For many of our customers, the topic of community management is truly uncharted territory, and exploring it sometimes comes with uncertainties.
- What questions should or may I ask the tradesperson?
- And how often?
- And anyway: How do I keep a community like this alive?
We often receive these and similar questions, and we find that many manufacturers follow a similar path over time when building and managing their community of craftspeople.
Certain approaches have proven successful and best practices have emerged, which we would like to highlight in this post.
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This article is structured according to our frequently asked questions. So if you are particularly interested in certain questions, you can simply skip over the rest (we know from working closely with you how busy your schedule is).
What questions should I ask the craftsmen?
In general, a good mix of technical questions and occasional "shallow" content is a good idea. The technical questions are welcome to predominate - the craftspeople are happy to give you technical input if they feel that it will be appreciated by you as a manufacturer.
By specialist questions, we mean everything that interests you as a product manager. From the general needs of your tradespeople to very specific questions.
On the other hand, there is the "shallow" content, which can also be entertaining or sometimes a little less serious. For one Evolute customer, the marketing department occasionally sends technical quizzes to the community, which always meet with a positive response. It is always possible to create so-called "fun content", but this is not mandatory.
We know from our customers that craftspeople find it exciting enough to be questioned in depth, seriously and in partnership. After all, Evolute was invented as a digital craftsmen's advisory board for product managers.
Which questions should I avoid?
You should be a little more careful with questions that are too obviously for marketing purposes or only to find out something about the craftsperson "persona". In some companies, community management is "outsourced" to marketing, which can sometimes mean that technical questions are neglected and questions are asked that are primarily of interest to marketing.
To classify: Ask yourself whether you would prefer to tell your favorite cell phone manufacturer about the new generation of your cell phone or questions about your age, your job title and your most used social media channel. Prioritize your questions according to the degree of motivation to answer your customers.
How often should I ask my community questions? And how many questions at all?
The mother of all community management questions: How do I keep my community motivated and close to me and at the same time ensure that neither party feels pressured by the questions?
Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question.
But: If you maintain an honest and cooperative relationship, your "superfans" will answer a lot of questions.
Our experience: You can do more with your digital craftsman's advisory board than you initially think you can.
However, no product manager has to feel obligated to always "shake surveys out of their sleeves". If you are a team of at least 5 product managers and everyone has understood the value of Evolute, it automatically happens that one party seeks contact with craftspeople every 1-2 months.
This means that the craftsmen receive a survey every one to two weeks across all PMs, which has proven to be a good rhythm based on experience. The most eager product managers send out a short survey to their community every two weeks.
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The most eager product managers send a short survey to their community every 2 weeks.
How long should the interviews be?
The question of frequency cannot be considered completely separate from the scope of the surveys: What should be clear is that no:e craftsman:in wants to answer two surveys with 40 questions each every week. Even the biggest fan doesn't have the time.
However, there are quite a few manufacturers who send out a smaller survey on a specific topic to their community every 10-14 days. These are typically rather short with 3-10 questions, but (and perhaps precisely because of this) the response rates are consistently above 40%. Short surveys can be answered "just like that" on the passenger seat of a delivery van, during a cigarette break or (yes!) on the toilet.
In general, longer surveys require more time from the craftswoman and the drop-out rate is higher and the response rate lower. This does not mean that you cannot send longer, more in-depth surveys (especially to your most loyal community members).
Similar rules apply here as with a friendship: relationships in which we invest a lot of time and in which the other party realizes that they are important to us are more resilient than those that feel rather superficial.
In other words: start carefully and build up your community by regularly asking questions that are relevant to the tradespeople. You will quickly realize that both the short-term "just ask" works extremely well and more time-consuming surveys achieve high response rates.
Should I rather ask multiple choice or free text questions?
Although we recommend asking ¾ of the questions as click questions (multiple choice or single choice) and keeping free text questions optional, we have already seen outliers here:
At one manufacturer, the product managers asked over 30 mandatory free text questions and were still able to achieve high response rates. In this case, it took about 10 minutes to answer, but it should be mentioned that there was also a "small thank you" from the manufacturer in the form of a €10 Amazon voucher.
And should we use incentives?
At Evolute, we live by the principle that partnership, communication at eye level and exclusivity have a more long-term effect than extrinsic motivating factors.
However, as we all know, there are exceptions to every rule: For example, we make no secret of the fact that we handed out an Amazon voucher as an incentive at the beginning of our own tradesperson recruitment process, as this made it much easier for us to get a foot in the door when addressing target groups on social media. The use case here is: The first-time participation of newly recruited tradespeople in the community of a manufacturer.
A second use case for an incentive can be a particularly elaborate survey, e.g. if you want craftsmen to take photos of the construction site/application.
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Incentives are common in market research. They also do not attract "the wrong people", as they usually only represent a small amount of compensation. Anyone who knows the hourly rates in the trade knows that you would have to dig much deeper into your pockets for a 1:1 payment.
Furthermore, there is nothing to stop you as a manufacturer from giving your community small goodies from time to time and, for example, sending a small thank-you gift for more extensive surveys. It doesn't have to be an Amazon voucher, it can also be something from your selection of promotional gifts. This will go down very well with a functioning community.
Do I have to answer the craftsman?
Absolutely. Preferably with a short personal message. Yes, at first this sounds like an additional burden in everyday life. But you will find that any effort required to respond to the craftsmen is less than conducting customer surveys in the traditional way.
Some product managers are afraid at this point that they will have to answer thousands of letters - that will never happen. As a rule, you will receive between 5 and 20 responses, and only if you have sent out a survey. You will get an answer in a total of 10-20 minutes - and with our answer templates even faster!
Craftspeople who are treated like partners and receive answers are generally grateful and feel that they are taken seriously.
If you, as a manufacturer, see the craftspeople as your partners, then they will also see you as such. This in turn leads to a faster response and high response rates - even without an incentive. Great effect, right?
Should I only accept craftsmen I know into our Evolute community?
Manufacturers in particular, who are just starting to deal with the topic of community management, are far too defensive here and would prefer to invite only those craftspeople they know personally. But they are missing out on a great opportunity for several reasons:
- This limits the number of potential feedback providers and limits the great advantage of Evolute: the ability to survey a larger number of craftspeople in the short term.
- The personally known craftsmen are often well-known "friends of the house" and therefore not necessarily unbiased.
- Tradespeople who know you or your sales force personally and are well looked after are perhaps more likely to be people who value personal relationships or feel perfectly looked after personally. You should make an effort to reach new people with a digital solution.
Even if Evolute makes all other market research solutions look old with great response rates of around 40%, you still have to invite 100-120 tradespeople to the survey for 40 responses.
Not every craftsperson you invite wants to join a digital craftsmen's advisory board and download an app for it. So you have to invite 240 tradespeople to get to 120 who register in the app.
And maybe you want to include different segments so that you can ask more specific questions in future? Owners, master craftsmen, journeymen? Large companies vs. small companies? Multi-family house specialists vs. single-family house builders?
The credo should be:It is better to invite too many craftsmen than too few. You can still make selections before each individual survey and remove less useful contacts at any time.
Do you still have questions about Evolute?
We know community management because, as a start-up, we have built up a great community of craftsmen ourselves. And we are happy to share our knowledge.
Simply get in touch via our contact form or request a sales appointment here.
