I am studying Marketing in MBA. I have project Yahoo vs Google . I need to survey Advertising Customers?

Question

I am studying Marketing in MBA. I have project Yahoo vs Google Customers. Customers mean companies or individuals generating revenue (NOT users like us). I need to survey them , ask questions..

I tried contacting some people, but it looks like mission impossible ..

The problems are :

1) Advertisers don’t contact directly deal with yahoo or Google they have third parties or agents, Who create. place and manage advertisements for them.

2) Its difficult to reach to decision maker, who is responsible for selecting Google or yahoo. They are behind many layers.

3) These people won’t have much time to spare , since I need at least 15-20 minutes per survey.

I was hoping my contacts in Yahoo or Google would help me finding contacts, but looks like its hard for them too.

Please suggest How can I find real people or customers of Yahoo and Google.

Answer 1

Seems like the problems you posted should be the questions you want answered.  I am a customer of Yahoo, and so are many others here.

Answer 2

Both Yahoo and Google have certification programs: Google's adwords professional individual/company and Yahoo!'s ambassador; Those professionals are most likely to deal exclusively with PPC ads and manage ads for clients of their own. It is not a must to be certified to do online advertising, but it helps for the image. You can easily find certified companies/individuals because of the proudly stamped pro badge on their websites. Some search keywords ideas 'certified adwords ' or 'yahoo ambassador'

Other types of people who place ads are either the webmaster, the person responsible for marketing, or the small business owners themselves (after all it is pretty easy to set up small ppc campaign).

You can reach all of the above by starting from the url in any  ppc ad then going to the website and finding their contact info.

I'm not saying it would be easy but if you write them a convincing letter on research objectives and how they will benefit from your survey (example: 'participants receive copy of the survey report')  this will increase your response rates.

What i would do is to email the survey link (self-administered online questionnaire /in the past i have used questionpro.com /) and inside the email i will write 'please forward to the person responsible for choosing online advertising' and 'it will benefit your company as you will receive the survey report.'

My guesstimate is that if well written 15% of all emails will reach a decision maker and it will take you a week of part time work  to collect statistically significant number of respondents.    

just a note: linkedin.com (online networking site) is a good place to find decision makers of all calibers.

note2: I think that Derek Gehl (marketing tips), Eben Pagan (getaltitude program), and other coaches on small business on-line marketing are good contacts as their students are most likely to use both adwords and yahoo search marketing   . If you have ever considered to make couple of calls for leads better be someone like them.  

note3 the most important ;) \ if it is just a project for getting some grade i wouldn't even bother and will stick only to the available secondary information.

Hope this helps.

Have a good one.