you’ve gone, a survey.

 

Richard

Yeah well, I’ve always wanted to create a survey for the craft beer industry at the time. Prior to that I’d always thought that the time and effort was going to take to actually create it wouldn’t justify the return. So, all I was thinking about was the smaller survey that we could send out to our database and we could put on our blog but probably wouldn’t really do much else. And then I started to think well what if we actually thought about it in a bigger game. If we actually did it to actually help the industry grow and we fed the results back to that industry and then took it from there. So, it was all about going. Okay how can we actually do this but on a much bigger scale and actually help the Australian Craft Beer industry.

 

Tim

Pretty big thinking Richard for a little business.

 

Richard

Yeah it was. I think once you do start thinking outside of your little box things do start to change. The results that we’ve had from the Australian Craft Beer survey is just been massive.

 

Tim

They were massive and I want to understand step by step how you actually created it. So, you’ve gone online survey, tick. You know one of the things I particularly love about this by the way is here we are Beer Cartel small business wanting to be much bigger but taking on a challenge that looking at what you’ve done. I would have expected that to come from a Carlton United brewery, a big national or global Brewer. So, this is what I particularly love about the idea. What we are hoping to achieve besides obviously an increase in sales what we hope to achieve from going down the online survey route.

 

Richard

So yes, there are a few different things we’re looking at. One was obviously build our customer list which we thought well what we can do is actually take our survey put it out there and then ask other people within that industry to help support as well and promote the survey and we thought we can magnify it at once. The other was to just become a thought leader in our space so we wanted to be that sort of knowledge base that people actually look up to. And think of us highly. The other one is to get publicity about us to make us more well-known and the last one was to really drive sales. So yeah idea was that if we can get people to complete the survey we might be able to give an award at the end and hopefully they might be able to buy from us.

 

Tim

Fairly ambitious objectives. Be interested to see whether you achieve them, he says with a smile. So, let’s step through the creation of this wonderful what is essentially a content marketing creation strategy that you use a survey to accumulate the content so first of all what software did you use.

 

Richard

So, we used a survey platform called Survey Monkey and we use their Gold Plan which was 330 dollars for the year that allows you to do unlimited surveys for the year.

 

Tim

Unbelievable. As a market researcher who’s created I guess bespoke surveys previously you must look at software like Survey Monkey guide. This is incredible what you can do for 300 bucks a year.

 

Richard

Oh absolutely. I mean I did use this in my market research days. This was kind of cheap in the town when clients came to us on a really small budget. But the amazing thing is it actually compares to the big massive costly survey program that you can use as well.

 

Tim

So, you’ve got your medium sorted out Survey Monkey. So beautifully and the way it presents the information and even the simple things like I’ve looked at your survey you’ve created and it just shows you where you’re at. You break it up chunk by chunk so that someone’s not confronted with this incredibly long page of questions which no one’s going to want to complete but you sort of do it in chapters right and then at the bottom it has, what is it a completion bar or.

 

Richard

A progress bars. Yeah, the key thing for anyone when you’re completing a survey or doing any kind of form really is to give them an idea of how far along they are. And so that’s what the progress bar does. And we also put a different sort of statements in the survey says not long to go now you’ve just got two questions answer and then it’s complete. Just a little kind of things to just help people move along and feel like that we’re not sailing their whole life away them we’re just taking a couple of minutes.

 

Tim

Yeah having getting the medium right is one thing so you’ve got Survey Monkey. Tell us about getting the message right getting the copyright I’m assuming you wrote it. But for many that would be a daunting task to write up a survey what’s the key tips Richard.

 

Richard

So yeah, I was very lucky that I did have the market research experience so I did know how to write a survey but I think it’s something that anyone can do these days and there’s a couple of reasons for that. If you Google your industry market research questions you’ll find questions that come up that people have used in other surveys. If you’re trying to create yourself you could definitely go down that road. And the other thing is Survey Monkey and other survey platforms actually have sit kind of questions that you can actually use to put into your survey so simple things like your gender what’s your age what’s your income. These are already structured for you so you don’t have to try and reinvent the wheel. You can actually just take these in and use them.

