Understanding your audience is one of the key ways for success with online marketing. The better you know your audience, the easier it is to deliver the kind of updates and helpful content they’re interested in. Before you even find a freelance writer to craft quality content, consider taking a survey to gain insights into your audience. With a short series of questions, a survey is a simple and efficient tool to get inside your audience’s head.

You can easily create your own survey with a basic structure. For example, request the top three content topics they would like to read and ask about the features that would make the content worth sharing. Send the survey to friends on social networks, post a link in a relevant industry forum, share it on Facebook or just send it to anyone who fits your customer demographic. Once the results are in, leverage it to generate and create the content that your audience is seeking. Then, it’s time to find a freelance writer.

If you don’t have confidence in crafting your own survey or are just too busy, take advantage of some of the survey marketing research tools; some are free, while others have a fee. Typeform is free and can be found at Buffer. It’s an intuitive survey with interactive elements and awesome visuals. Use it to share a survey link on social medial platforms. This way, you get direct insights from the people who engage with your business.

Survey Monkey is one of the most popular free survey tools. It has a very large list of special features for all survey sizes. Opt for quick two-question surveys or a large one that can be sent out to hundreds. With its free plan, you get 10 questions and 100 responses. You’re privy to unlimited questions and responses for a modest $25 a month.

Voice Polls does all the heavy lifting for you. It goes out and finds the survey takers for you. You get feedback from the general population for just $0.10 per response. And for $0.10 more, you receive responses from your targeted audience along with complete demographic information.

Survata is bit pricier. Prices start at $100 and go up depending on how advanced the package is. You define the exact demographic and write the survey questions. A survey analyst reviews the survey and makes as needed suggestions and edits. Survata finds respondents to complete the survey and guarantees high quality data with complete and validated responses. Users receive raw data and tools to analyze it in an Excel spreadsheet. Plus, Survata delivers richly annotated responses with the location, age and gender of the respondent.

Learning about your audience is the first step in creating engaging and sharable content. Conducting audience surveys is the way to get there.

Deborah V is a freelance writer with a focus on SEO tactics for small and mid-sized companies. She maintains an up-to-date knowledge of Google’s guidelines and changes.