Creating an original research report is one of the most effective ways to build authority in your industry, stand out from all competitors, and reach and engage more of your target customers. It’ll also improve the SEO of your website and unlock all kinds of opportunities, from PR to relevant collaborations.
So, why aren’t more businesses doing this? Because collecting the data you need for your report can be complex and time-consuming, and it often leads to one (or more) of these setbacks. But that doesn’t have to be the case for you!
ScoreApp makes data collection simple but effective, and we’ll show you exactly how to avoid the most common original research pitfalls.
Ready to create your authority-boosting report without hiccups or ridiculous expenses?
5 common pitfalls when creating original research (and how ScoreApp helps you avoid them)
You can’t churn out a few random questions, share your survey once, and expect to get plenty of useful data for your first-hand research. At the same time, though, this doesn’t have to be difficult either: just strategic.
So, here are the main mistakes to look out for.
1. Unfocused or confusing survey questions
Your survey must feed into your original research goals. So, if you include poorly written or irrelevant questions, you’ll get skewed or low-quality data (and you’ll probably confuse and annoy your participants, too).
How ScoreApp helps
Every single question should be there for a reason and be crystal clear, without room for misunderstandings. In most cases, we recommend aiming for 5-15 strategic ones.
ScoreApp makes this easier by giving you:
- Customizable, expert-designed survey templates for your original research
- An AI assistant that can also help you create the right questions
- Various formats to choose from (like yes or no, multiple choice, open text, sliding scales, and more), perfect to collect both quantitative and qualitative data
2. Low response rates
You could have the most strategic questions but… if not enough of your target participants see, take, and actually complete your survey? It’ll all be for nothing.
This is a super common original research pitfall when businesses haven’t got a plan to distribute their survey or when they make it so long and confusing that most participants give up.
How ScoreApp helps
Your survey must be engaging and impossible to miss.
ScoreApp facilitates this by:
- Connecting with third-party tools (like your email marketing platform and CRM) and working with the rest of your marketing. For example, you can design a professional landing page for your survey, add it to your website, link to it in your social media bios, and send both organic and paid traffic to it, reaching more and more people
- Offering a user-friendly and attractive design that keeps your participants engaged
- Collecting their contact details, allowing you to stay in touch with them and even retarget the small percentage that abandons your survey before completing it
3. Inaccurate or biased data
Without even realizing we’re doing it, it’s so easy to end up creating questions that’ll influence our participants’ answers. For example, by asking “How much do you enjoy X on a scale of 1 to 10?” we’re already implying they are enjoying it… which might not be the case at all!
So, if your original research survey includes leading questions, your data will be inaccurate.
How ScoreApp helps
Keep your wording neutral (going back to our previous example: “How do you feel about X on a scale of 1 to 10?”), and consider collecting a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data.
With ScoreApp, you get to make the most of:
- Our AI assistant, to write your questions and potential answers
- A range of question formats to gather different types of data
4. Messy and complicated data collection
Unless you’re happy to pay an agency thousands for one report, you should take care of your own original data collection.
Unfortunately, though, a common pitfall is that it can become overwhelming and all over the place, especially if you look through dozens or hundreds (or more) of submissions manually.
Not only is that unsustainable, for small and medium businesses in particular: it leaves plenty of room for human error, compromising your original research.
How ScoreApp helps
ScoreApp makes original research simpler and more streamlined as well as more effective:
- It’ll keep collecting all your survey responses automatically
- You’ll access in-depth but intuitive analytics to review all those answers and spot patterns, which will help you use your new data to create your original research article
5. No incentive for your audience to participate
At the end of the day, original research means “asking people to take time out of their day and use their brainpower to answer your questions.”
So, it can be tricky to convince enough of your target participants to do that, especially if they’re presented with a boring survey.
How ScoreApp helps
You can approach your data collection in two main ways:
- Sending a more traditional survey but really grabbing your audience’s attention with ScoreApp’s eye-catching, colorful, and professional-looking templates, leading with why their contribution matters. For example, on your ScoreApp landing page, you could include: “We know self-employment can be challenging, and we really want to do something to support more solopreneurs with their day-to-day challenges. Can you answer 12 quick questions to help us understand what’s really happening behind the scenes?”
- Turning your original research survey into a fun quiz that offers something valuable to your target audience too, incentivizing them to participate: personalized results. For example: “Share your experience, and discover your content marketing score, receiving tailored tips to improve it”
How ScoreApp makes your original research easier and more effective
Outsourcing your original research is expensive, and DIYing it without the right systems can lead to these costly pitfalls.
Instead, ScoreApp makes data collection fun for your target participants and simpler but more effective for you, bringing you many more accurate insights that are a breeze to analyze.
You especially get to make the most of:
- Pre-built and customizable templates – Create a quiz or survey that meets your original research goals, starting from strategic templates and tailoring them to match your brand
- Lead capture – Stay in touch with your participants. For example, retarget them if they abandon your survey, nurture them by connecting it with your email marketing platform or CRM, and send them your new report as soon as it’s ready
- Automated data collection – ScoreApp handles this for you, bringing all those submissions in one place
- Audience engagement and marketing tools – Use our built-in features to connect your survey to your usual platforms and to easily promote your landing page with the rest of your marketing. ScoreApp can also automatically divide your participants into groups based on their survey answers. So, you’ll then get to nurture them with personalized and more effective messages, turning some of them into paying customers (even before your actual report is ready!)
- Different tiers and plans – Original research doesn’t have to cost thousands! Start with ScoreApp’s generous free plan, and only upgrade to the right paid tier when you need more features
- Intuitive analytics – Easily review all your survey submissions, spot trends and patterns, and make sense of your data to then create your new primary source report
Avoid ridiculous expenses, messy processes, and these common pitfalls of original research: start collecting your data with ScoreApp today and for FREE.
