How to collect—and act on—audience feedback

Too many marketers get so caught up in looking like the expert, they forget to act like a student. 

But when it comes to understanding your audience, there are no wrong questions—only the risk of not asking any at all. 

Emily Kramer, the founder and creator of MKT1 (and its 60K subscriber newsletter), discovered this challenge early when she realized that successful content required a deep understanding of what her audience actually cared about, not what she assumed they needed.

Today, she’s the kind of marketer other marketers trust, because she’s built her brand on giving readers no-fluff, tactical advice on topics they really want to know more about. 

Emily is also a self-described Typeform power user who uses forms to plan her multi-channel content calendar—and she believes all marketers need to get in the habit of asking their audience what they think.

“Marketers can get so hung up on being seen as an authority that they get scared to ask questions,” she says. “But it’s so important to be ‘business vulnerable.’ Admit you don’t know everything about the audience, admit you don’t know everything about the industry, and just ask.” 

When teams prioritize appearing authoritative over genuine audience connection, they miss opportunities to create content that truly resonates. 

(And get stuck on generic content creation that’s over-reliant on guesswork, SEO keyword-driven topics, and what competitors are doing. Because there’s nothing readers love more than a vague, bland listicle…) 

By using surveys as part of a systematic audience research process, Emily has shifted from assumption-based content to truly audience-driven offerings—all while getting 25% more responses for half the effort. 

The power of branded forms

Emily’s approach centers on the belief that consistent, structured audience engagement through branded surveys creates a competitive advantage over companies that rely on traditional, siloed planning methods.

You don’t need more competitor analysis. 

You need a system for regularly checking in with your ICP. 

This positions your brand as genuinely customer-focused, rather than self promotional. It also helps you create content that naturally addresses real customer pain points and interests, leading to higher engagement rate and conversions down the road. 

But you can’t just send your readers anything, and Emily also encourages high-quality, branded survey experiences to get better participation. 

“You can have fun with a Typeform,” Emily adds. “Old school forms and agency surveys can be a crappy experience for people. A branded survey feels more first-class.” 

When you put care into those forms, survey-based audience research can feel like a premium experience, rather than a burdensome ask. 

How to run your audience survey-driven content machine 

1. Create a branded survey template 

A little branding goes a long way to making your survey feel like a more elevated, personal conversation. Templates also help lighten the lift, so you can create standardized surveys more easily. 

Emily has at least three go-to templates: one for MKT1 as a company, one for the MKT1 newsletter, and one for her “Dear Marketers” podcast. “They look similar, but with different logos and slightly different colors to keep it interesting,” she says. 

Establish consistent branding across all survey touchpoints to create professional, trustworthy experiences. 

‍Bonus tip: Use Typeform's template feature to standardize your survey creation process. Once you've designed a few forms that work well, save them as templates so your team can quickly spin up new surveys without starting from scratch each time.

2. Pre-post on social

“Everyone thinks about using LinkedIn after you make a piece of content to distribute it, but I always ask a question in a pre-post,” says Emily. 

Think of it as your warm up to help you direct where the bigger lift (a full survey) should focus. For example, Emily uses LinkedIn polls to gather early sentiment on marketing topics she may want to cover in her podcast. Comments add color beyond the poll results, and give her specific quotes and ideas to react to when recording. 

Before setting up your full form, test out your topics and ideas with your social media audiences. It’s a great way to get un-stuck and to gauge topics your readers will be more likely to respond to. 

“There’s a lot of wins in that pre-post,” says Emily. “It’s one of my favorite things to tell people to do.” 

Bonus tip: If you don’t have an active social audience, you can always poll internal audiences, like current clients or fellow employees. 

3. Deploy targeted, deep-dive surveys

Once initial testing shows strong engagement around a topic, it’s time to capture more nuanced data to inform your content strategy. 

Use your pre-posts to uncover complex topics that require more exploration, then create comprehensive surveys to gather more insights. Logical branches and conditional questions that adapt your survey based on respondent roles and answers can capture more nuanced perspectives. 

For example, Emily recently shared a poll on LinkedIn asking marketers about their biggest marketing ops challenge. In responses and comments, a theme emerged around reporting and attribution as a common problem. 

With that intel, she can now write a longer survey focused on attribution specifically vs. “marketing ops chaos” at large. She can share both the survey and its results on social and in her newsletter, and use it to share future podcast episodes. 

‍Bonus tip: Surveys can also be a resource for your readers. When creating educational content, don’t limit yourself to templates and downloadable guides. Consider offering quiz-style surveys that lead your readers to responses that help shape their strategy. 

4. Transform survey data into content series

With all that juicy data collected, the final step involves converting insights into multiple pieces of content to maximize ROI. Publish comprehensive results, then break down individual insights into focused pieces

“Turn survey comments into content. Then turn comments on that content into more content,” says Emily. “Don’t just copy what readers are saying. Use it to create new things and think about topics in a new way.” 

Emily notes that you don’t need respondents to fully complete the form in order to get good data: Partial submits help you lock in data on early questions even if readers abandon the form partway through. 

The simple recipe: "Throw a Typeform out to people, get some information, publish, rinse and repeat. Then you can publish something on each individual question and its results." 

Bonus tip: Build goodwill and strengthen relationships by crediting your contributors. In addition to just being polite, this practice can also help you access new people through your contributors’ audiences if they reshare what you’ve created.  

Key learnings for marketers

Branded presentation and superior user experience help Emily get better survey completion rates: 25% more responses for 50% less effort, she estimates. 

“Typeforms are easy to create and they sync with all my other tools,” says Emily. “I also don’t feel embarrassed sending them out. They’re not some ugly thing for people to fill out—they’re kinda fun and enjoyable to complete.” 

For marketers looking to build their own audience-driven content processes, Emily has a few key strategic principles to share: 

Connection is about authenticity, not authority. Be business vulnerable and go in with real curiosity. Don’t be afraid to ask “dumb” questions. Sometimes it’s the fundamentals where your readers will surprise you the most. 

Speed and flexibility beat perfect planning. Agile, responsive content processes outperform rigid, approval-heavy workflows—because they actually get published, which gives you new audience data to work with.

User experience matters for research tools. “I like branded Typeforms because they look solid and are fun to fill out,” says Emily. Readers don’t want to slog through anonymous surveys like a test subject; they want to have a conversation. 

Recycle research data across your business. The intel you collect from surveys and social posts should inform your content, but don’t keep it in a silo. Share out to inform product development, customer success strategies, business ops, and other efforts. 

Get the most out of partial data. Use tools that allow you to collect partial submissions (not just get data from completed forms), and put your most important questions first to get the most bang for your buck. (More on the art of form structuring here.) 

Consistent engagement builds predictable success. Don’t send the occasional survey then ghost for months. Regular audience interaction—including engaging back on social, shouting out contributors, and following up on comments and responses—will lead to better content timing and topic selection. 

Research-backed insights lead to better content quality than assumptions. The brands that win aren't the ones with all the answers—they're the ones who ask the right questions.