What Are They Really Thinking?

(Written by guest contributor Alan Bechtold)

To make compelling offers and to create sizzling copy that sells those offers effectively, you must enter the conversation already going on in your ideal prospects’ minds. This is an edict that’s been passed down through generations of successful direct marketing masters. It’s never been proven wrong.

The trick: how do you figure out what your ideal prospects are really thinking?

Advertising agencies spend millions of dollars putting together “focus groups” to try and find out what consumers think about a client’s product. It definitely helps rack up some billable hours, but the jury’s still out, decades later, on exactly how accurate those focus groups really are. Research has shown that many times people participating in market research focus groups tend to tell the researchers what they want to hear.

Companies spend millions more on telephone surveys, “man-in-the-street” surveys, and even those offers on the Web that claim they’ll pay you for taking surveys.

Fortunately for most of us, when it comes to researching our own markets, we don’t have that kind of money to waste on these shaky, never-proven techniques. It’s fortunate we don’t have the money, because I contend this also saves us millions that other companies waste trying to get useful data from such tactics.

Instead, I always advise that you stick with a niche that’s familiar to you. Find one that you’re already involved with, whether it’s a hobby, a past vocation, or some experience you’ve had in your life. This enables you to already pretty much know what your ideal prospects are thinking – because you are your prospect!

When you focus in on a market that you already know intimately, you can sometimes literally do your market research in the mirror!

Still, it’s always best to also check the pulse of the market you’re going after, beyond your own thinking. And the good news is that the Internet gives us the ability to easily conduct our own marketing research cheaply and effectively in the comfort of our own offices.

And the Survey Says…

Surveying your current customers and prospects can be a valuable aid to your market research.

Set up a survey, ask the right questions to get the answers you’re seeking, and you can invite your own list of customers and prospects to fill you in on what’s on their minds.

A good survey can also be a lead generator to build your list. Just invite people to opt in to your list before taking the survey to receive the results of your survey when it’s completed. Then you can invite joint venture partners to also send their customers and prospects to your survey because they’ll be eager to see the results and apply them to their own marketing, too…if they’re smart.

The more responses you get to a survey, the better your results will be because you’ll then be able to spot trends and repeated thinking that might not otherwise be evident with a smaller sampling.

Setting up a survey is really simple. There are numerous programs and services available that make online surveys a snap to build and make available. My favorite is Instant Form Pro:

http://www.instantformpro.com

Instant Form Pro is a data collection system that is geared towards marketers. It lets you create as many surveys as you want for any kind of market, and it is easy to include bonuses to your customers or prospects for completing the survey. You can also easily up-sell them on the thank you page. Once you have the software installed, it’s time to actually write your survey.

There are two problems you must solve to make surveys work and get you the kind of “what’s really on their minds” intelligence you’re looking for:

1. You must ask the right questions.

2. Your own customers will usually lie.

There’s really nothing you can do about the second problem, except to always look for trends in the answers you receive on your survey. Never focus on individual answers. Judge the responses only by the overall number of people who selected a given answer.

Asking the right questions takes a bit more creativity. This is why I suggest strongly that you set up a test survey first. Have just a few select customers or prospects answer it, and then get their feedback after seeing what answers they provide.

You’ll soon find that merely flipping the order of the words in a question can sometimes have a dramatic effect on the validity of the answers you receive on the other end.

Don’t be afraid to play with this a bit.

And never, ever offer anything other than multiple-choice answers on your survey. Any time you open up an answer to be written in by participants, you’ll create a headache for yourself trying to spot trends. You often won’t even get coherent answers you can work with in the first place!

Next week we’ll talk about even more ways to figure out what your customers and prospects are really thinking!