The business that wins is the business that understands their customers better than anyone else.

One of the things I see all the time with my clients is that they are offering their audience what THEY think their audience wants or needs.

When what they should be offering is what THEIR AUDIENCE WANTS. Big distinction right there.

It is only once you have someone in your web {evil laugh} should you give them what YOU know they NEED.

Let’s find out what your audience wants then.

You may be thinking that you already know what they want. And maybe you do. Then again, maybe you don’t.

What I find with my client’s is that they aren’t as close to their target market’s wants as they might think.

Often-times their business has evolved and changed over a number of years – even in ever so slight ways – and they haven’t taken the time to update their ideal client avatar.

Even minor differences in messaging can have enormous impacts on your bottom line.

I’d encourage you to do a refresh of who you are wanting to serve and their biggest problems. That way you can be laser-targeted in delivering solutions to their actual problems not the problems that you think or assume they have.

I’ve listed out 4 ways to get to the heart of the matter below.

The single best way of finding out what people want is by asking them. Easy peasy.

If you’ve been toiling away on the interweb for a while you probably have a small email list, a few blog posts and some Facebook™ Lives.

Here’s what you should do:

1. Review your blog posts to determine the 3 most popular ones – Google Analytics will tell you this in just a few clicks;
2. Review your Facebook™ Lives to determine the 3 most popular ones;
3. Look for themes coming up in posts in your Facebook™ group and Facebook™ groups you’re a member of. Ask directly in your Facebook™ group or on your Facebook™ page or profile what people are struggling with in relation to your expertise; and
4. Survey your email list and followers. Use the survey to determine: 
   • Which avatar they identify with (if you have more than 1); and
   • The biggest pain points (and how you can help relieve those) for each avatar.

More on doing a survey!

How to get your list to complete the survey?

If you have an engaged list and followers it might be very easy to get people to respond.

If you have an inkling it might be difficult to get responses try these:

1. Add a little sweetener for those who complete the survey – a free cheat sheet, a coupon, put them into a draw for a prize – do anything that might incentivise them to spend a few minutes of their precious time doing something for you;
2. Make the survey short and sweet and tell them in advance how many minutes of their time it will take to complete – try for less than 5 minutes – every man and his dog is under immense time pressure these days so being respectful of someone else’s time is super important;
3. Make the survey easy to complete – have a mixture of dropdowns and freeform text answers; and
4. Number the questions and include a progress bar at the top of each survey page so people know how many more questions they have to answer.

What survey tool to use?

For simplicity I’d suggest using Survey Monkey which is free for up to 100 responses. You can pay if you want more responses.

There’s also Google Forms (free but people complain it’s glitchy) and Wufoo (a paid monthly subscription).

What questions to ask on your survey?

Don’t reinvent the wheel. See if any of your competitors are doing something similar and take inspiration from their survey.

After helping many clients with their surveys I created a survey template pre-loaded with 16 questions which you can modify to suit your business. I also include some great hacks on what to do with particular answers. Grab my free Survey Template here and start collecting all the juicy info you need today!

One last thing. It’s important.

Don’t overcomplicate this. Don’t faff. Just do it.

Done right, you can find out exactly what your target audience/s want in a matter of days.

Now you know what to do. What are you waiting for? Go do it!

NEXT STEPS

Give ‘Em What They Want

Collate all the info you’ve collected.

It should become blindingly obvious what your target market’s biggest problems are and the topics they are most interested in.

So now you know what your audience wants.

It’s time to give it to them!

BUUTTT, before you start getting your creative mojo on… I suggest you do it strategically.

I find flinging stuff against the wall to see if it sticks horribly inefficient. And amateur.

I know that you’ll have some really enlightening data from all your research… don’t squander it.

I’m gonna say it… and you’re probably going to cringe at the word BUT… there’s a FORMULA to creating offers and content.

I’ve run out of time here but I cover it off in another blog post which you can feast your eyes on here.

Talk soon,

Bec

P.S. Go here to get my free Survey Template which has 16 sample questions and some hacks on what to do with particular answers. All you need to do is update the template for your business and away you go! You’ll be able to blast it out to your list in an hour or two!