What does your audience say?
Market research, UGH. No one likes to do market research. But market research can be the thing that validates your amazing idea, or forces you to shift into a new direction.
I’m sharing all about how to do market research in a way that #1 isn’t boring, and #2 is effective.
You audience will tell you what they want to hear from you...if you listen.
First, let’s define audience.
Your in-person clients, your Facebook group members, your Facebook Page likers, your Instagram followers, your email subscribers, anyone and everyone who will listen to you, they are your audience.
Now with this, it’s important to realize who it is that you’re taking advice from. As you go about asking questions and diving deeper into what your audience is telling you, make sure that the advice you take is actually from ideal clients. Not your biz bestie, or your coach, or your husband, or your friend who doesn’t have an online business (unless all of those people are your ideal clients).
Let’s unpack this with an example:
Let’s say you’re thinking up a new freebie to build your email list. You’re a personal trainer and a nutritionist who helps women lose the last 10-20 pounds of baby weight. You’re going to be introducing a new training program that is going to be sold passively so you’re no longer trading dollars for hours.
But first, you’re going to generate leads by advertising a free resource to a cold audience via a Facebook Ad.
Your first step in all of this is to validate the need for your freebie.
Does your ideal client identify that this freebie is what they need? Or is it you deciding what you think they need?
There is a BIG difference there.
As much as we can want something for our ideal clients, we have to meet them where they are. Otherwise what we offer up is going to go over their heads and we will lose them.
You can want to teach them about counting macros, or core strengthening exercises, when what they actually want is to fit back into their skinny jeans. Everything else is over their head.
When you confuse, you loose. And sometimes this can be SO HARD for us to wrap our minds around.
Anytime you do ANYTHING in your business, you should first validate it with your audience.
One of my favorite ways to do this is to ask your audience questions.
So let’s go back to the personal trainer example we used earlier, ok?
You absolutely need to start asking your ideal clients questions in order to figure out what your free resource will be.
You will want to find out a couple of key pieces of information with these questions:
What they identify as the pain point they are experiencing.
How they feel when dealing with this pain point.
Words/language that they use to describe their pain point.
The kind of support they think they need.
The obstacle that is keeping them stuck.
How they like to learn.
Now that you know what kind of information you’ll need to uncover, dive into those questions. Remember, as important as it is to figure out their pain points and as deep as you want to go into those pain points, people don’t love to talk about the things that are bothering them. It’s important to talk about both pain points AND pleasure points.
Questions that you can ask (and remember, we’re still using the personal trainer example):
If you could wave a magic wand and change anything about your exercise routine, what would it be?
What is something you’re really good at when it comes to your nutrition?
What time of day do the munchies kick in?
When do you workout, morning, afternoon, evening?
How often do you workout?
What do you wish you could improve when it comes to your nutrition?
What is the thing you wish you knew more about pertaining to exercise?
How do you workout? Gym, outside, DVDs, streaming?
In a perfect world, what would be your ideal food day?
What stops you from eating the foods you know you’re supposed to eat?
I could go on and on with this, but see what I’m doing here? I’m learning more about what this particular ideal client needs and identifies that he/she wants.
Now, where do you ask these questions?
Anywhere you can!
Here are some examples:
Your own Facebook group.
Facebook groups where your ideal client may hang out.
On your Facebook profile.
On your Facebook business page.
Instagram feed.
InstaStories feed.
Email list.
Former clients.
Existing clients.
Friends who are your ideal clients.
Bottom line: regardless of what you know your ideal client needs, you have to first make sure your ideal client actually wants it before you do anything.
Market research will help you to get inside of the head of your ideal client, and if you are to effectively market to him/her, knowing where they are will serve you and your business in BIG ways, which will, in turn, allow you to serve them in even bigger ways.
Two things I want to tell you about as I wrap this up:
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If you found this article helpful, don’t forget to leave your biggest takeaway in the comment and/or share it to your audience!
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Email: allison@allisonhardy.com
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