How To Conduct Market Research For Your Sales Copy
At any stage of your business, you have to know who your audience is in order to be successful. And by successful, I mean, to consistently sell your services and bring in the revenue you need to continue.
Without a clear picture of who is on the opposite side of the screen, you have zero insight into which demographic they fall into, what is important to them, and what they need to know in order to make a purchase.
In other words?
Your copy is going to end up being either ridiculously vague or completely off the mark. Either way, you’re not going to sell your services if you’re not talking to the right people in the language they want + need to hear.
Tips for conducting market research effectively
Ask the right questions
Market research requires a large enough pool of participants to give you a variety of responses that you can implement into your messaging and offers, depending on how the interviews go. You’ll need to have questions prepared that will give you the best insight into how to translate their answers into copy you can use to market online.
The questions you’ll need to ask might sound a lot like these examples:
What are your primary goals regarding ____?
What’s your first instinct when you hear ____?
What’s the hardest part for you when it comes to ____?
How much time each week do you spend ____?
What have you done so far to improve ____ yourself?
What’s stopping you from hiring someone to ____ for you?
Where do you go to find information about ____?
Each of these questions speaks to either their thoughts + feelings on the services you provide, their pain points and frustrations, their current reality with having to do it themselves or make do without, what’s not working in their business, and where they do go for help with this task when they feel like it.
BE respectful of their time + do not pitch
Everyone has to do market research at some point or another — it’s a vital part of upkeeping your business.
What I’m saying is, we’ve all been there. We all know how tough it can be to find participants who are available and willing to help us out. Therefore, when you do line up your participants and begin scheduling the calls, it’s crucial to be respectful of their time and boundaries.
Not only can a badly conducted market research interview impact your relationship with the participant, but feeling uncomfortable can also influence their answers and whether or not they’re willing to continue responding to all of your questions to get you the information you need for your sales copy.
Now, let’s go over a few little do’s and don’t of market research interviews, shall we?
DO:
Tell them upfront that the interview will take X time and stick to that (if you said 15 minutes, then begin closing the call at 15 minutes — even if you haven’t gotten through all of your questions)
Review and edit your questions beforehand to avoid repetitive or confusing questions
Steer clear of jargon that is too technical or difficult for someone outside your industry to understand
Keep the interview relevant, concise, and organized
Express your gratitude for their time before and after the interview
DON’T
Make your introduction too long or spend too much time on small talk
Rush them while they answer your questions
Make the process difficult — once they say yes, send them a Zoom link and keep it simple
Use market research interviews to pitch your services — even if it feels like they might be a good fit, this is not the time, and it will not leave a positive impression
pay attention to how they talk about themselves
Market research interviewing is all about listening. As you interview more and more participants, you’ll probably start to notice some patterns — this is absolute GOLD when it comes to crafting your messaging.
If the patterns of responses align with the type of client you’re trying to target, then this verbiage is fair game to use in your copy to speak to this exact type of person. It also gives you major insight into how to address these clients.
It can mean the difference between calling them “boss babes” or “entrepreneurs and business leaders” in your sales copy — these two phrases address totally different subsets in the entrepreneurial world, and each will usually attract one kind and deter the other. Therefore, you need to know who your audience is so you can address them the way they address themselves and their audience.
ready for fresh copy that converts allll the right people?
Once you have your audience down to a science, you’re in a better position to nail your sales copy and start bringing the right leads into your business. If you’re wiped out from all the market research you’ve been doing and are ready to hand over the reins to a professional copywriter, let’s talk.
Book your free discovery call today and we’ll chat about how to get you conversion copy that will produce the results and revenue you need.
