Becoming a Market Mind Reader
If you want to increase your sales and your ROI in any market, get to know your customer better.
What are your customer’s thinking?
- What are their hopes and dreams?
- What do they lie in bed worrying about at night?
- Who do they love?
- Who do they hate?
- How do they feel about your competitors?
- How do they feel about you and your business?
- What causes them to buy?
- What keeps them from buying?
- What do they most want when they buy?
Do you truly and honestly know your customers? The better you get to know them, the easier it will be to deliver them the value they’re really looking for…and the easier it will be to grow your business.
There is an old statement that says…
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Read that last sentence a few times to understand the full meaning.
Early on in my business I learned just how important copywriting was so I sought out the best teachers I could find on the subject. I studied all the materials I could get my hands on by Ted Nicolas, Gary Halbert, Jay Abraham, John Carlton, Brian Keith Voiles, and many others. And the one theme that continued through every single one of them was: EMPATHY.
I remember quite well going through John Carlton’s course and him telling the story how he had to keep writing a promotional for a weight loss product over and over again. He was writing as an assistant to Gary Halbert…and he kept having it handed back to him because he needed to put some EMPATHY in the letter.
Go over to Wikipedia and you’ll find quite a few definitions for empathy. Scan through them and you’ll see they all point back to a very similar definition.
“To empathize means to share, to experience the feelings of another person.”
Do you really empathize with your customers?
If you’ve ever really gotten into the zone in writing a letter to your customers, you can “feel” while you’re writing when they’re going to stumble over something. You can sense where they’re going to have issues in the letter, because you’ve gotten to know them. You know when they’re going to bring up objections so you can deal with them. And it’s that trait that the greatest copywriters have mastered for the markets they write in. They know their customers, how they feel, and what they’re thinking at each point in the sales process.
How do we start reading the minds of our customers?
This is a deep subject, but I’ll give you a few strategies to help you get started on the right path. This only covers the tip of the iceberg, but you can use many of these techniques immediately…
Method #1: Surveys
You’ll notice I did a survey this past week where I asked you as one of my readers what were you thinking. Why did I do this?
I wanted you to tell me what was most important to you. I didn’t want to take for granted what you wanted to read about. I had you tell me.
In addition I wanted to know how YOU saw this blog from your viewpoint. I’m using all the feedback to prepare an upcoming change to the overall blog design and layout. It won’t be based on how I think about what I do. It’s going to be based on my reader’s opinions.
One of the first things I do when I enter a new market is put up a survey about the market. I ask them what they most want to know about the subject along with other questions to determine as much as I can about the audience I’m attracting.
This new market survey serves two purposes. Often the product itself can be developed right out of the questions they ask. In other words, the survey results create the basic outline for my product. Is it nice of them to write my outline for me?
I also can compare different potential markets by how much I’m paying per survey. A very rough estimate is I expect to pay 10 times as much for a sale as I pay to get a survey filled out. So if I’m paying $3.50 to get each survey filled out through Google Adwords, I’m expecting a cost of $35 per sale from that same advertising.
In a couple of cases I found just through doing the survey that the market was going to be more expensive to enter than I was willing to pay. Those projects when on the back burner to focus on the ones which had a much greater chance of immediate success. If you’re like me, it’s not a question of not having enough project ideas. It’s the problem of having too many and not knowing which ones to focus on. Try a survey…
What about when you have a project that isn’t selling like you expected? You of course start testing the page, but what else can you do? You can add a popover on exit survey to ASK your customer why they choose not to respond. A percentage of them will tell you! So instead of guessing your way in the dark, let them light your path by telling you what you need to change to get and hold their interest.
Method #2: Direct Feedback
Have you considered actually talking to your customers?
I know this might sound a little outrageous, but most of them probably won’t bite. You can talk to them and ask them what they like about your product or what they don’t like. You can ask them why they chose to buy from you. You can ask them what their biggest concern in buying from you was. You can even ask them what else they’d like to have available.
Call up a few of your customers on the phone and thank them for their order. Ask them if there is anything else you can do for them. Then ask them a few of the questions above. Then SHUT UP and listen.