 

Tim

Is there a sort of any learnings around open ended questions versus closed questions?

 

Richard

Yeah absolutely. The main thing is you want to make the survey as simple as possible to get people to complete. So, to do that you want to require as little will in a gene and brain matter from them as possible so you don’t have open ended questions. It’s all about tech box questions that can people can quickly answer and then move along. And the other thing I’d say is also with your questionnaire or your survey trying to make it around five to seven minutes max. People we all know who are completely starved to time these days. So, it’s something that doesn’t feel too long but if you ask the right questions and that’s to an engaged industry people actually enjoy taking part in the survey.

 

Tim

I think maybe we are starved of time. Their attention spans have shrunk thanks to things like social media. So, combine those two things and you do want to keep it simple and sharp. Just walk us through I’m going to put a link to the entire questionnaire in the show notes to this episode but just walk us through the types of segments and questions that you were asking.

 

Richard

Yes sure. So, the first question was just to confirm their age because we obviously need to make sure that 18 passed because it’s around alcohol. Then we get craft beer behaviors. So how long people have been drinking craft beer, what styles of beer they drink, who they think is Australia’s best craft brewery. How long they’ve been buying craft beer. What their favorite beer style is and then it progresses into some additional questions. So, what do they think about different ownership businesses and the craft beer space. There’s a small independent craft brewery compared to a multi-national which one is they most likely to buy from you and then you’ve got things like do you think cans are better than bottles. Do you drink from a beer glass? So, it’s all things that are of interest to people that are involved in the craft beer space.

 

Tim

So, you’ve got this wonderful beautiful looking online survey and I want to interrogate you as to how you got it out there and promote it but before we do that, then understanding as people are completing the survey their information is going to the back end of Survey Monkey. I haven’t seen the back end of that program. I’m imagining it presents the data very clearly and allows you to cut it up. However, you like?

 

Richard

Yeah absolutely. You can slice and dice it how you like. It has a huge game of different charts you can choose from. So, if you want your pie chart, bar chart, all of those your line chart. It’s an amazing piece of software for the price that you pay.

 

Tim

I do love a good pie chart. Do you have your preference for chart?

 

Richard

I’m a very anti pie chart.

 

Tim

Oh hello. It’s controversial why.

 

Richard

I just don’t think it gives a really clear understanding of what people are looking at.

 

Tim

Richard, I think you need to revisit this. Beautifully presented three-dimensional pie chart is quite art.

 

Richard

Even worse, three dimensional.

 

Tim

All right we disagree on pie charts. So, what you’ve done as this data is heading into the back end. How you presented it as a finding, an eBook or how?

 

Richard

So, we put it into our blog. For us one of the end games was to try and drive seo. So, let links to our site and so we put it on our blog titled that the 2017 Australian craft beer survey results. And it’s amazing. I think probably in most countries and you actually talked craft beer survey we can be that number one spot.

 

Tim

So even right there I mean it’s genius what you’ve called at the 2017 Australian craft beer survey. I mean are you sure that’s not coming from a multi-national brewery and this is what I love about the marketing world Richard. It’s changed so much and it allows businesses like yours and mine to punch so far above our marketing weight and marketing budget right.

 

Richard

Absolutely. I mean yeah, it’s amazing what you can do now even compared to five years ago the world is changing. It means it’s so much easier for small guys to get a leg up on the big competition.

 

Tim

Correct. So, got the survey. How did you get it out there? How did you promote I’m sure you’ve got an email list so goes out to those guys you put it on your social media? But I’m feeling that’s fairly limited. So, you went out and what sought partners?

