In this new episode of the Hit Record Podcast, Meredith Olmstead sits down with Nida Ajaz, FI GROW’s Senior VP of Marketing, to discuss how micro surveys: short, one or two-question polls can deliver powerful insights for credit unions and community banks. They explain why these simple tools are especially valuable in an AI-driven search environment and how they can help financial institutions personalize member experiences, improve content strategies, and identify hot leads faster.
Key Takeaways:
Micro surveys capture real-time member insights with just one or two questions
These small data points help personalize journeys and improve content strategy
Embedding surveys across email, web, and social helps gather ongoing feedback
Transcription:
Meredith Olmstead:
Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmsted, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing and sales consulting agency. We work exclusively with credit unions and community banks. And I am here with Nida Ajaz. She is our senior VP of marketing. Say hi, Nida.
Nida Ajaz:
Hi everyone.
Meredith Olmstead:
So Nida and I are deep in research mode for an upcoming webinar that's probably going to be done by the time you all listen to this podcast on AI search and how to stay visible in AI search for financial institutions, for banks and credit unions. And we've got a really small little actionable insight that we thought we would share on a podcast because it's quick and easy, and that's how we like to kind of organize our podcast. So we can do it really quick, a little tidbit that is something that people can take away. And so this one we loved, and I'm going to let Nida introduce it. It's basically micro surveys asking tiny questions to deliver big insights, basically. So Nida, what are you...
Nida Ajaz:
You might be wondering, "Well, what does AI search have to do with these micro surveys?"
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Nida Ajaz:
But one of the key things that we are finding is that learning and getting your own data of little things that could matter in the consumer journey play a huge role even in your content strategy. It plays a role on the way your websites are designed, the way your consumers are interacting with you. So I think this point that we're making is about creating micro surveys. What are micro surveys? They are basically short one- to two-question surveys and not a long form. Traditionally, you think that surveys are just hosted on a web page; you send people an email, and then hopefully they reply to it. But we have a couple of different examples that we're going to go through that are something we've kind of implemented across multiple years. Right, Meredith?
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Nida Ajaz:
We've been doing this for a while.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Nida Ajaz:
So one of the main things we're learning in our webinar is that going back to basics and just implementing little things that could make a huge impact is so important.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. And before we talk about the actual examples, things that I want to say about this and why it matters to AI, that we're finding, is because really the why and the human behind what you do is really important with AI search because that's what humanizes your brand. That's what reminds AI search why you are different from your competitor. And so if you can humanize your brand and show them why you're different from the other person who's generating their content with AI, that is what makes you stand out in AI-driven search nowadays.
So by asking these one-off questions where you can really get insight that makes a difference, that you can showcase or then personalize the user's experience going forward to your individual member or customer, that is going to help that person more... Have a better journey with you. And then their experience is going to be more authentic, they're going to convert more, they're going to interact more and engage more. And then that is going to show search engines and AI search that, "Hey, this is quality content. This is a website or an experience that the consumer is really liking and finding value in." And they're going to send more people down that buying journey path, basically.
Nida Ajaz:
100%.
Meredith Olmstead:
That's what we're hearing. And so that's why we thought we would share these. So you have three awesome examples, and they're like, they're super easy to do, so we just wanted to...
Nida Ajaz:
Yeah, they're super easy. And we've implemented it across the years for multiple clients. So one of our clients, they had always struggled with the source on the backend. So almost all our clients use HubSpot on the backend, and it tells you the source of where a lead is coming from. And so we usually implement gateway forms right in front of your product application. And on that product application form, you collect minimal information, like a first name, last name, email, maybe sometimes a phone number if you have a sales follow-up. But it's very simple form. So if just someone abandons it right after they start the application, you have the information to follow up with them. Well, we incorporated a question for them, and it said, "How did you hear about us?" Just to identify what the consumer thinks in their mind is how they learned about you.
Meredith Olmstead:
Right.
Nida Ajaz:
It's a very simple question. You can list out all the marketing channels that you've been using, whether it's radio or online or digital ads, whatever it is.
Meredith Olmstead:
Word of mouth, email, whatever, Google, Google Ad, Facebook, whatever.
Nida Ajaz:
Yeah. So we incorporated for this client, and it's interesting; you actually start getting, you can create a report based on these because you're providing the drop-down choices of each of these. But it's really cool to now see people are truly identifying Reddit, even though their source shows that they were digital paid ad; like, on the backend, I can see they came through a digital paid ad, but on their self-identified source, they're sharing that they learned about you from Reddit or they learned about this client from ChatGPT. So it's very interesting to see that what we are seeing on the research side of things, like AI search, how...