I’ve also always found seminars to be an awesome opportunity for this. I often make my way around the room before the event or early on in the event to ask everyone why they’re there. What is it that they came to learn? What caused them to choose this seminar over the other options? What other seminars have they attended and how did they feel about them? How could I best serve their needs as a speaker at the event?
They’re tell you what they came for and why. Everyone you talk to is another step closer to really understanding your market.
Method #3: Examine How Successful Competitors Approach the Market
Who are the most successful people in the market? Find out…and then print out all their websites and sales copy. Examine it. What hot buttons are they hitting on? How are they identifying themselves with the market? What tone do they write in?
I shared Jay Abraham’s system for using Amazon for the same purpose recently. Go through all the top books in your category and write down their titles. Read through all the feedback people leave on these books. And look for the emotional comments both for and against the book. What emotions are driving people in the market?
They’ve already tapped into the dominant emotions of the marketplace for you. Become a marketplace detective and look at all the evidence. Who are the most recognizable names? How did they get there? What are people saying about them? How could you put together all this material and do an even better job?
Method #4: Real Test Results
This is the strongest test of the audience’s reaction. Survey information is valuable, but real test results are even more valuable. You might run a survey and people agree yes they would be willing to pay for X. Then you offer them a product about X and nobody buys it. When the money meets the road, they weren’t willing to whip out their credit card. It’s the same issue with taking a survey of the “price” people are willing to pay. You’re almost always going to have the survey say people are willing to pay less than they really are for the product…when they’re faced with a real solution to their problems staring them in the face.
For example, with the survey I recently did I asked people what kinds of articles they most wanted to read. I’m going to combine this with looking at my traffic stats from previous articles. So I have in hand what people say they want more information on and I also know what they have responded to best in the past. My future articles will be a combination of information from BOTH these sources. The good news is that in this cases the two sources are agreeing.
If you’re not testing in your business, you’re not learning. Make a commitment to test SOMETHING this week. Test a new headline. Test a new type of blog post. Test a video. Do something different that you can track the results of. Some will work. Some won’t work. Either way, you’re learning. There are no failures in testing…only new information.
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Terry,
I appreciate your advice about the importance of knowing your market and your suggested techniques for learning about your market. As always, it’s excellent advice.
Even more, I appreciate how you model that advice in action. Your genuine interest in being of service comes across clearly. You don’t do your research as some sort of manipulative tactic or market “trick”. You do it to be certain you’re meeting people’s needs as best you can.
I think we all would do well to emulate that.
Stay Well
Terry,
Great article and I do appreciate your good advice.
You said in your article Terry that:
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. ”
This is very true. Even when it comes to email marketing. For example, if you can show your readers that you care about them and their needs, the trust goes up. Even better, your sales go up with that too.
Anyway, thanks for sharing and god bless.
Hi Terry. I have enjoyed reading your site for some time now. I used to look at other online marketers as competition (as you stated above) but I don’t any longer. Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe that consumers can consume more than most of us can offer, unlike an automobile dealer that generally, once you buy an auto, your buying another one is nill. Just a thought and BTW, I don’t look at you as a competitor and I hope I have not offended you. Thanks and please keep putting your empathy into your work – it shows in the details. Stan Eyler
Hi Stan:
I often refer to “competition” as future joint venture partners so I definitely agree with what you’re saying. But I still do think of them as competition when creating a product from the standpoint of how mine can stand out in the marketplace (the primary topic above). For example, it would be impossible or at least very expensive for someone to buy all the “internet marketing training products.”
I’m reading all the advice about how to market an imaginative book Daddy’s Little Spy – Isabella ISBN9781844264728
Greener than our grass I had no idea that bookshops charged thousands of pounds to display your book in their shop window. Your article on empathy is particularly applicable to the misery me genre.
So I’m having to use the internet to spread the word about Daddy’s Little Spy. So far feedback has been good and your ideas are giving me hope.
Kind regards Isabella.
This is a great article, I wish there were more people that would write articles like this to really help people learn how to improve their business.
Building a relationship with your customers and with other people on the internet is one of the most important things you need to do.
There are so many people out on the internet today that are after that quick sale and on to the next hot thing, all they care about is themselves and the quick dollar.
Thanks for a great article!!!
Pugsley
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