Why voice of customer is so important in your messaging

Nailing your voice of customer is so important. 

WIthout it, you can show up all you want, but your content will tank. 

Because you are not speaking your customers’ language. 

So what is voice of customer? 

You know that scene in Ghost, with Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg? 

Patrick is the hot ghost and Whoopi is the psychic medium who can hear him.

There’s a scene where he’s telling her to repeat his message ‘word for word’ 

Anyway, whenever I talk about the importance of voice of customer, I hear Whoopi’s voice saying: ‘word-for-word.’

So, voice of customer is a fancy marketing buzzword for knowing how your customers describe their problems, goals and fears. 

When you use your customers’ language, you resonate. 

When you fail to do so, they tap out. And once lost, they are gone forever. (Like Patrick… sniff.)

That’s why it’s mega-ultra-really-super-yes-ma’am important for you to get right. 

If you stuff up this crucial bit, the rest of your content marketing game is going straight to hell, just like evil Willie Lopez. (This scene scared the shit outta me at the time.) 

The big voice of customer mistake

Sometimes we are just too close to the situation. Without realising, we use expert language. 

Massive fail. It’s worse than Carl’s fake coffee stunt. (Okay, no more Ghost references.) 

We are so damned familiar with the language of our industry. So we start using these smartypants phrases and no one bloody gets it. 

And when someone doesn’t get it, they feel dumb. They might think YOU are smart, but they FEEL dumb. And that is the last thing you want your customers to feel. 

The problem with that smart, or professional language? It often lacks emotion. 

When you ditch that wordy jargon, and adopt plainer style, you hit your customer in the feels. 

They consume your content thinking: 

• ‘Yes, that is SO my problem’
• ‘OMG, she gets me’
• ‘Wow, I think she can really help me’ 

And it’s only a matter of time till they roll into your DMs, begging you to work with them. 

So now you know how much it matters, you need to take action.

How to find your voice of customer 

Time for research. 

I recommend these tactics: 

1. ask yourself 
2. ask your customers 
3. online stalking 
4. Amazon reviews 
5. Google keywords 

Voice of customer tactic #1: ask yourself 

Hopefully, you listen to your customers and you understand their brains. 

That’s why you’re bloody great at what you do. 

So ask yourself, how would your customer finish these three questions: 

• “I want to…” 
• “I don’t know how to…” 
• “I am afraid that…” 

Let’s say you’re a fitness coach specialising in injury recovery

Your customer might say: 

• ‘I want to play tennis without pain’
• ‘I don’t know how to rebuild strength’ 
• ‘I’m afraid that I’ll never play well again’ 

A common mistake here would be to say something like: 

For tennis injuries, our acute injury treatment includes manual joint therapy, active rest and compressive bandages. 

Expert language alert! 

This terminology might be confusing for your customer and doesn’t tap into their emotions.

So using your voice of customer word for word: 

Worried you’ll never play well again? 

Our goal is to rebuild your strength so you can be  playing pain-free tennis again as soon as safely possible

{Side note: There is a place for technical information, especially in the healthcare space. But be careful not to focus on the features of your service and forget to talk about how your customer feels.}

In this video I share another example 

Voice of customer tactic #2: ask your customers 

It’s very worthwhile to conduct market research to get the words directly from your customers. 

These conversations can be an absolute goldmine for accurately capturing your voice of customer. 

Recently, I conducted nine customer interviews with service business owners who want to get more out of LinkedIn. They said some bloody brilliant stuff, so it was well worth my time. 

What I did: 

• prepare a quick list of survey questions based on customer goals, problems and fears 
• put a callout on various social channels looking for volunteers
• offered a free LinkedIn profile review as an incentive for people to participate
• shared a Calendly link so people could easily book a slot 

Within half an hour of my callout, I had booked nine spots! Whoo. 

In the research calls, I simply chatted to them about their experiences with LinkedIn, and their goals, problems and fears. 

And how did I write down their responses? You guessed it: word for word.

