Steal My Exact Market Research Methods To Speak To Your Customers

What happens when you actually speak to your customers and find out their problems? 

You hit gold. 

Recently, I interviewed nine women about their feelings towards LinkedIn. And I got so much value. 

So today, I’m sharing all the deets. So you can decide if this is a tactic that will work for you too. 

Why market research matters 

I’m always banging on about avoiding made up customer avatars. You gotta actually speak to your audience. So, not being a hypocrite, I did the same. 

Because if you guess? You might stuff up your messaging. 

You absolutely must focus on getting your voice of customer right. 

Once you have these conversations, content is easy. Because you understand your audience’s goals and problems. So you can write content that speaks to them. Gets them in the feels. Gains their trust. 

Step one: decide what you want to know

My focus was learning if my audience:

• sees potential in LinkedIn
• likes or dislikes LinkedIn 
• gets leads generally 
• have any fears about LinkedIn 
• finds my potential offers appealing

Step two: specify ideal candidates 

This is important and I didn’t quite get this right. Which meant that some of the people I interviewed were not suitable. 

But I did quantify people a little. I wanted a person with:

• an established service business, not ecommerce or bricks and mortar
• interest in Linkedin but not sure how to proceed 
• fewer than 1000 LinkedIn connections 

I should also have specified a geographic location. Because one person who responded to my callout was international. She was also very junior in business, so she didn’t meet the established criteria. 

I also had two people who hated LinkedIn. They had no interest in using it to grow their business. So they weren’t right for me either. 

So it was lucky that I had a total of nine interviewees because three of them were not quite right. But we had lovely chats anyway. 

Step three: offer an incentive 

Asking someone to donate their time so you can badger them with questions? Pretty big. 

So included an incentive. I offered a free 10 minute LinkedIn profile audit via Loom. 

My hunch was that people aren’t sure how to make their profiles work harder. So I figured the audit offer would appeal. (It did.)

Step four: make it easy to book

I set up a Calendly link so people could book their own time slots. I blocked out days I was unavailable. This means that anyone who wanted to book could use Calendy to schedule a time. 

But I didn’t include the Calendly link in my posts, because I wanted to vet people first. 

Step five: ask 

I created a list of places I could find people. This included: 

• my own LinkedIn page 
• paid and free Facebook groups (about five) 
• friends who reach similar audiences who could recommend candidates 

Here is the original post if you want to see it: 

And BAM! Within half an hour, I had nine bookings. 

I was shocked that it happened so quickly. I was expecting to beg people to jump on a call with me. Which goes to show: 

• people are kind 
• there’s interest 
• I have a warm audience 
• the incentive was appealing

Posting the callout in different groups helped me secure a good cross section of respondents. 

Yippee! 

Why did I ask people to send me a DM? So I could vet them. A few people offered to help who had more than 1000 followers, so I politely declined.

And after I got my international response, I changed my criteria to people in Australia.

After the nine bookings, I quickly closed the booking link. 

Even days later, people were sending DMs wanting to book, which I also declined. Nine bookings was enough. (I was aiming for five.)

Step six: implement 

Now that I had the calls booked, I turned my attention to the structure of the research calls. 

I knew the questions I was going to ask, but I needed a script to follow. 

It went like this: 

• Small talk
• Introduce myself and share my LinkedIn results
• Explain the purpose of the call 
  • emphasise that it’s not a coaching call 
  • explain how I will be using the information they share 
  • explain how I will protect their privacy 
  • explain when I will deliver the promised Loom video incentive 
• Question one: tell me about your business and what you do
• Question two: do you think LinkedIn could help you achieve your business goals? why/why not?
• Question three: do you have a LinkedIn strategy? If yes, how is it going? 
• Question four: do you have any fears about using LinkedIn? If so, why is that a fear?
• Question five: what do you like and dislike about LinkedIn? 
• Question six: share some benefit statements and ask which resonates more
• Question seven: detail my offer and get feedback 
• Conclusion: thank them for their time and wrap it up

Immediately after the call, I jumped on to their LinkedIn profile and completed the Loom profile reviews. I looked for easy ways they could increase their visibility and profile appeal. 

What happened during market research calls 

I didn’t always stick to the script. Instead, I had lovely chats with awesome humans. Being flexible helped create a natural conversation, so people felt relaxed. 

Clarifying at the start that I would not be coaching during the call was helpful too. But I couldn’t help myself and a few calls did turn into coaching sessions. 

How I use the responses in my content

As people spoke, I wrote down their answers word-for-word. It’s important to capture this. Because I want my messaging to reach my audience, in their own language. 

I got so many nuggets of wisdom! My understanding of my audience’s problems is much better now. 

After the calls, I created a big list of content prompts based on the conversations. Now I feel more confident that my messaging resonates with my audience. 

For example, one person was not sure about LinkedIn creator mode. So I wrote a blog titled ‘should you turn on LinkedIn creator mode?’

How I use the responses to create offers

My idea was to create a LinkedIn strategy VIP day offer. But I found that people didn’t resonate with that. So I turned it into a 4-week program instead. If I hadn’t done the research, I would have been stuck offering a VIP day without realising people wanted longer-term support. 

I also learned that the opposite was not appealing either.  A three-month program is too long and too costly. A four-week program hits the spot. 

Side note: I have created this offer and sold one already, whoo! 

The three mistakes I made

Mistake one: not prequalifying candidates

This left me with one person who was overseas and not reflective of my ideal client. 

And two people who hate LinkedIn and don’t see its appeal. But those two people gave me great insights as well, so I was glad to speak with them. They also helped me refine my program offer which was excellent value (for me, thanks ladies!) 

Mistake two: not asking about people’s goals in general 

I should have asked more about people’s broader business goals. I kept the conversation to LinkedIn specifically. If I’d asked, I could tie my messaging back to bigger goals. But I didn’t. Oops. 

Mistake three: turning calls into coaching sessions

One person asked me a few questions and I couldn’t help but answer. I should have been strict about my ‘no coaching’ rule. But it was fine. 

The things I did right 

Creating a valuable incentive: making it easy to get bookings

Vetting people first: by making people DM me before booking 

Having a loose script: giving me structure and confidence to run the calls

Ditching the script: allowing conversations to flow naturally 

But the biggest thing I did right? Building my audience on LinkedIn by starting in 2020. This meant that I had already established a profile and a following. So people were willing to help me out. 

TL;DR: Want to stage your own market research calls? 

Follow this easy process: 

1. Decide what you want to learn
2. Specify your ideal candidates 
3. Offer an appealing incentive 
4. Make it easy to book
5. Ask people through multiple channels
6. Vet people to get the right candidates
7. Set up a structure but be open to deviating from it 
8. Record comments word-for-word
9. Use those comments to create content (and offers)