Latest / Marketing Made Simple with Fexingo: Branding, SEO, and Digital Strategy for Beginners / How Brands Use Surveys to Find Hidden Market Gaps
Transcript
- Lucas: So we talk a lot on this show about brands spending big on ads, on content, on influencers. But there is a quieter, cheaper tool that almost every marketer underuses — and it's the customer survey. Luna: The humble survey. Everyone sends them, nobody reads them properly. Lucas: Exactly. And the result is they miss the hidden market gap sitting right in their own data. I want to start with a number that stuck with me. Deloitte ran a survey of B2B buyers in 2025 — 78 percent said they'd pay a premium for a product that 'understands their workflow.' Not features, not price — understanding. Luna: That's huge. And most companies are out here listing features on a landing page, not asking 'how do you actually work?' Lucas: Right. So today I want to look at two brands that used surveys very differently: Notion and Peloton. One used surveys to uncover a hidden gap and grew. The other surveyed well, then ignored what they heard. Luna: Let's start with the good one — Notion. I'm a heavy user, and their surveys always feel like they're actually listening. Lucas: They really do. In late 2024, Notion noticed a plateau in paid conversions from their free tier. So instead of guessing, they sent a targeted survey to users who had been on the free plan for more than 90 days. The question wasn't 'what features do you want?' It was 'what is the one thing that, if you could do it faster, would save you the most time in your day?' Luna: That's the workflow-mapping approach. Problem-first, not feature-first. Lucas: Exactly. The top answer was 'collaborating on documents with external clients without paying for a seat.' So Notion launched a guest-access feature that was free for the host but required the guest to have a paid account. Within six months, paid conversions jumped 30 percent. They found a gap that their competitors — Confluence, Monday.com — weren't solving. Luna: And that gap was hiding in plain sight. They just asked the right question. Lucas: Now contrast that with Peloton. In 2023, as the post-pandemic demand slump hit, Peloton surveyed its community. They asked 'what would make you work out more?' The overwhelming answer was 'shorter classes — 20 minutes or less.' So they launched a whole line of 20-minute classes. But they didn't act fast enough. By the time they rolled it out, three other fitness apps — Apple Fitness+, Lululemon Studio, and even Amazon Halo — had already built short-class libraries. Peloton's survey told them exactly what to do, they just moved too slowly. Luna: So the gap was real, but timing killed it. Surveys have a shelf life. Lucas: Exactly. You have to act before the market shifts. Deloitte also found that companies that act on survey insights within 45 days see 2.3 times higher ROI on their product changes than those that take longer. Speed is a competitive advantage. Luna: Okay, so what about small teams who don't have a data science department? How do they run a survey that actually finds gaps? Lucas: The key is to avoid the three most common mistakes. First, don't ask 'how satisfied are you?' That's vanity. Ask 'what is the one thing that almost made you not buy?' That's a loss-aversion framing. Second, don't ask about features in isolation. Ask about workflows: 'describe your typical Tuesday morning trying to solve X problem.' Third, don't send the survey to everyone. Segment by behavior — people who almost churned, people who bought recently, people who have been free for a while. Luna: So the Notion survey targeted free users who stayed — a specific segment. That's actionable. Lucas: Exactly. And there's a specific research method from the Harvard Business Review called the 'jobs to be done' framework. The idea is that people 'hire' a product to do a job. Surveys that uncover the job — not the feature — reveal gaps competitors miss. For example, a hotel chain discovered that business travelers weren't booking because they wanted a place to have a private phone call, not just sleep. So they added 'phone booth pods' in the lobby. That came from asking 'what job are you actually trying to do?' not 'what amenities do you want?' Luna: That's a great concrete example. So the survey question should be about the situation, not the solution. Lucas: Exactly. Situation-first. Now, there's also the 'negative' survey. You ask customers who left why they left, but you also ask customers who stayed what almost made them leave. That 'almost leave' group is gold — they reveal the friction you haven't fixed. Luna: I've seen that in SaaS churn surveys. The 'almost left' users give you the real objections, not the polite ones. Lucas: Right. So to make this practical: if you're a solo marketer or a small team, here is a three-question survey you can send today. One: 'What is the most frustrating part of your current workflow related to?' Two: 'If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about how you solve this problem, what would it be?' Three: 'On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend? And why did you pick that number?' The 'why' is where the gap lives. Luna: I love that the last question is basically a Net Promoter Score follow-up. But the magic is in the open-ended why. Lucas: Exactly. And you don't need a big sample. Even 50 responses from your most engaged users can reveal patterns. A 2024 study from Qualtrics showed that just 30 to 40 responses can surface 80 percent of the major themes. So don't wait for a thousand replies. Luna: That's encouraging. I think a lot of marketers get paralyzed because they think they need a huge statistical survey. Lucas: Yeah, and while we're on tools, you can run these in Google Forms or Typeform for free. The hard part is the question design, not the tool. Luna: So if today's episode gave you a new angle on how to ask your customers what they actually need — and that's worth a coffee to you — we have a simple way to say thanks. It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure, no perks, just supporting the show staying ad-free. Lucas: Honestly, it's the only reason we can keep this show independent. And we appreciate every single one. Now back to surveys — there's one more tactic I want to share that's especially good for B2B brands. Luna: Let's hear it. Lucas: It's called the 'lost deal' survey. When a prospect chooses a competitor, send a very short email — three questions max. One: 'Which vendor did you choose?' Two: 'What was the deciding factor?' Three: 'What could we have done differently?' You'd be amazed how often the answer is not price. It's something like 'they had a case study in our industry' or 'their onboarding was faster.' Those are marketing gaps you can fix in a week. Luna: And you can automate that with a CRM workflow. HubSpot and Salesforce both have that built in. Lucas: Exactly. So the takeaway for today: surveys are not just a feedback tool. They are a market-gap discovery engine. If you ask the right questions — workflow-focused, loss-aversion framed, segmented by behavior — you can find the unmet need that your competitors are ignoring. And if you act within 45 days, you own that gap. Luna: Alright, next time you send a survey, think about Notion versus Peloton. Be the Notion. Lucas: And if you try any of these questions, let us know what you found. We might feature your story in a future episode. For Marketing Made Simple, I'm Lucas. Luna: And I'm Luna. See you next time.