Ask And Ye Shall Receive!
In this issue:
- How simple surveys can lead to product breakthroughs …
- Surveys for dummies …
- How to zero in on the sweet spot of desire that’s hidden within your target market …
- An important caveat …
- And more!
Dear Web Business Builder,
Marketing is really pretty simple.
Just find out what people want, and give it to them. Too simple, right? So simple, few do it … preferring to play blind target practice with their marketing dollars – the financial equivalent to handing a monkey a loaded gun!
Instead of interacting with their prospects to zero in on the sweet spot of desire, these companies hide from them. And end up blowing their brains out on failed marketing campaigns, victims of their own advertising shrapnel …
My prediction?
Those who insist on continuing this monkey marketing – simply aping their competitors without care or thought for the real wants and needs of their prospects – will crash and burn over the next 12 to 18 months … while savvy online marketers who understand the importance of applied research leave them in the dust.
Why?
Because in today’s brave new world of copious supply – far outstripping demand – consumers are naturally gravitating toward businesses that display unusual empathy: who listen to them … and react.
Online marketers particularly
guilty of spraying and praying …
A direct mail operation would go broke in a heartbeat doing the kinds of shotgun marketing most online marketers do. I suppose it’s the perception that e-mail is free that’s at the root of the problem. It’s an erroneous conclusion …
Generating a database of subscribers to e-mail to costs time and money. And unlike offline databases that you can rent, you have very little real information about those names before you invest in them – or even after you acquire them.
Just because mailing to them is free, doesn’t mean not knowing who they are isn’t costing you a boatload of money.
That’s why, once a year, I conduct a survey of my online databases. I firmly believe that in the long run, the marketer who knows his or her market best wins.
So today in Web Marketing Advisor, we’re going to take a look at the ins and outs of effective surveys … what they can do for your business … and how you can get them done with a minimum of fuss. I know it’s not the sexiest of subjects, but the rewards are toe-curling cool. I promise.
How simple surveys can
lead to product breakthroughs …
Like anything else, a successful survey starts with an objective, or a set of objectives – the more specific those objectives the better.
The main reason I surveyed my list was to gauge demand for different types of continuity programs. I was basically asking: what kind of training and advice are you willing to pay for on a recurring basis?
I look around and I see marketers far and wide clamoring to get on the continuity bandwagon. But I don’t see a lot of innovation.
Everybody seems to be doing the same thing: sending out a newsletter, an interview on CD, and maybe doing a special members-only live call each month.
Nothing wrong with that … but when everybody in the niche starts doing the same old sausage of the month routine, it gets a bit old. I know for a fact retention numbers are taking a nosedive. I’m chomping at the bit to add continuity billing to my revenue base, but I need a fresh approach. With a few simple questions I think I found the breakthrough I need.
Got a similar opportunity you’d love to exploit, and need an innovative way in?
Surveying for dummies …
The first step, of course, is developing a set of questions that gets to the core of your problem. Sounds easier than it is …
See, what ends up happening with a lot of surveys is this: They get done, and that’s the end of it. The marketer squints at the data, but doesn’t know how to interpret it, or apply it in their business. I don’t want that for you.
So when you’re working on your survey questions, put some thought into how actionable … easy to interpret … and meaningful the answers are likely to be. Great answers demand great questions. The way you ask them, to a large extent, determines the usefulness of your survey.
There are many ways of asking the same question. I use a service called Survey Monkey, and they give you plenty of flexibility. It’s a fantastic service – cheap, really easy to use … and makes executing your surveys a breeze.
You can ask simple yes/no questions … multiple-choice questions … specific data questions, and many more types of closed-end questions. The system automatically tabulates handy percentages and graphs for you.
Or you can ask open-ended questions that you’ll have to massage for yourself.
As a rule of thumb, I use opened-ended questions when a) I don’t have a clue what the most common answers to the question will be, and b) when I want to fish for the kinds of language people use to describe a particular problem, question, or goal that concerns my product(s).
Open-ended survey questions can be a goldmine when it comes to divining the dominant emotions your prospects have around a given subject. Taking the time to classify, quantify, and qualify the responses allows you to internalize the lingo and phraseology of the market, so you can feed it back to them in your sales copy.
Not only are you listening to them, and giving them what they want. You’re telling them about it in their own language. Powerful stuff.
Which begs the question: How do you classify, quantify, and qualify responses to open-ended questions? How do you know when a particular response is relevant enough to cycle back into your marketing?
How to zero in on the sweet spot of desire
that’s hidden within your target market …
Response skyrockets when your offer and sales copy resonates with the passionate majority. Open-ended questions can lead to great insights into what individuals are thinking and feeling. But they can also mislead …
You need a way to discern how widespread a given sentiment is before feeding it back into your marketing and sales copy. You also need a way to separate casual responses that are unlikely to result in purchasing behavior from serious responses that demonstrate a clear frustration with the status quo.
If you ask 100 people the typical open-ended question, such as “what’s your biggest problem, question, or goal about getting more traffic to your website?”, for example, you’re going to get 100 different answers. The first step is to go through the responses and categorize them. All of the answers that have to do with pay per click go here … all of the answers that have to do with free traffic go there … all of the answers that have to do with getting the traffic to convert go somewhere else … and so on.