 

Richard

So, what we did first of all we created a Facebook video and we publish that and then we ran out to the industry and said look if you’re able to support this survey what we’ll do is we’ll give you a specific industry report that has insights on how to actually help grow your business and all you have to do is share the Facebook link and if you’re kind enough also put it out to your e-mail database and so we went from there. And I think the online Facebook video we had 370 shares to give you an idea.

 

Tim

Brilliant. Now again I’ve seen that Facebook video with all respect Richard it is wonderfully. What’s the word? Naive, amateur. Amateur budget. This is great. Again, it doesn’t have to be a big production. It was a 14 second video folks. I’m guessing shot on your iPhone Richard and its just simply Richard going down the shelf of his store in Sydney videoing a series of beers along the shelf and then with a super above it saying win a 500-dollar voucher or something to that effect by completing the survey that’s it.

 

Richard

Yeah. Very simple. We tried an image the previous year so we did a 2016 survey. But we know that Facebook just values videos so much higher so straight away we thought video would be the way to go this year. And yeah it was pretty effective.

 

Tim

So just to be clear you have encouraged others to share the video and the link to the survey. On Facebook you got 370 or so shares for them doing it. Are you giving them a private labeled report or?

 

Richard

What we did was we said that anyone that shared the survey they’d get an industry report which we value 2000 dollars and that’s the one that has their insights on how to help create a business. And people also got more than 50 people to complete the survey. Then we’d give them their own sort of personalized report that says this is how your brewery site for instance. This is how Boulter brewery customers compared to everyone that drinks craft beer in Australia.

 

Tim

How do you track that?

 

Richard

So, what we did was, with survey maker you can actually create custom links and so we’re able to identify where we said. This is your customer link. Put them in all your social media comms. Put that in your email database and we can actually track exact so we can say that that’s your customer right there.

 

Tim

Okay. Brilliant. So how long was it up for this survey.

 

Richard

Roughly two months. So, it was going to be a bit shorter but we kept having lots and lots people complete it. So, it just made sense to keep going.

 

Tim

Wow that’s nice. Okay so you’ve got lots of complete. How many in the end completed the survey?

 

Richard

Went pretty well. We had 17000.

 

Tim

That’s a fairly good sample size.

 

Richard

It’s not too bad and standard market research if you can get a thousand people complete survey you’re doing really well if you’re getting 5000 people to complete survey you’re paying huge bucks to get that survey done we bench that 17000.

 

Tim

Great story. Okay let’s talk about the results. The other thing which I think is really interesting is it cost a whopping fifteen hundred bucks. Correct.

 

Richard

So, part of that was that money for survey monkey 330 dollars. We had 500 dollars for a prize to spend on craft beer for one lucky person they complete the survey and we spent about five hundred dollars on Facebook ads.

 

Tim

I think to be fair to add to that your time too. I mean imagining fairly time consuming.

 

Richard

Yeah it was. That take time and effort but the payoff was massive so it was well worth it.

 

Tim

Just before we talk results because they are amazing Richard. I want listeners who are other small business owners to think I could do this. So, a twofold question one, is an online survey a great content marketing strategy for any type of small business. And is it easy enough for a small business owner to get their head around which I guess is yes given what you’ve explained already.

 

Richard

Oh yeah, I think it’s relatively simple to put it all together. And if you think about the media always looking for angles to talk about your industry and they are always searching for things to talk about. So, what we did which anyone can do is actually structure the survey to think okay what would the media like to get hold of, what would they like to talk about and then provide statistics around that.

 

Tim

Genius. Okay talk us through the results start with sales. Start with the big one.

 

Richard

So yeah, we had a good. What we did was we offered everyone that complete the survey just as additional thank you. We said okay here’s ten dollars to spend with us. If you spend over 50 dollars and we had sixty-five thousand dollars in additional sales.

 

Tim

A simple 10-dollar incentive. How big did it grew your list by?

