The 3rd (and Easiest) Way to Find Out What Your Customers Really Want

The 3rd (& Easiest Way) to Find Out What Your Customers Really Want

This one is probably the easiest of all the strategies I’ve shared with you so far.

Here it is:

That’s basically it. 

BUT... here’s where it gets good.

Let the first 3-4 questions be demographic related.

So for example:

If you’ve ran any ads on platforms like facebook, you’ll recognize that the age range above is the exact same as what they have on their platform.

These age ranges are targetable. That's why I picked them.

But we can take this one step further.

In one of the surveys I ran to my old audience (dentists), I asked them about which professional associations they were a part of:

If you google "professional dentist associations", you will find a bunch of associations.

You could write all of them in your survey.

But instead, you should pick the ones that are most relevant to you.

Here's how you find out which ones are most relevant to you.

In my example, the professional associations I picked are the ones that are targetable as interests in Facebook ads.

If I couldn't target it as an interest on FB ads, I didn't list it in my survey.

The result of this is that when people answered my survey...

...what they were really doing was telling me exactly how I can target them (and others like them) using facebook ads.

Most of my audience said they were part of ADA, so that’s the interest I targeted in my FB Ads.

Using this info alone, I was able to get our Cost per Lead (CPL) down to ~$5.

Just for context, the buying power of dentists is VERY high.

For this particular project, we were selling a course for $5K USD at the time.

And our CPL was ~$5 for qualified leads.

Theoretically, we could get roughly 1000 dentist leads and breakeven with just 1 sale.

It was a great setup for our FB ads.

And this magical CPL was possible because of the survey data that my audience had given me.

That’s how powerful these customer surveys can be.

But there’s more.

The Best Information Your Audience Can Give You

The best information from these surveys actually comes from open-ended questions.

This is where you really get to understand things like:

• how your customers describe their problem in their own words
• what words do they use to describe their wants, desires, pain points, etc.
• where are they in their journey to getting what they want

These answers give you ideas for what you can test in your ads, emails, Landing Pages, headlines, etc.

If you combine this method with the High Impact Testing method I shared in the first article, you’re on an accelerated path to cracking your message-to-market match.

You want people to open up and share what they’re struggling with and what it would mean for them to have this problem solved for them.

Here’s a bonus tip: you can categorize what people say into similar themes and count the number of times these themes come up when people describe their problem.

You can also graph this data.

The info from these surveys is the raw material for your marketing collateral.

From here you can build your campaign, your entire marketing message, even a brand new product based on the analysis of these survey results.

(MGSD was a product that was created directly from the results of a survey like this.)

It is extremely important that you get your questions answered.

Ideally, you want to get 30-50 responses to have a solid sample size of responses.

Now you might be thinking, “But Abhi!! I can’t control whether or not people will respond to my survey!”

You’re wrong.

I mean, you’re right… but you’re also wrong.

How to Get People to Respond to Your Surveys

You can incentivize people to respond to you.

In a different marketing project, this is how I guaranteed that people filled out my survey with meaningful feedback.

I mentioned in my email:

"The first 50 people to fill out this survey with meaningful feedback will get a $5 Starbucks gift card."

And we sent out those $5 gift cards to the 50 people that filled it out.

It also incentivizes people to provide detailed answers when you ask for meaningful feedback.

And gives you the right to reject anyone who just gave you short, one-word answers that aren't useful to you.

Of course, this cost us $250 to run the survey.

But as I mentioned in the last post, the information we gathered from this survey helped us attract 4 full arch implant patients for my client.

Each patient being a $25,000 procedure.

Spending $250 upfront to eventually make $100K is a pretty good deal if you ask me.

What we did was use the information we gathered about our patients' pain points and desires and put that information on our landing pages.

That significantly increased our conversion rates.

Our lead quality improved.

And that led to the eventual $100K in 3 months.

How to Get the Same Effect
Without Spending Anything

I later learned that you don’t need to offer gift cards or any monetary rewards to get people to fill out your surveys.

You can offer something for free as well.

Anything that’s relatively low effort for you to create, but high impact for your audience.

That could be content, a free course, or anything.

The world is your oyster here.

In the MGSD launch, I combined this survey approach with customer development calls.

And I offered 1 month of free coaching to people that filled out my survey.

At the time I really wanted to understand our audience and what they were struggling with.

So I figured the best way would be to offer 10-15 people free coaching for an entire month and really work with them closely.

It was a fantastic experience, and I met some amazing people back then that I am still in touch with now.

Understanding their struggles, frustrations, and what was really holding them back...

...was the raw material that led to the MGSD program.

But here's the important part:

How You Can Implement This Yourself

First pick a strategy you like.

(As I mentioned above, you could even combine these strategies.)

I would pick something that's easy for you to implement now.

My recommendation would be to send out a short survey to your audience in exchange for something free.

Or you could even do what Jeff Walker does.

Email your audience and ask them:

what are the top 2 things you are currently struggling with?

And people will respond to you by replying to your email.

This way you don't have to create a survey or anything.

This simple email strategy works really well.

It is how I started the F&A23 launch back in December last year.

The point is: to understand what your customers really want, you just need to get in conversation with them somehow.

And the good news is that there are literally endless ways of doing this.

Here's an example of how Charlene (from the ikario audience) is doing it:

Quick Shoutout to Charlene

Charlene sent me an email last week to share how she has implemented a similar version of this.

Here’s her email:

That is absolutely brilliant!

Actually, it’s so brilliant that I am going to steal it haha!

(Thank you for sharing Charlene!)

And btw, I hope that the purpose of this page here is making sense to you now.

I also ask people to answer the question: what do you need most help with right now?

I routinely include it in my blog posts and emails.

(Just like I did over here.)

And this page is also collecting answers over time and helping me understand what it is that my audience wants, and needs help with.

In my case, the answer to that question above is: 

Consistency

"I can do what I need to do but can't do it long enough to produce results."

It’s an interesting problem.

But one that I’ve helped a bunch of people overcome by now.

The truth is you’re not supposed to “grind” all the time.

That’s how you end up getting burnt out.

The way to stay consistent is to strike a balance between your stretch goals and the process it takes to get there.

This is practically the basis of our 1-on-1 business coaching here at ikario.

And next week, I will show you how to create the “Perfect Plan” that you can actually execute on consistently.

That’s exactly how:

• Nadja built up her Amazon FBA soap business
• How James built his real estate business
• and how Nick built (and started scaling) his high ticket leadgen business from scratch in less than 3 months.

Actually, all 3 of these people did it in less than 3 months.

That 3 months mark is important... 

...because 3 months = 1 quarter of the year.

And I am sure you noticed, we recently started Quarter 2 of 2023.

So let me ask you this: have you done your goal-setting for Q2 of 2023?

If yes, would love to know what your goals are below.

If not, no worries.

Next week, I will teach you how to do it.

Hope you enjoyed this series.

-Abhi

PS. If you had to pick one thing, what would you say makes it difficult for you to stay consistent with your goals?