It might sound like hyperbole, but it’s true—a well-run survey will give you all the ammunition you need to build products your list desperately wants to buy, and to write the copy that sells them.
In this email I’m going to show you how I use 30-Second Survey responses to come up with course ideas that I can build and sell.
Step 1: Run a 30-Second Survey
Make sure you run a 30-Second Survey that looks like this.
A few key things to remember:
- The CTA to get someone to fill out this survey should be weak ensuring that only people desperate to solve their problems participate.
- The last 2 questions are designed for you to be able to identify the buyers and "hyper-responders" on your list. You will weigh their responses more heavily when analyzing the "#1 biggest struggle" question.
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Read back on my emails from this week and last if you want to learn more.
Step 2: Manually go through your survey responses (it’s worth your time even if it takes a couple hours)
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is trying to hand off this step to someone else or to try to run it through AI.
If you are going to be writing the copy for your business and/or creating the products, reading survey results is 1000% worth your time and mental energy. 30 minutes – 120 minutes spent reading now, will save you hours in writing time later.
Step 3: Open a separate text document & create "buckets" for the common problems you identify
Open up your survey results and a separate text document (I use Apple Notes).
Look at each response line by line.
If you notice that someone hasn’t purchased other products and they don’t want a phone call with you – you can skip their response (for now).
For example, I’ll pay attention to the first response here, and skip the second one:
Now look at their response to the "biggest struggle" question.
What’s the general problem they’re trying to solve? I make that a simple heading in my text document – it’s now a "bucket".
Then I copy/paste their response in a bullet below. This is what my text document starts to look like:
You might start with a bunch of different headings or "buckets" and that’s okay.
You’ll begin to notice that certain buckets fill up with more responses than others and that they should be merged. For example, the "Traffic" bucket could be merged into "Growing & marketing strategy".
By the time you’ve reached the end of your survey responses, shoot for 3-7 buckets at the most. It’s better to have larger buckets that solve several related issues, versus a ton of small buckets.
Step 4: These buckets are the products your list wants. Figure out how to create them or how to sell them as an affiliate.
When you’ve spent some time gathering responses and building buckets, you’ll notice that some buckets will begin to dominate.
In my case, I noticed that the "Time" bucket which is really the "Productivity" bucket, started to build up the most responses.
I wasn’t expecting this result although it makes sense in retrospect.
So there’s one product idea – a productivity course – staring at me in the face.
Yes, it really can be this easy and if you run a 30-Second Survey and go through the above process, you’ve thought more deeply about your next product idea than 95% of other marketers and businesses have.
You do not have to simply guess what your list wants next – your best customers and buyers will practically scream out what they need (if you let them by using these surveys).
In the next email I’ll show you how I use 30-Second Survey responses to write the actual copy for the products I create. When you use customers’ words you start to get responses like, "Oh my god it feels like you’re reading my mind!" And that’s a lot of fun (and very profitable too).
Talk to you tomorrow!
– Derek