 

Richard

Our list. So, before we start the survey all together so back in 2016 we had 6000 people on our survey on our e-mail list. We had 7000 people that complete the survey in 2016 and then 17000 that completed in 2017. And it grew our database to 32000 now.

 

Tim

That is tremendous. Just out of interest, much of an unsubscribe rate once the once they’d done the survey?

 

Richard

No, it was very small and I think part of that is our e-mail database is just one way to get sales from. Actually, our whole ethos of our business is we’re really passionate about craft beer. We started as business back in 2009 and the whole idea even back then was to take people on a journey to tell them about the wonderful sights smells stories aromas and flavors about craft beer and to help it along the way. And so, as part of all our email program we have a big focus on education. And so, we’ve always tried to use our e-mail database as a way of communicating that information.

 

Tim

Yeah so, a lot more I would call it pull marketing versus push marketing you’re not just going out with the beer or the with the cheapest beer of the week or some sales items. You’re actually adding value to others who enjoy the craft beer experience. Joy. 2009 is when you started is a craft beer even invented then.

 

Richard

It was tiny. Back then it was called boutique beer. I don’t even know about craft beer and it was very hard to get hold of anything. I think it might have been say 20 to 30 craft breweries in Australia.

 

Tim

What did you see that others didn’t?

 

Richard

I think it was just that we are so early. People hadn’t even thought about it. So, these days there’s actually a lot of I guess bottle shops and other people that want to enter the space and the breweries have grown from say 30 breweries back then into almost 500 now. So, it’s just changed completely.

 

Tim

I actually think this more. I have had for Jamie Cook from stone and wood on this show and also the lady from Burleigh brewery I am sure they should there was like 850 craft breweries or am I imagining that.

 

Richard

It might be your imagination but they are growing pretty rapidly. There’s a basically every week there’s a new craft brewery spotting out these days so that’s yeah, it’s exciting times for the industry.

 

Tim

It certainly is. Let’s get back to the results from the online survey what did it do for website traffic.

 

Richard

We doubled it compared to 2016.

 

Tim

Off a low base or was a pretty decent base.

 

Richard

I was talking to a person that was trying to get us to do some ads the other day and he couldn’t believe just how much traffic we got. There was some paid.

 

Tim

Well done. And I imagine you would have gone from a seo point of view you would have got a whole lot of back links.

 

Richard

Oh yeah it was massive. We were featured in about 20 to 30 different media pieces. We were and podcasts like yourself. Radio interviews. We’re everywhere.

 

Tim

So great amount of publicity received. Just with those back links. We talked about this off air but the idea of, have you gone out to each of those outlets and bloggers and other podcasts who have talked about this in their medium and tried to manipulate the back links so instead of click here for the 2017 Australian craft beer report and click here is hyperlinked. You would want 2017 craft beer report hyperlinked. Have you done that? Have you gone and followed them up?

 

Richard

I haven’t. But yeah it sounds like a good idea. So, I think it’ll be something to get our va to do.

 

Tim

Correct. Yes, it’s a bit of a roll the sleeves up strategy but absolutely worth it. Lots of publicity received. How would you measure your thought leader status now that you’ve done it?

 

Richard

I guess one of the key ones was we’ve got to present at the last year’s Australian Craft Brewers Conference so straight away that does help. And I’ve been asked to speak again this year. Amongst industry there’s big tech there. Outside of that just in marketing world actually got our story promoted and sumo which is one of the big sort of marketing websites that’s behind sumo me which is that great sort of app seller

 

Tim

Very Google friendly getting a backlink on sumo much less a case study and it’s a very good study I must say. Any other unexpected outcomes. I mean certainly getting asked to speak at that conference is pretty significant. Anything else you’ve gone wow didn’t think that would happen.

 

Richard

Well when I was actually at that conference so they had to big keynote speakers. There was one lady that was a German professor that travels the world talking about craft beer and getting paid a monstrous amount for it. And while I was sitting in the audience she actually started talking about Australian craft beer survey and this is the lady I’ve never met never spoken to and she’s referring to that as a great example of stuff that’s happening in that industry.

