Here’s a good, creative use of DIY Google Consumer Surveys (#gsurveys). Prior to the Ultimate Fighting Championship Pay-Per-View event on 04/21/12 between Jon Jones and Rashad Evans, someone responsible for advertising at UFC conducted #gsurveys trying to measure the effectiveness of UFC’s ads. We came across pre-event screening questions which asked if we had seen ads for the UFC event #145 … and if we had seen ads, we were offered a check-box question attempting to measure where we had seen the ads. The 2nd question is formatted incorrectly. It can either ask “where have you seen ads?” … and then permit multiple responses (as it does). Or, if it is worded as written, “where have you seen ads the most?” … then only a single (radio button) response (not multiple responses) should be permitted. But that DIY glancing-blow aside, at least somebody at UFC, to his/her credit, was thinking creativity. SurveyUSA-OK.

Then, immediately after the PPV event, the DIY researchers at UFC were back in the field, with a Hub-Spoke #gsurveys configuration, trying to learn, with at least two separate back-end questions, how many freeloaders they had at this event. UFC would be the first to know, and does not need Google Consumer Surveys to tell it, that UFC sold 700,000 pay-per-view packages to this event (@ $44.95 = a $31 million box office). UFC already knows that works out to about 1 in every 150 USA households. What UFC may not have as current a handle on, is how many of these needle-in-a-haystack viewers watched the the PPV, but did not personally pay the cash to see it (because they were at a bar or a friend’s house).

Here are the pre-event / post-event DIY #gsurveys questions that we saw. Did you see any other #gsurveys questions that we missed?

Pre-event / Post-event research is one possible excellent use of Google Consumer Surveys. If any of you have already had success (or, failure) measuring pre-event and post-event, using Google Consumer Surveys, we’d like to hear about it.

If you’re thinking of doing your own DIY research, leverage the learning that the UFC had with this creative approach to #gsurveys. Just as not everybody who needs a new deck has the wherewithal to drop over to Home Depot and buy the materials and complete the project on his own, so too, not everybody who has a research need may be an excellent candidate for DIY research. If you’re in doubt, call a professional researcher. They’ll help you think through the pros and cons of DIY research. A good researcher will tell you when DIY is the right approach for your particular project.