Introduction

Oil and gas companies are always looking for ways to improve their bottom line. Gathering oil and gas insights helps companies to do this. When you're on the hunt for new ideas that will keep your business competitive, there's no better place to look than your own customers. With a survey project, you can learn more about what they want from their products and services. Not only can you learn what your customer or suppliers want, but you can also learn how they are using these products. 

Step 1. Define your project objectives

Before you begin a survey project, be sure to define your objectives. How will you use the data? What kind of oil and gas insights do you hope to discover? Who is your target audience and what is their behaviour like?

To get started, think about what you want to accomplish with the survey. Do you want to understand how oil and gas professionals communicate with each other on social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter? Or do you want to learn about their experiences with technology in general when working in the industry? Maybe there's something else on your mind. You'll need to decide what information can best help answer these questions. Once that's figured out, write down as many goals as possible for your survey project before moving on to the second step of this process. In the next section, find out more about the second stage of gathering oil and gas insights.

Step 2. Identify the trends and innovations in oil and gas that affect your project objectives

The first step is identifying key trends and innovations that affect your project objective. Once you know what is happening in the industry as a whole, you can identify what's relevant to your own project objectives and plan accordingly. There are many ways to find out about the oil and gas industry. You could talk to experts, read reports and articles on the subject, and look at industry statistics. However, you can save time by using a survey project to gather oil and gas insights from your team and others who are involved in your project objective.

Step 3. Create the survey questionnaire to gather oil and gas insights

A survey questionnaire is a list of questions that you ask your audience. It's important to know what questions are going to be asked and how they should be asked. The design of the survey can make or break your project, so it's important to consider:

• How many questions should the survey have? This depends on your budget and time constraints. The more questions you have, the longer people will take to complete them (and therefore cost more money).
• What type of data do you need for this project? Do you want quantitative data or qualitative data? If so, then use open-ended questions where survey respondents can write as much as they want. Using multiple choice options where there are only three possibilities: yes or no answers or 1-5 star rating scales, gives you a limited set of answer options. Using open-ended questions allows for richer insights because they allow room for interpretation and debate.
• Where to place each question? Placing an easy question at the beginning will encourage survey respondents who may not have read through all pages of the questionnaire. to continue with the survey. One reason behind this is that placing complicated ones towards the end might cause them to abandon the survey if they get bored by too many difficult inquiries upfront.

Step 4. Identify and sample your survey respondents

At this point, you have a strong understanding of what your survey will cover and how it will be used. Your next step is to determine the best way to reach out and get answers from your target audience. Here's a set of questions you should have answers to when planning to identify and sample your survey respondents:

• How can I find people who are interested in taking my survey?
• How do I reach them?
• What questions should I ask them?

If you're unsure where to start with these questions, then keep in mind that you can partner with a data collection panel to gather oil and gas insights. A data collection panel will gather oil and gas insights by launching your survey project, recruiting verified survey respondents, and collecting the data from them. This kind of panel is also referred to as a survey research specialist. The panel acts as a bridge between the company that's conducting the research and the survey respondents. For instance, consider that you want to undertake a survey project targeting senior executives working in Oil and Gas who are responsible for procuring a certain technology for their company. How do you go about it? A survey research specialist can help you find answers to this question. To know more, check out our post titled: Recruiting B2B participants for an Oil and Gas B2B research survey.

Step 5. Administer the survey by phone or online

The final step is to administer your survey. There are two ways to do this: online or by phone. Online surveys are more popular because they're easy to complete. However,  if you want to collect data from people who aren't on the internet or don't have access to it, a phone survey may be better.

You can also run an online survey and supplement it with a phone call in certain areas where internet accessibility is lower. Alternatively, you could use phone calls among older populations where many seniors still don't use smartphones or tablets.

Phone surveys are great for collecting data from companies abroad where help is needed in translating your questions into other languages. They're also good if you have residents outside of major metropolitan areas who have limited access to computers and wi-fi hotspots. While there are many places these days where survey respondents can go online, rural areas tend not to get as much attention from internet providers as urban ones do. Thus, these survey respondents will be less likely candidates for running an online panel. In this case, it would be better to call them directly via telephone calls that connect through landlines. Several traditional market research methods exist to gather insights from populations who are not active online. These include conducting in-person surveys, phone calls, or surveys by post.

Step 6. Analyse the results of your survey to generate data-informed oil and gas insights

Once you've conducted a survey, you can use several data analysis tools to find patterns in your survey results and answer research questions.

Analysing data is a great way to get a better understanding of your audience and how they interact with your company. There are many different types of data analysis, which can be divided into two categories: exploratory and predictive.

Exploratory data analysis is used to identify trends in the data that might be useful for further analysis. For example, if you're looking at customer demographics, you might want to find out whether there are any patterns in their age or gender that can help you predict their buying habits.

Predictive data analysis is used to forecast future events based on historical information. For example, say that you know that a company in the oil and gas industry has contracted with a particular supplier a number of times. Based on this historical data, you can predict the likelihood of the company interacting with that supplier again. Needless to say that there isn't just one variable at play here and that protective data analysis also suffered from many limitations. Find out more here. 

Heat maps are one type of exploratory analysis that shows where people click on a page or other area within an interface. They can be helpful for designers who want to see what parts of their product are popular with users. Segmentation analysis allows marketers to understand how different groups within their target audience behave differently from each other by using demographic variables like age or gender. 

Let's summarise the data analysis techniques mentioned above to gather oil and gas insights:

• Analysis Reports: These are automatically generated reports that show the demographics, responses, and answers of your audience based on their geographic location.
• Advanced Segmentation: This tool allows you to filter results by gender, age range, income level, or other factors that relate to oil & gas industry needs.
• Heat Maps: These maps allow you to see where respondents are located geographically so that you can target specific regions with an ad campaign or follow-up survey questionnaires.

Conclusion

In this blog, we’ve walked you through the steps of creating your own Oil and Gas survey. We hope that the insights gained from these surveys will help you make better decisions in your industry, whether it be to report on the latest trends or identify new opportunities for growth. With GrapeData, designing surveys is quick and easy. Drop us a line at sales@grape-data.com to know more.