Catching attention online isn't about having beautiful graphics and lots of exclamation marks and exciting,
catchy language. It's not about that. It's simply about reading our ideal
client's mind, sharing writing something that when they read that, even when they
skim through it, they're like, Oh, this person gets me. This
person's reading my mind. I'd better keep reading. Welcome to Imperfect Action.
I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books, downloaded all
the freebies, and did all the courses. But it wasn't until I started
taking imperfect action that my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect Action
is about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action,
and moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this
show, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips, and strategies to
build a business that brings you more profit, more free, and even more
joy. Are you on the list to get my daily businesses? Every day,
I'll send you a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business
in a more intentional way. Sign up at step Taylor dot co, forward
slash DBB, or at the link in the show Notes. Hey, welcome
back to Imperfect Action. This is episode seven hundred and ninety three. Today,
I'm sharing five questions to ask your audience so you can create targeted content
that lands. Because sometimes we like to think that we know everything about our
audience, about our ideal clients, and a lot of the time we're just
guessing. Now, whenever i run out of ideas for content, whenever I'm
stuck with my marketing, whenever I'm stuck with messaging, writing copy, anything
like that, I always go back to the audience research that I have done
in the past. I always go back to the answers that I have got
from my audience and from my ideal client whenever I have talked to them one
on one or if I've sent a survey to my list. And today I'm
going to share with you five questions that I personally do ask my audience from
time to time in my own business. Now, a couple of tips before
we jump into the questions. Surveys are great. I love surveys because they're
great for getting lots of answers. But bear in mind that not everyone is
going to give you in depth answers, and not everyone who is answering.
Your survey is your ideal client, so you do need to take it with
a little bit of a grain of salt. You know, not every answer
is going to be worth listening to. Some people might tell you your price
is are way too high and I can't ever afford to work with you.
And it's very easy to take that answer on board and be like, maybe
I need to drop my prices, But in reality, maybe this person just
isn't your ideal client, and your ideal clients are absolutely okay with your prices.
A great tip I picked up a little while ago, and I'm not
sure where I got it from, was to pay more attention to those who
put effort into their answers. So the people who are giving you longer answers
on their surveys are probably a little bit more invested in what you're doing.
They care a little bit more than the ones who are giving you three word
answers. With surveys, you may need to incentivize someone to complete the survey.
I generally will offer you a five dollar donation on behalf of each person
who completes the survey. And when we've done audience research in the past,
I think sometimes we've done two or three dollars because we get a couple one
hundred people answering, and it could it could end up being a very expensive
audience research exercise. Like I love that it's going to charity, but a
lot of the answers that we get from people who filled it out, they're
like, not really very valuable to us because they've given us like one word
answers. Right, how you frame your survey or whatever kind of research,
if it's a call, how you frame it will impact whether someone is going
to do it. This is a pick a tip that I picked up off
Kirsty Fanton where she talks about how you know if you frame it as,
hey, it's five questions and it's going to take you two minutes, that's
a lot more appealing than hey, will you do my survey? And somebody
has no idea why should they do the survey? How long is it going
to take them? What questions? How many questions? So somebody is much
more likely to do it when they know a little bit about what's involved.
Zoom calls with your ideal clients are always going to yield more meaningful responses than
a survey because you can ask follow up questions. A survey doesn't give you
the ability to ask why, or to go a little bit deeper into somebody's
answer and find out the real motivation behind it. A survey is just the
answer that they give you, and then you kind of have to take it
at that. You can't go any deeper. Whereas a few zoom calls you
can kind of ask follow up questions tap into what's going through their mind when
they are giving you these answers. Okay, So having covered off on those
tips, now here's the five questions to ask your audience so you can create
targeted content that lands Number one, what are you struggling with when it comes
to your area of expertise? This question? I love it because it uncovers
potential problems that we can solve, and it also shows us where there might
be a disconnect between what we as the expert and what we do know is
the problem. So the expert problem, what I call the expert level problem,
versus what our audience knows is the problem, or how our audience is
experiencing the problem. I love the analogy that James Wedmore uses around you're the
expert in headaches and your audience has a headache, and you know that your
audience's a headache is caused by dehydration. But for them, they are experiencing
it as a headache. They're not experiencing it as dehydration. So if you
go and give them, sell them a cure to their dehydration, they're going
to say, no, thank you, I've just got a headache. So
by asking this question, what are you struggling with? It opens up the
door for our audience to explain to us how they are experiencing the problem.
Even if it's already a problem that we know they have, we get to
hear it in their own words. It's highlighting the language that they are using
to describe the problem so that we can speak to them in their words,
not in our words. And as soon as we start to speak to somebody
in their words, that's when we can catch their attention. Right. Catching
attention online isn't about having beautiful graphics and lots of exclamation marks and exciting,
catchy language. It's not about that. It's simply about reading our client's mind
sharing writing something that when they read that, even when they skim through it,
they're like, oh, this person gets me. This person's reading my
mind. I'd better keep reading now. This question also gives really great content
ideas. It gives ideas for offers because the best offers solve a problem,
and it helps us with our messaging when we are selling these offers. So,
like I said, great things that stand out messaging online that stands out
is messaging where your ideal client feels like you are reading their mind. It's
the same with a sales page. If your ideal client is reading that sales
page and they're like, Wow, this is exactly what I need, then
they're much more likely to buy. And that all starts with listening to the
words, the language they are using with when it comes to what they are
struggling with. The next question to ask question number two what your goals as
it relates to whatever your area of expertise is this year. So, for
example, I asked what are your goals for your online business this year?
