The Simple Hack That's Guaranteed to Strengthen Your Message

No matter what you’re selling, you are always selling people a better version of themselves.

But the truth is, their ideal self might look quite a bit different from what yours does. That’s why your best messaging does not come from inside your head. It comes from the people buying what you’re selling.

You might be thinking— ‘I already know who my customers are. I have a whole ‘persona profile’ Google Doc choc-full of notes about my ideal customer!’ But, how sure are you that this profile is accurate? Did you use real data to validate that your profile is on the money?

Why real customer data is unbeatable

Often, we write our sales messages based on our interpretation of who our customers are and what they desire, not necessarily on actual data.

But real data can uncover customer desires or trends you may have never thought of alone. And, it can help you turn pretty good copy into really compelling copy by using their exact words and phrases in your messaging.  

Through data collection, you’ll get a really clear picture of two essential ingredients for your copy.

1. Your customer’s pain points (what do they say their challenges and desires are? How does it make them feel?)
2. Your customer’s motivations (why does it matter to them?)

While your customer’s challenges may be fairly easy to uncover, it’s how the problem makes them feel and and their real motivations for wanting a solution that may be more difficult to predict.

For example, many people might want to lose weight, but their motivations could be very different— from wanting to keep up with their kids, to wanting to feel sexy in front of their partner to making their friends jealous. As you can imagine, the copy might be quite different for each of these people.  

If you have the time and opportunity, or are developing a new product or service offering, in depth customer interviews can be incredibly valuable. But, on top of everything else you’re juggling, I don’t blame you if the thought of setting up regular customer interviews sounds way too difficult to implement!

So today I want to share some simple ways to collect real data from your website visitors, on autopilot.

2 ways to set-up a simple, automated customer survey

Method 1: Use Hotjar

HotJar is software that helps you to understand how your customers use your website by using heatmaps and recordings. But, it’s also great for customer surveys and polls. You can ask a range of questions from multiple choice to open-ended questions. There is a free version of HotJar and it’s pretty straightforward to setup too. Check out their website for tips and tutorials on setting up a survey on your website using their software.

Method 2: The Double Freebie

This is the method we use to collect amazing feedback from our website visitors every day. In fact, you may have been one of the generous people who have already filled in our customer survey!

Our process works like this—

1. Someone signs up for a free resource via our website by providing their name and email. Learn more about lead magnets here.
2. Once they hit submit, they’re redirected to a thank you page, which asks them if they wouldn’t mind sharing their feedback. In exchange, we offer them another free resource to make the offer a little more enticing!
3. If they accept, we ask them to fill in a short 5 question survey to get access to their second free resource. We've setup a form on our website for this, but you could also use something like Typeform.
4. Our email marketing system automatically sends them their freebies directly to their inbox.

Beyond copy: How to use your data

Even when you think you know your customers inside and out, there is always more to learn! We have only been collecting data in the way outlined above for just under a year, but it has already proven to be incredibly valuable in helping us to better understand our ideal customers, and uncover audiences we didn’t even know were visiting our website!

So, aside from elevating your marketing messaging (which in itself is amazing), it can also help you to—

• Improve your website design and user experience.
• Determine which paid product or service offerings you should release next.
• Create free content your customers actually want (e.g. blogs, videos, podcasts).
• Understand how your customers actually use your products.
• Understand how you are different from your competitors.
• Understand how people arrive on your website.
• Anticipate customer questions and objections about your product or service

Wouldn’t you agree that this type of information is invaluable to your business? 

Now, here is my challenge to you—in the next 2 weeks, set up a system to start collecting more customer feedback. You can use one of the methods I’ve suggested, or find another way that suits your business model. Then, leave a comment to let me know how you went. You’d be surprised what happens when you just ask!

I hope this article helps you to elevate your sales messages by getting to know your customers on a deeper level. If you found this helpful, or know someone who would, please share it with them!