 

Tim

I love it. And you’re on after her?

 

Richard

Not quite after her but yeah next day, I did get to have a chat. So, it was nice when you see something like that happen.

 

Tim

Did you establish any kind of partnership with her?

 

Richard

Not a partnership. We’re keeping in touch. I’m keeping abreast of what’s happening in the Australian market.

 

Tim

Well Richard it’s a great story. You’ve sort of created a very positive rod for your own back now I’m assuming this is going to be an annual event.

 

Richard

Yeah. So, we’re just about to launch the 2018 survey and they’re just working on the last set of questions for that moment. I’m pretty excited on it when it rolls out.

 

Tim

What are you going to do differently?

 

Richard

There’s not going to be a lot. The question is what we want to change about each year just to find what is topical that media wants to get hold of. One of the big things we going to do this year though is actually ask people to refer others to complete the survey. We’re going to offer additional prizes for those people that do get their friends to complete the survey and we’ll just see how much that can actually increase the amount of people that complete the survey.

 

Tim

I guess it’d be tempting to do a fancy video and sort of up the ante on everything you do but at the same time what you’re doing is working so your challenge is to kind of maintain some kind of equilibrium.

 

Richard

Yeah, we actually are taking the video to another level so we have a videographer. It’s going to be a bit higher end so we’ll see what happens.

 

Tim

Well that’s interesting. We, I guess attempted to do that when things are successful. We’ve got a bit more dough to throw at things but oh well I guess the proof will be in the number of surveys and shares and results that you get. So good luck.

 

Richard

Thank you. Yeah. So, we did 17000 last year. I’ve got aim this year and it is 40000. We’ll see how it go

 

Tim

It’s significant. It’s like double and a half isn’t it.

 

Richard

So yeah, we’ve got a few different ideas. The other thing is we’re going to try and partner a few other big sorts of companies and if they come through then I think we should be well on the way to having that.

 

Tim

You’ve been in business since 2009 Richard with beer cartel is this online survey the best marketing you’ve ever done.

 

Richard

This and one other thing. So, we also have a Christmas Advent calendar that we release and we release it. So, it’s a countdown to Christmas so if you think of the traditional advent calendars that you’d have it go from the first of the same I think that normally end on the 24th of December. And you have little chocolate inside and you get to eat those on each day and get all excited well we’ve done the same as a craft beer. So, it’s a case of beer and you get to open it up each day and reveal a different beer to put in the fridge and enjoy at night.

 

Tim

I think that you should just explain the logistics behind that. It’s actually a box of beer individually marked so that you know that’s December 1 December to December 3 and each one is different.

 

Richard

Yeah absolutely. So, box of beer individually perforated or containerised and so you just pull a few little cardboard things that goes on the top of each beer each day countdown to Christmas.

 

Tim

I think that’s genius. How much does it cost and where can people get it?

 

Richard

Roughly 119 I think it is. So be on the websites will be doing your pre order. I think we started in September. They go absolutely crazy.

 

Tim

I would imagine they would and I would imagine too that if you could white label that and provide them branding for other businesses to provide to their clients that would be just a business within itself each year.

 

Richard

Potentially. I mean even last year it just with the one that we’ve got. We had some clients that bought a whole heap. They’re pretty awesome presence. One of the things is it stops the clutter of a present that’s normally given late December right near Christmas. This is something they can actually give someone in November so you’re avoiding the sort of Christmas gift and clutter.

 

Tim

I think it’s genius. Richard you are a very clever fellow. Thank you for sharing and I look forward to speaking to you later in the year just to get a quick update on how the 2018 Australian craft beer survey went.

 

Richard

Yeah sounds good. Pretty hopeful that it’s going to go pretty well.

 

Tim

Thank you.