Ask the real marketing experts: your customers
- Gihan Perera
- 14 June 2009
When one of my clients Max Hitchins
released his e-book 365 Marketing Ideas For
The Hospitality, Tourism & Travel Industries, he made more than $4000 in sales in the first 24 hours.
Was he just lucky? No. He ran a monthly competition on his website and asked site visitors which of his products they would like to win as a prize. What we discovered over a period of months was almost everybody was asking for a particular book. It was the first in the list, so we moved it around – and the results were the same. That’s why Max put so much time into producing this e-book, which was on the topic people were requesting, and gave that priority over all his other products.
Market research surveys
Learn from Max’s example. Sometimes we’re too close to our own products and services. You might think you know what customers and clients want, but do you really know? A simple market research survey can give you the facts. You’ll be amazed by some of the responses – and they might be very different from what you assumed.
Instead of hiring an expensive marketing expert, you’re asking the real marketing experts: your clients and customers
Open or closed questions?
When it comes to survey questions, one size doesn’t fit all. Broadly:
- Ask open-ended questions to gather information.
- Use closed questions to refine information you’ve already gathered.
For example, when Matt Hern was surveying his newsletter readers, he asks a single
open-ended question along the lines of, ‘Please share with me the burning financial questions you’d like answered’.
Later, when he starts working with a new client, he asks them to complete a detailed financial health check questionnaire, which is much more specific.
As a general rule, the less you know about the people, the more open-ended you should make the questions.
What question do you ask?
The best questions address customers’ needs; and their needs vary depending on their knowledge, experience and exposure to your kind of products and services.
When somebody’s evaluating something, they generally go through four stages:
- Why. Is this right for me at all?
- What. If so, what specifically is the best option for me?
- Who. Who is the right person to offer this service?
- How. How do I work with them?
So, when you’re doing your survey to discover their needs, focus on one of these four stages – the one you think applies to most people in your market.
For example, if you’re a financial planner like Matt, you might ask one of these questions, depending on where you think they are in the process of engaging your services:
- Complete novices: What is your biggest concern about managing your money?
- People who have heard of financial planning but haven’t investigated it: What is your biggest question about financial planning?
- People who want a financial planner: What is your biggest question about choosing a financial planner?
- People who have decided to work with you: What is your biggest question about working with me?
The right question can give you nuggets of gold in the responses, while the wrong question can be a complete waste of time for you.
With the internet and easy access to tools like www.surveymonkey.com, it’s so easy and
cost-effective to conduct online surveys that there’s really no excuse for not doing it.
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