A key secret to my success (and the big idea behind great offers) is to find out what your prospects want, and then give it to them.
At my recent Platinum Mastermind meeting, Plat member Will Hamilton shared one technique he's using to find out what his market wants. I pulled Will aside at the break and recorded this video for you, because you can use this same technique to find out what people want to buy from you…
So how could you use this technique to find out what your prospects and clients want? What do you think you would learn? Please leave a comment below and let me know…
Jeff Walker
How can you use surveys in your business to find out what your prospects want? What other ways are you using to figure out your offers?
Lynn Johnson
How refreshing! Reminder of what I know and what I forget to remember.
I met Will at the Phoenix PLF meeting, and it was great seeing him again.
I am going to create a survey right away!
Shaun
Hi Jeff,
Very interesting video, it is so true. You don’t just go ahead and create a product because you think it is good. You could be in for a very rude awakening because it may be a bad seller. You must do research to see what the market wants, and create a product for that market. That is what I’m doing right now doing research before I create my product. Jeff your video came at the right time, it just reinforced how important it is to do your research first and not rush into things.
Regards,
Shaun.
Beatrix Willius
Great video! Customers are always so totally fascinating. They never do what we would like them to do. Which is good and bad.
Pam
Great reminder! I recently interviewed people I coached a couple of years ago to get a ‘looking back’ view of the value they got from our work together. The information I got was eye opening, and I’m now developing content based on those new insights.
Jason Stovall
Jeff,
Great short pointer and spot on, back to the basics. Wondering if I would use Survey Monkey for local business survey via Facebook Ads in news feed or drive the traffic to website that has the survey?
Thanks a Million
Russell
Jeff great video and a topic I struggle with almost daily. It tends to follow the Golden Rule of Assume – A** Outa You And Me! Almost always, we learn that what we think is important, typically, is far from what our market thinks is important.
Thank you.
On a side note, how the heck did you blur the background in that video? I looked closely and it appears to be a filter rather than a short depth of field. Would love to know…
Thanks again,
Russell
Jeff Walker
@Russell: it was the lens and depth of field – no filter.
Bill O'Hanlon
Great reminder from Will and Jeff. I learned so much from the survey comments and from the comments on the Pre-launch Content videos, even though, like Will, I am an expert on how to write and publish a book. The specific language people sued and their concerns were an awakening and changed how I marketed my product. The most common concern my folks expressed was: Nobody knows who I am so why would they buy my book. I knew this was a concern, but not the top one for my folks and I immediately created some stuff in the pre-launch and in the product to help them with this.
Jason Spencer
Thanks Jeff and Will! Great stuff.
One of the things I recently did to take this a notch further was to get my target audience in a room locally, and create an entire local live event meetup around a topic that would draw the audience in. With some local promotions/publicity, we ended up with around 50-60 people at the event (and it was completely free, open to anyone).
After 20-30 minutes of high education/value for the audience, we then broke out into small groups of 5-6 people all interested in exploring and brainstorming about a specific problem within this market (all defined and brought up by the audience). Their job during these breakout small group sessions was to develop ideas for solutions to these challenges/problems.
At the end of the night, we had about 10-12 challenges/problems defined, and complete brainstorms with bullet point ideas for solutions to these challenges/problems. The audience created the product in the room live right in front of me.
Ryan Gromfin
Thanks for the information Jeff and Will. It was great seeing you both at Experts Academy last weekend. Great information as always!
Quick question for you Jeff.
Do you ever ask your list, what kind of training or modality they would like from you (me) ro develop. I am not sure if my restaurant customers would prefer to hear me on a cd, see me online, work in groups or what price point they would pay for it? I have surveyed and know what information they want, I just don’t know how they want to consume it? If so can you give me an example of how to ask this?
Thanks,
Ryan
Susan
Thanks Jeff and Will. This is great common sense advice especially for those just starting out, like us. We are just starting to build our platform and our list. How do you recommend applying this at the early stages when I don’t yet have a list to survey? Engagement via CTA in a blog post? or in social media posts? any other specific thoughts?
Barry Friedman
Excellent, of course, or it wouldn’t be here. Thanks for sharing this, Will!