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, they're self-identified. Might not match. The tracked digital path. Yeah.
Nida Ajaz:
Exactly. So it's cool to know from a consumer's mind where they're identifying they actually learn. Another example is very different. Because let's say this was all the way where they're ready for purchase. Let's say they're not ready for purchase. A lot of times we recommend incorporating some sort of downloadable or a tool or something like a calculator, something that you can capture the lead, even if they're not ready to go ahead and sign up for a product. So we have, for example, a Car Loans 101 ebook for anyone who's looking to get started and buying their first-time auto. And we incorporate tiny questions like, "How soon are you looking to purchase a car?"
Meredith Olmstead:
And you can put that right in the email that's delivering the ebook that they just downloaded.
Nida Ajaz:
Yeah. In the email, and then it's also on the form. So we put this form for downloading the ebook on the product page, and anyone who has given their name and email already or we've collected, it switches that question out to asking, "When are you planning to buy? How soon are you looking to buy?" Then we give them choices.
Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha, okay.
Nida Ajaz:
"Is it within this month? Is it within three months? Is it within the year?" And within the month, we actually set up an automated follow-up to share to a retail team member to reach out. Because that's a very hot lead looking to buy or borrow a car, get an auto loan with you. So these little things could give you such insight that the customer is willingly giving you.
Meredith Olmstead:
Right.
Nida Ajaz:
Which makes it so much easier for you to identify hot leads from cold leads.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. Or if they're saying, "Oh, I'm just shopping around, or I'm not ready; I'm probably going to buy in six months." Then you don't bother that person; you slow down your nurture. Maybe you stretch out because HubSpot does give you the ability to speed up or slow down a sales nurture or a marketing nurture. So instead of following up every five days, maybe you change that to every two weeks for the next three weeks or four weeks or whatever, two months. So you can change your follow-up based on that timeline that somebody is giving you, and that personalizes their journey with you. So it makes a lot of sense.
Nida Ajaz:
Yeah. And this can be done for any of the key products, right?
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Nida Ajaz:
Like, home-buying journey is such a long journey. There's so many cool ways to gather information of what you want on that as well.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, yeah. The other one you were talking about is when you're trying to identify people's pain points around products and services. I mean, you can do that, like you said, with homes. I mean, it's always nice to just really understand where people are really struggling. What's the hardest thing about buying a new home? Or where do you struggle most when you're trying to pick a new car? But credit cards, for example, sometimes you really try to figure out, "Okay, what are people looking for when they're looking for a new credit card?" So I think you said that there was a survey that you sometimes were giving out for credit cards.
Nida Ajaz:
Yeah, so we could even do pop-ups on websites. So let's say you have one credit card page with all the different credit cards listed and things like that. You could do a pop-up survey of just asking a question of which card benefits are... "Which ones matter to you most, or what are you looking for?" And give them the categories. Like, is it travel? Is it rewards?
Nida Ajaz:
Is it low interest?
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah.
Nida Ajaz:
Is it debt... Like consolidating and moving your balances over? Whatever it may be, you could personalize that journey right on your website just by asking a one-question survey. So the reason basically for this whole podcast was to kind of tell you, think outside the box when it comes to surveys. We always assume that it's going to be this one thing that's going to go to all members, but let's start thinking of how we can incorporate it on website, on social media. Like with polls, you can do one-question surveys and gather data. You can do it on email, you can do it on pop-ups, on websites. So just all of these different ways to just get more information directly from the member to personalize those experiences.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah. So member or customer data can really help frame how you're then rolling out ideas or framing existing products to other customers and other members. So it's very, very valuable, and it should be something that you are really looking at on a daily, weekly basis. It should not be... You should not be only surveying your customers or your member base once or twice a year. You're missing out on so much data. So if you think about trying to just run some of these one-question kinds of surveys baked into some of these campaigns that are ongoing, you can really be getting data on a real-time basis and using it as feedback for your marketing and sales follow-up all the time.
So awesome. I love these examples. Thank you so much, Nida. I hope you all enjoyed some of these ideas and can take them back to your credit unions and banks and use them today. If you want to learn more about digital marketing and sales for your bank or credit union, please visit us at figrow.com; we have lots of other podcasts, blogs, case studies. We'd love to see you there. Please join our list, and otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.