Hello, my friend, welcome to the Tralongo track. I'm your host, Giana, and this is your weekly dose of a little bit of mom life, a little bit of business strategy, and all the insanity that happens in between. I'm so excited that you're here. I also know that you're busy. You got life going on. So let's jump right into the episode.
Welcome. Welcome. Well, Episode 43, we're talking about market research today. I'm going to tell you a story, because I'm nothing but honest about my failures. Okay, so I hated market research when I first started my business. I avoided it like the plague. I definitely thought I knew better and didn't really understand why I had to do it.
In all fairness, the way that I was taught to do it felt very unrealistic for a mom who was home with her two kids. The way that I was taught to do it was to jump on a phone call and talk for 15 minutes or half an hour and take notes and then re-watch the video. And I'm like, “Yo, ain't nobody got time for that, right?”
Here's when I realized that I was making a really big mistake by not doing it. I had this content program called How Busy Moms Do Social Media. This was old school, Giana. In my marketing, for the most part, I was focusing on moms not having enough time to create content. The first time I launched it, I didn't sell a lot and I was so confused why and I'm like, “Okay, I didn't sell any. Fine, let me do market research.”
So I started talking to my ideal client and they didn't resonate with not having enough time at all. They were telling me all different things. They didn't know what to post. They didn't know what time to post. They felt like they were, oh my gosh, what is it called? They had imposter syndrome.
All these things that had nothing to do with not having enough time. I literally would never have had that information if I didn't do market research, right? I thought I knew better. I was so stubborn about it. I get it.
After I did that market research, I completely changed my marketing plan, because I needed to talk to what my ideal client was actually struggling with, not what I assumed they were struggling with, because we know what we do when we assume.
If you've been avoiding market research, please use this as your sign to start doing it. It really, really helps get into the head of your ideal client. You're able to use her language in your marketing, which creates better connections. It makes creating your content easier–way easier. If you do market research the right way, it essentially creates your content for you.
That's when you start getting the DMs that are like, “Oh my gosh, you're in my head.” Or, “Oh, I was just thinking about that today,” because you're literally taking what your ideal client is saying and turning it into content.
There's really three ways to do it. You can do all three. You can pick what works for you.
You can tell me to jump off a bridge and do nothing. That's fine, too. You do you, but I'm telling you that market research is incredibly, incredibly important. I do market research essentially before every new offer I'm going to launch, and then I'll typically do it in a transition period or once a quarter just to check in with my audience, find out why they're following me, just kind of do that check in, like that pulse point.
So the three ways to do it. Talk to your current clients or re-watch coaching videos, if you record your coaching videos, and on the call you, you kind of were like, oh my gosh, that should totally be a post. Go back and r- watch the coaching videos. Whenever I'm stuck on content, which doesn't happen often, but if I get in a rut on content, I go and re-watch coaching videos and immediately have a notebook full of ideas.
To teach about and talk about actually this pod. Now that I'm saying this, this podcast episode came from when I did a one-on-one call to help one of my clients build out her offer suite. We started talking about market research and she was like, oh, no. No, I lied. This isn't my broadcast channel. Okay, we're off the rails here. In my broadcast channel, I did a Q& A week, and her question was, “Everybody talks about market research, but nobody tells you what it is or how to do it to actually make it work for you.”
I was like, “Oh, dude, that's so true. I even talk about market research, but I guess I've never really elaborated on it.” So here we are, having a whole podcast episode on it, content on it. So, asking your current clients, rewatching those coaching videos and using questions that your audience is asking you or your clients are asking you and creating content or even mini offers with that information is super helpful.
The next one is much more of the traditional way and that is surveys. Now, depending on who your ideal client is, my ideal clients are moms, and they’re business owners. Their time is limited, but I honestly think, for the most part, people are busy. You do really want to limit the survey.
Have some multiple choice questions. Mostly multiple choice, honestly, and then one or two kind of, you know, paragraphs, but you want the questions to be very, very specific. In my opinion, surveys actually work better when it's for a specific type of offer versus just general conversation. When you do surveys, you are going to have to reach out and ask specific people to do them.
I like to ask people to do the surveys who have been circling and watching and been engaging with my content, with my stories. Maybe we've been chatting in the DMs a little bit, but they haven't purchased from me. Those are the people I like to ask to do the surveys to find out, okay, is this somebody that would ever buy from me anyway, or do I have anything to offer her that's actually going to help her? It helps me get in her brain a little bit more. Surveys work better if they're more thorough.
Then, what has worked the best for me, and I'm going to kind of walk you through the strategy. This is not a strategy I created out of my butt. I kind of piecemealed a couple different people's strategies together, and as soon as I tell you what it is, you're going to have an initial reaction to me, but hear me out, okay?
Story polls. Story polls are the best, easiest, lowest barrier to entry, way to do market research. You're going to say, um, “Giana, nobody answers my polls. Nobody puts anything in the question box when I put it out there.” I'm going to say, “Well, let's talk about how to do this the right way instead of the wrong way.”
The wrong way is posting 22 question boxes one time a year and hoping people are going to answer them, because they're not going to do that. You have to train your audience. Having question boxes, not just for market research or having polls, don't just do it for market research. Do it for fun stuff.
Would you rather, what color shirt should I wear today? How do you do your coffee? What can you not live without, right? Make it a part of your ongoing content strategy in just a fun, personal way. That's where you have to start.
Then, second, what I have found has worked really, really well when you are doing story polls is to tell people from the jump that you're doing market research. You would so appreciate their time to answer these polls, because you do appreciate their time, and that you will not DM them at the end, right?
Because, a lot of times people don't answer polls, because they do not want to be DM'd and pitched, because that's what people do.
You're not, you're not going to DM them and pitch, you just want the information. So tell them, like type it out on the slide, I'm not going to DM you and pitch you, I'm just collecting this information. It is much more likely, I have done this and several of my clients have done it, it is much more likely that they will answer you when you do that.
Then, at the end you can say, I do this sometimes, I don't do this all the time, but if it's a much more pointed type of market research, again like for a specific program, on the last slide I will say if you answered all these questions and are comfortable with me sliding in your DMs and asking you (if you have like a couple more specific questions), I'm still not going to pitch you, hit yes or no.
Then for the people that hit yes, slide in their DMs and have a back and forth conversation, which will give you a little bit more insight into where they're at. Be respectful of their time, and personally, I almost always offer them like, let me send you a coffee. Let me send you a $10 Amazon gift card.
Some people are like, girl, no, like I'm fine. Some people are like, yes, immediately send me a Starbucks. I will take it.
Those are three ways that you can easily do market research. It doesn't take a ton of time out of your life, out of your business to do it, but it can make a huge impact when you launch.
It can make a huge impact on the content that you create and the connections that you're making. It is something that you want to build into your launch strategy. You want to build it into the quarterly planning of your business. I highly recommend that you keep a market research doc and just, you know, it doesn't have to be fancy.
Just keep all your notes there so that when you do get stuck you can refer back to what that looks like and if you're wanting to learn more about market research and really have me basically like virtually hold your hand walk you through it. I have a 7 minute market research 101 video and a workbook.
This is really going to help you craft the specific questions to ask that's linked in the show notes. It's going to walk you through how to do the market research, the questions. It's going to talk about what you can ask your current clients. So again, that's linked in the show notes. That's what I have for you today.
I hope you have a really great week. I hope this helps you really get into the brain of your ideal client and I'll see you. Holy moly. I'll see you in October. Oh my gosh. I'll see you in the spooky month. Have a great week. Bye.
