Customers are tough cookies. They're extremely media aware and increasingly cynical – it's a clever marketeer who can get under their skin. Online surveys reinvent traditional format and offer a unique way of interaction – all benefits of internet without programming.

Here are ten reasons why they may be silver bullet marketeers' need, complete with examples supplied by Martin Day, managing director of Survey Galaxy - one of a new breed of websites making online surveys quicker and cheaper

1. It's cheap as buttons

Select right survey website and creating surveys can be free of any charge and cost to publish is minimal. Useful information harvested from surveys can be reused and repackaged in other marketing and PR for use in press outlets making it a very efficient form of information gathering.

2. It's easy peasy

Anyone can develop an online survey. Survey sites allow people who are interested in benefits of surveys, rather than technicalities, to side-step required programming skills and create relevant up-to-the-minute surveys, instantly – surveys that are even easier to complete than they are to make.

3. Anyone can play

Once survey is online it's a simple step to promote it, either through email (with a link enclosed), via a link from a website or referenced by other forms of advertising. Anyone who has link can be connected instantly to survey, at a time that's convenient to them, 24x7.

4. We've all got an opinion – and we like to give it

Customers like surveys – they're not seen as spam, but as an empowering opportunity to make their voice heard and a chance to have an impact on a brand. They can be particularly good for broaching sensitive subjects with concerned employees; a survey asking a workforce on their opinion of change allows key issues to be raised in a positive way and encourages employee participation. Online surveys allow message to reach each individual and invite feedback in a manageable form.

5. Get inside their heads

You can lead a customer to an advertisement but you can't make them think. Surveys actively engage respondents, who think about question before giving their response.

6. Beautiful relationships start here

It needn't all end at end of survey – while you have their attention and are in mood you can ask if they want to sign up for more information or a regular newsletter – making most of window when you have their interest.

Fly fishing -- it doesn't work, does it? When I first watched someone fly-fishing, they released line and fling it far out into water. No sooner had fly hit water was it being reeled back in. Even today, I still don't understand how this method catches any fish. Yet it does. The results had an opportunity to occur because line was pitched.

Fly fishing looks like so much more work compared to worm, bobber, sitting on a camp chair, day dreaming, an occasional inconsequential conversation, sipping on a beer (okay root beer for family friendliness), relaxing and waiting for bite. The energy is more comfortable yet results less active -- maybe, maybe not.

If you talk to a fly-fisherman, they claim there isn't anything better. And same is uttered from a by-the-seat- of-the-pants fisherman as well (cute description huh?).

Doesn't this sound like one marketing pitted against other.

What makes two different? Technique? Yes. Water type -- salt or fresh? Yes. Type of fish? Yes. Equipment? Yes. Supplies? Yes. Or is it bait? Yes.

The right answer is "all of above."

You can also throw in temperature, weather, and time of day. Everything depends on right combination in right order. You don't want to toss out fly before line. Well, I guess you can. But you miz-as-well kiss it goodbye.

Or as my Grandmother used to say: Don't throw out bath water before bath.

Marketing is not any different than fishing. If you are tossing out wrong hook to right fish, they are not going to bite. If you have right fish and hook, and wrong technique, maybe a prayer or two will work. The results might trickle now and then. Yet, not results you need.

This is why marketing experts emphasize importance of knowing your target market. If you don't know who you are trying to catch, you are forever going to be trying different lures, hooks and techniques. Eventually, wearing you down and keeping you chasing next best thing to come along that just might work.

You can't catch flounder in fresh water or blue gill in salt.

Stop throwing out fly without line. Start knowing what bait they like to eat, what line spooks them, what is their timing for buying, and especially what type of fish.

Start with this exercise for service professionals:

Start exercise by hand to get "feel" of it. Then move process into a spreadsheet to continue its growth and your clarity.

Step 1: Grab a blank sheet of paper. Turn page sideways -- landscape.

Step 2: You are going to making many vertical columns so write small.

On left, create first column. Record name of each one of your clients that you remember off top of your head. Keep it simple and write just name you remember. It could be just their first name, company name, or a nickname or label you privately gave them. Don't be kind be truthful.