Ben Murray
Nice information, but just remember that surveys are a great starting point, but often don’t identify the real pain and desire people are searching for. For instance, someone might say they need SEO help on your survey, but it may turn out the real ‘pain’ they are suffering from is knowing how to convert the traffic they are already getting. They may mistakenly believe that getting more traffic through SEO is the solution when really it isn’t what will help their business.
I would suggest telling your plat coaching group to set up free ‘consultations’ with your list and actually spend time talking one on one with a few members/subs for 30 minutes about what’s really troubling them, why they aren’t getting results from other programs, etc. than just relying on surveys. Yes, this takes much more time and most people will never get around to it, but it will really help you hit the emotional pain points and create an offer that will really convert and actually help them.
Keep up the good work and info-
James
Hey Jeff…
I’m still using the ‘testimonial cruncher’ method to do just this.
Great reminder for all…. 🙂
JK
Kim
Hey Jeff and Will thanks for the information. I watch another video yesterday and this guy spoke exactly about using survey forms on your landing pages to find out what your audience requires, and then produce the product or service accordingly. I am just in the process of doing exactly that. Asking my audience what do they need. Makes sense really and is so obvious. I think the key is also to make the survey reasonably short not to long for your target market as well. Cheers Kim
Michael
HeyJeff & Will. Great info, thanks Guys.
I will pose these couple of questions though, mainly to Will, but to a lesser degree, Jeff as well.
1. How did you run the survey in the first instance,namely, did you just ask a bunch of questions, was it a couple of open-ended questions where people were free to put in whatever they liked, or perhaps did you approach with a bit of an idea of what the general problem was (hypothesis), and asked a series of questions around this?
2. Was it an open survey (to the world at large) or only sent to your mailing list?
3. If it went to mailing list, what was the response rate? Do you feel this was acceptable / enough responses to make the data reasonably accurate?
Thanks guys.
Suzanne Reilley
I canNOT get this reminder enough.
Shari Elle
Hi Jeff and Will, great reminder – thanks!
Im also wondering about the same questions as Michael… how to run the survey and what to ask etc. Looking forward to hearing your response Jeff.
france paramelle
thanks a lot Jeff for this information. We are going to launch..and before we will do a webinar to know what exactly want people..Then, according to this webinar we will adjust or modify our product…Our launch is postponed because of our lawyer being late to finish our society in the states…. I hope the lawyer will be ready soon… By now, on the marketing project, we are ready..;-)) at last, and thanks to you!!!!thanks a lot to share with us your experience and your student’s experience
Wayne (Joe) Evans
Hey guys,
To date I have ignored this area because…I felt I knew better…. same as Will! ;-(
I will start this afternoon with a question…
Great info as always Jeff.
Llwyddiant!
Joe
Ingram
Although this seems like such an obvious thing to do, it often takes someone to point out the obvious to make it clear again!
I’m going to set up a simple survey in Survey Monkey and email it out to our customers and prospects, I think this will really give us some quality information that we can use to create helpful and better informed resources and products for our customers moving forward.
Would you suggest adding an incentive or simply saying that it will help you offer better ways to help people in the future?
Thanks!
Ingram
Will Hamilton
Hey Michael –
Thanks! To answer your questions:
Email went out to my list. Response rate depends on which list I’m mailing… prospects, buyers (most responsive), etc.
If you’re just getting started, I’d recommend one open-ended (essay) question that asks something to the effect of: “What’s your #1 challenge when it comes to XYZ.” You then need to go through the responses and identify the common problems. Longer answers – the ones where someone writes you their life story – get more weight than shorter ones.
That’s how we discovered that playing with a new partner was the #1 challenge for recreational doubles players.
Hope that helps,
Will
Stephen
Hi
A great insight, and probably one we should ask ourselves every month just to stay on customer needs.
BTW, I’m wondering how you managed to TradeMark the phrase ‘Internet Marketing’?
Or is it the phrase ‘powered by Internet Marketing’?
Thanks
Stephen
Derek Russell
This is a great way to get information fast as to what people want. Would you say the same tool can be used for artists? Or does that come down to trust your inspiration and building relationships with key partners to grow?