The way I do this is to transfer the survey results from Survey Monkey into an Excel spreadsheet. Then I manually go through the responses, one by one. I just work my way down the column, and copy and paste each response into a second spreadsheet under an appropriate heading. For my recent survey I had over 800 responses and ended up with more than 60 categories.
Most of the categories ended up with just one or two responses, some had a few, and less than a handful had lots. When I was done, I had a broad sense of where people are struggling, and what they think they want.
But I also needed to get a sense of how important, urgent, and unmet those wants are.
One way to do this is to pose a follow-up closed-end question, where you ask, “How difficult has it been for you to get the specific information and help you’ve been looking for?” Actually you turn this into a multiple choice question, where you list, “easy, “relatively easy”, “difficult”, and “very difficult”. And Survey Monkey tallies it up.
Another way to get people to tell you what they want is to ask what I call a vision question. In my survey I asked my subscribers to “please describe the training (both the content and the format) you feel you need most to quickly take your business to the next level in 2008.”
And my closed-end follow up was, “How much would you be willing to invest each month to acquire the training you just described?” giving them several ranges of monthly spending to select.
The reason for the follow-up question in both of these scenarios is to help spot high quality answers. What we’re looking for are unfulfilled needs. If someone says the help and information they’re looking for is easy to find … or if they’re not willing to invest a reasonable amount in the training they just described as ideal, you can discount their response.
If on the other hand, they indicate the information and help is difficult to find, or they say they’re willing to spend good money on it, and their response is reasonably detailed, you’ve got a quality response.
On my category spreadsheet, I highlight the high quality responses in the few columns where I’ve got a lot of responses. So now I’ve got a measure of both quantity and quality – sort of like a heat map of the market that I can use to develop new products and copy angles to try.
An important caveat …
Of course, surveys and market research are just the beginning. They simply point you to theories. And theories have to be tested. What people say isn’t necessarily what they do.
Never make large investments based solely on research. Surveys can point you to breakthroughs, but test your conclusions small before rolling them out.
Until next time, Good Selling!
Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
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Daniel Levis is a top marketing consultant and direct response copywriter based in Toronto, Canada and publisher of the world famous copywriting anthology, “Masters of Copywriting”, featuring the selling wisdom of 44 of the “Top Money” marketing minds of all time, including Clayton Makepeace, Dan Kennedy, Joe Sugarman, John Carlton, Joe Vitale, Michel Fortin, Richard Armstrong and dozens more! For a FREE excerpt visit http://www.SellingtoHumanNature.com
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1 Comment »
Join the Discussion!
Let us know what you think. Or ask us anything. Or offer your own sage advice.
The only rule: RESPECT THIS HOUSE! Postings that contain abusive language and/or personal attacks will be cheerfully VAPORIZED. One cross word and – POOF! – your well-thought-out post will be gone in a puff of smoke.
– Clayton
Comment by Yuriy Dyskyy — January 23, 2008 @ 10:24 am
If You are thinking that I write too simplly,then I send for your my the last letter for Searhengine.
Dear Marlon Sanders!
Maybe You and I to more mature men,than are the
contemporary generation the young men. Therefore I may
be to set forth was complicated of the philosophical
conception to understand the Internet Business,but and
assence
be ours being … On the present time I have observe
very characteristic a tendency to move it is too a big
devirsity the Marketing products (video clip,wide
assortiment the audio/video books,tele-video showing,a
lot of letters and others);and all this absorb by the
Internet of Space and ,of course,peoples.I clearly to
imagine oneself - what is stream an information
messagers I getting and yet more understand that from
100 to 2000 letters I every day ,simplly,to exspose
destruction- as useless material. It is
possible,somebody will be seemed flattering that him
such often to write a lot opponents. However,all this
I have to see other tendency - it is impossibly to
take responsibility oneself and shown this case for
Guru. I am feeling danger and understanded that ours
are the Internet Marketing be absent \”SCHOOL\” and was
following all this any evented having spontaneous
character. For example I am showing to some case from
science. The genious German physicist is Albert
Einstein was making a lot discovery: it is phenomenon
photoeffect,the Theory of Relativity,but Einstein have
been stiking individuality and had not own followers.
If been Einstein would development own \”school\”,then
We are having today are the Thermonucler Reactors be
that king on principle as termo -plasma process on
Sun! Another it is known the English physicist Ernest
Rutherford ,the wrong way,building own school the
young physicists and better him follower would be
future by Professor S. Kapitza.
When is Kapitza come back in Russia,then He has been
some difficult by the experiment apparatus and,of
course,Kapitza was applying to help by Rutherford. The
Rutherford,immediately,was returing an apparatus own
the young colleague. Now We are observeted a
phenominal an Energy Crisis almost all the of
countries the World and nothing to make cannot ;to be
only because ,that 50 -70 years back the academics was
occupied by destruction force(nuclear weapons),but not
peace goals. While the professor Kapitza would bulding
own direction ,tendency in Science. Now We are display
to be stormy development the electronics(laser
disk,high technology,the Satellite TV in Internet)- it
is correct school.
Yuriy Dyskyy.
Comment by art peterson — January 26, 2008 @ 9:03 am
Daniel,
You just handed me the keys to unlimited wealth. This truly is the way to make gobs of money.
The reason I say this is because like in face to face selling its the [B]dialogue[/B], the exchange of ideas, the getting to know people on a core level– That\’s where value is created.
Keep it comming.
thanks