And this question I love because it uncovers what they really desire, what they
really want. It shows us ways that we can help them with our free
content, with our paid offers, and how we can communicate in our messaging
in a way that we're communicating the transformation so that they actually want it rather
than what we think that they want. We're using the words that they use
to describe what they actually want. For example, maybe maybe I would be
imagining that my ideal clients want to build an empire because that's like the biggest
possible transformation they could have. But then talking to them, I find out,
oh, actually they just want a lifestyle business that gives them time freedom
and financial freedom. So if I'm using messaging around here's my course to help
you build an empire, to say, no, thank you, I really
just want to build financial freedom and time freedom. I want a lifestyle business.
Now. The other thing that's really interesting with this question is the words
that they use your ideal clients use to articulate what they want versus the words
that you think they will use sometimes can be a very big difference, So
we want to make sure we're paying attention to what words they use. This
question also encourages them to think about what they want. Maybe they haven't actually
thought about what their goals are, and it's forcing them to consider, hey,
what do I actually want to achieve this year? Maybe it's forcing them
to even think about what's possible for them to achieve, so it can be
kind of inspiring for them as well. Question number three, what's standing in
the way of you reaching these goals? This question is great for uncovering the
potent obstacles that are holding them back from having what they want. Now.
These obstacles come in two forms, real obstacles and imagined obstacles. Most of
the obstacles will be imagined, you know. It's like, I have to
do this, this, and this before I can achieve my goal. And
it's probably because they are overcomplicating it, or maybe they're overwhelmed, or maybe
they are afraid. I get this one a lot with my audience where they're
like, oh, I have to get more followers before I can launch my
course. I'm just waiting to have more followers, and that shows me,
Hey, okay, so I need to do a bit more educating around how
you can launch for the first time and you can launch multiple times even before
you've got lots of followers. Or the other one that comes up is I
have to find a videographer and decide where I want to host my course before
I can create it. And that's actually a backwards approach. So I now
know, okay, I need to do some educating around why that is a
backwards approach. Now, these imagined obstacles, they're ones that you can overcome
both in your free content and in each part of your sales process. So
if you have a webinar, or if you have sales calls, card,
open emails, sales page, all of these are elements of your sales process,
and you can use these parts of the sales process to help your ideal
client to see how these obstacles aren't real obstacles. They are obstacles that they
have created in their mind, and that it's actually a lot easier for them,
or a lot closer for them to reach those goals than they thought was
possible. Now, the real obstacles, the ones that aren't imaginary obstacles.
These could give you ideas for other offers that you could potentially create as well,
or they could give you ideas for free content you could create for your
ideal clients. All right, question number four, if you could waive a
magic wand and achieve those goals, how would you show up differently? What
would you do differently? What would be different in your life? Life?
And this question is really getting them to visualize their future selves, and it's
giving you inspiration for your messaging and your copy that you can use when you're
selling your offers. Because when somebody is buying your offer, they're really buying
a future version of themselves. They're buying into this future identity that they don't
currently hold and that they really want to hold. So, for example,
let's say right now they are an unsuccessful business owner. That's the identity they've
given themselves. When they are buying your course on how to market their business
better, or how to write copy, or how to launch or any of
those business related courses, what they are really buying is this idea that one
day their future identity is going to be a successful business owner or whatever that
identity is for them. So when we get to when we ask them about
their future selves and a question like this, then we can really speak to
what they want to be and who they want to be in the future,
and our becomes so much more compelling to the ideal client. This is also
a really inspiring question for them to answer, because chances are they haven't stepped
into the future of themselves their future selves in a little while. They probably
haven't reflected on this, so allowing them this moment where they can visualize what
their future might look like. It's pretty cool. It's kind of cool for
them. And then question number five, the final question is what questions do
you have about whatever your area of expertise is? And if you have multiple
areas of expertise, you can ask this question multiple times. You know,
I would rephrase this in different ways. What questions do you have about digital
product launchers is one? What questions do you have about building an online business
that's profitable when you're offline? That's another one. I would ask what questions
do you have about building out your office suite? What questions do you have
about growing your audience? What questions do you have about launching a podcast?
These are all different my areas of expertise, based on my different offers,
and I wouldn't ask them all in one survey because you know, the more
questions you have in the survey, the fewer people are going to respond.
But I would alternate between these depending on what the goal of the survey is.
This is my favorite question for content ideas. Honestly, I ask it
every time I send a survey to my list. Every time I do it,
I end up with dozens of new podcast topics. And this is how
I've managed to do seven hundred and ninety three episodes without running out of ideas
yet. And honestly, I have still so many more in my idea bank,
and it's just it's multiplying because my team and I now we do brainstorming
calls every month content brainstorming calls where we come up with new topics based on
past ones, based on questions that people have asked, based on the survey
responses that we have, we think about different ways that we can approach all
of these different topics. So there you have it. Five questions to ask
your audience. What are you struggling with? What are your goals? What
is standing in the way of you reaching those goals? If you could waive
a magic wand and achieve those goals, how would you show up differently?
What would be different in your life? And then lastly, what questions do
you have about my area of expertise? If this episode has been helpful for
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so much for listening. Catch you next time.