NOTE: If you’re a brand new customer of mine – I send out a new tutorial every week about running a solopreneur business and copywriting. There’s nothing for sale this week.
—
Yesterday I told you that the first thing I do with any business struggling to get off the ground… or to get more money out of an existing business… is to run one of my 30 Second Surveys.
30 Second Surveys are the best way to:
-
Understand which of your leads actually pull out their credit cards to solve their problems (vs. who are the freebie seekers who are statistically unlikely to ever spend on anything)
-
Learn exactly what the buyers are looking to spend money on right now
-
And to know the exact products you should be building next, as well as the exact phrasing to use in your copy to sell them
I am huge proponent of surveys when they’re done like my 30 Second Surveys. I’d go far as to say they’re life-savers for most business owners who are confused about who their customers are or what products they should build next and how they should write copy to sell them.
But there’s a huge problem with traditional surveys.
Everyone that fills out a normal survey is "lying" to you in some way.
-
They’re trying to tell you what they think you want to hear
-
They’re lying to themselves about their situation
-
Or they simply don’t know what they want or need
The "lying" is almost never intentional. It’s just something we all do subconsciously when taking surveys. We’re protecting our ego or the ego of those around us.
[There’s a book I recommend everyone read that covers this exact issue called "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick says that you should never ask your friends, family or anyone if they’d buy or do something – which is exactly how traditional surveys work.]
But even worse than your customer’s responses not being trustworthy, is the fact that most traditional surveys are taken only because of a bribe.
How many times have you seen (or run) a survey that says something like:
"We want your feedback. Fill out this survey and get a free widget."
Bribing people to fill out a survey is the worst possible thing you can do and you might as well delete the data because it’s useless.
That sounds harsh maybe, but think about who fills out surveys for a free bribe.
Freebie seekers.
Now, I’m not going to kick freebie seekers off my email list, but I sure as heck don’t want their opinion on what kind of content I should write, or products I should build… because they obviously won’t buy it.
And the entire purpose of running a business is to make money.
All too often I see business owners struggling because they don’t know how to identify their buyers – and they end up producing all their content for the freebie seekers (who, surprise surprise, won’t ever buy no matter how perfect your content is).
Your surveys should always be looking to identify people who buy things and to put weight into their opinions.
How do we do this? The 30 Second Survey of course.
And it starts all the way back at the beginning, with the call to action to fill out the 30 Second Survey.
We want to immediately start filtering out leads who are desperate to solve a problem.
This is very meta but look at the call to action I made for the survey I sent to my list (you) yesterday:
I’ve set up a 30 Second Survey I’d like you to fill out.
It really should only take about 30 seconds to fill out.
And it’s actually a real 30 Second Survey – I want to understand my own list better, so please fill it out like you would normally :-).
For the rest of this week, I’ll be using the results of this survey to show you how to set these things up yourself – and interpret & use the results to 2x-10x the amount of money you can generate from any list.
>>> Here’s the link to it (it’s 100% anonymous)
I’ll start sharing the initial results tomorrow – and explain a bit more about why the questions are phrased the way they are, and the psychology behind each one.
What do you notice?
There’s no bribe to fill it out and it’s mainly me-focused.
The reason why I’m sending the survey is so I can understand my list better – and then I’ll be able to create content that helps you.
You want to set up your call to action for your survey in the same way for a very specific reason:
There’s a small percentage of your list that is desperate to solve their problem – and you want those people’s responses first and foremost.
Only someone who is desperate and actively looking for solutions will fill out a survey with a call to action like this.
Those people want better content that will help them solve their problem faster.
And, more often than not, they’re your buyers.
The people who actually pull out their credit cards when they have a problem.
Most of the other people on your list are tire-kickers waiting for opportunities to hit them over their head. That’s fine – I’m that avatar in some hobby areas of my life – but when it comes to business problems, I want to solve problems fast and be done with it. That’s why I’m a good customer to have in the business market and if businesses surveyed me properly, they’d get a lot more money out of me than they do now.
So that’s step one: you want only people who are actively (and preferably desperately) looking to solve their problems to fill out your survey.
The next step in this "buyer filtering" process is the survey questions themselves.
And this email has gone on long enough…
So I’ll cover those tomorrow.
— Derek
P.S. I’m running a 30 Second Survey of my own right now – and if you haven’t yet, I’d love if you took 30 seconds to fill out.
It really should only take about 30 seconds and it’s actually a real 30 Second Survey – I want to understand my own list better, so please fill it out like you would normally :-).
>>> Here’s the link to it (it’s 100% anonymous)
We’ll be going over the results a little later this week.