Michel Fortin has answered Edward’s question! Here
it is…
Question: “How do you get inside the head of the
prospect?” And I’ll try and make it more specific
by saying, what’s a quick overview of your
methodology for discovering the conversation in
the prospect’s mind?
I just posted a blog post today, “How to Target
Your Perfect Customer,” that specifically deals
with this. (What a coincidence!) Here’s the link:
Michel Fortin’s Blog
Generally, this involves doing a lot of detective
work. Market research is key. Getting to know the
prospect as intimately as possible is even better,
and a step beyond typical market research.
Sometimes, I conduct phone interviews with
clients, record the conversation and get the call
transcribed. And often, they practically write the
copy for me!
I try to pull out their passion. Get them to
expand. Ask open-ended questions. Ask questions
(like the questions I posted in my blog post) and
let them take over the conversation. Really.
I also sometimes browse related or
industry-specific forums. Just watching some of
the conversations going on is very telling. People
are posting their desires, their fears, their
concerns, their appreciation (or disklike) of
certain products, both competing and non-competing
products, etc.
Sometimes, I join these forums under a pseudonym
and pose questions, as if I was “one of them.” I
then carefully watch what kind of answers they
give me. And blogs and social networking sites,
which have now exploded, are perfect locations to
discover what kind of conversations are going on
in specific niches or about specific topics.
For example, let’s say you’re writing copy for a
“fly fishing” infoproduct. Then you could browse
forums like:
http://www.flyfishingforum.com/
http://www.theflyfishingforum.com/
http://troutunderground.com/
Sometimes, and if the client hasn’t done so, I
also create a blog or information site, where I
post articles on the topic at hand. If I have
enough time, I tend to wait it out a bit, see what
kind of traffic it generates, what kind of
comments it gets, and what kind of keywords they
find me under.
There are tons of market research tools out there
to help you. You can use them to do keyword
research, lateral analyses — meaning, other
topics, concepts of discussions going on in the
marketplace you target, including locations they
find you under. For example, if a blog on fishing
links to you, what was the conversation? What are
the comments on that blog post in which you were
linked from? What other sites are they linking to,
and what do THEY say?
(There are many new tools to help you, like
www.hittail.com that lists some of the
less-than-targeted keywords they find you under,
but are popular enough on the Internet to warrant
more research. Hittail is specifically designed to
help you know what to post. You can post articles
with more of those keywords in them to attract
more traffic. But I like to use it to find out the
frame-of-mind of the visitor.)
David Garfinkel said it best: don’t just learn who
your market is and what their problem is. Find out
“how they talk about it.” That’s important. How
they talk about their problem is not just a
language thing (meaning, what the problem means to
them).
It’s also very insightful into the mindset of the
market, the behaviors of your market, buying
patterns, lifestyle choices, etc. For example, if
your product is about how to cure insomnia, people
don’t talk about insomnia. They talk about
lethargy, lack of productivity, loss of job or
relationships, feeling sluggish, absenteeism, lack
of clarity and focus, low self-esteem, etc.
So the copy shouldn’t talk about how to cure
insomnia. It should talk about all the “problems”
and “end-results” people suffer and talk about as
a result of insomnia. See the difference?
Michel Fortin, CEO
The Success Doctor, Inc.
http://SuccessDoctor.com