Voice of customer tactic #3: online stalking

Time to stop stalking your ex online and research your customer instead. (Psst, mine is a super hotshot in finance; don’t tell him I looked.)

Visit your favourite Facebook group, where you reckon your ideal customer is hanging out.

Not sure which groups to target? Use the Facebook search tool to find groups related to your audience or niche by name, such as:

• Aussie women in business (if you are a biz coach)
• ask a hairdresser (if you are a stylist)
• pregnancy groups (if you are a birth doula) 

Use the Group search bar to enter your key phrase. And write down the topics that come up. 

I did this in a bunch of groups to understand the questions people have about LinkedIn. Some of the comments included: 

• I have no idea what to do with my business profile on LinkedIn
• Should I turn creator mode on or not? 
• I struggle with LinkedIn, it’s just so dry, not my place 
• I am all over Instagram but I have no idea when it comes to LinkedIn 
• How can I get the most out of LinkedIn for my business?

These are great topics for me to cover in posts. I even wrote a blog to answer the question: should you turn on creator mode? 

Voice of customer tactic #4: Amazon book reviews 

On Amazon, there is a book for every subject. 

And the reviews are a voice of customer bonanza. 

Here’s what to do: 

1. Head to Amazon.com
2. Search for book reviews related to your topic 
3. Scan the reviews for potential phrases
4. Look for voice of customer nuggets in both good and bad reviews 

Let’s say you are a property stylist or interior decorator. Or house-make-pretty person. 

On Amazon, I quickly found this book on interior style with 362 ratings. 

Here’s a review that is littered with voice of customer prompts. 

You can take the comments from this review and turn them into content ideas for your social media, emails or sales pages.

All this from just ONE review?! Thank you, Bezos. 

Voice of customer tactic #5 Google search 

Google knows everything about us, starting with what we search online. 

And those search terms can be fantastic clues for what your customers are searching for too. 

There are three free Google search features you can use: 

1. Autocorrect 
2. People also ask 
3. Related searches 

Google autocorrect guesses what you’re about to type, based on data on previous similar searches. 

To activate it, type the beginning of a phrase related to your niche, and let Google finish the question for you. 

My client, an ADHD coach uses this tool to find blog topics. 

What a bloody bonza list of topics! 

The people also ask feature suggests similar questions based on the original search query. 

Trigger this by typing a question your ideal customer might search online. 

Let’s say you are a decorator and you want to talk about bedroom colours for winter. The people also ask feature gives you four content ideas. All great voice of customer, non-jargony questions you can answer. 

And finally, the related searches feature appears towards the bottom of your Google search results page. 

Let’s say you’re a hairdresser and you want to make shampoo recommendations to your audience of busy mums. 

Using the related search feature, you can see some ideas for content. 

Question: Now you have captured great voice of customer content, where do you use it? 

Answer: EVERYWHERE 

1. Your website sales pages
2. Your Instagram posts, reels and stories 
3. Your Facebook ads 
4. Your sales pages 
5. Your SEO meta descriptions 
6. Your emails 
7. Your blog posts 
8. Your LinkedIn posts 
9. Your video marketing 
10. Your discovery and sales calls 
11. Your media interviews 
12. Your networking conversations 
13. Your sleep (optional) 

So to recap, why voice of customer is so important, and how to find it: 

Using voice of customer language makes you connect deeply with your customers, so they trust your expertise. Find your voice of customer by: 

1. Ask yourself: what are your customer goals, problems and fears? 
2. Ask your customers: survey them and use their replies word for word 
3. Stalk Facebook groups and other online sources to find questions your customers ask about your niche 
4. Search Amazon reviews for voice of customer inspiration
5. Use Google free search tools to find content prompts 

Once you’ve found your voice of customer language, use it everywhere. 

When you get voice of customer right, your content hits your audience in the feels. 

It’s like you read their minds—because you kinda sorta did. You’re almost on psychic level—just like Oda-Mae Brown. (Sorry, could not resist a final Ghost reference).