Part 1:
Research

It doesn’t matter if you or the key people on your marketing team identify as part of your target market or your ideal client profile…

…you need to gather data and insights from outside of your own building. 

It isn’t a one time process either, it is an ongoing one. 

It happens slowly at first and then all at once that companies find they no longer are resonating with the market. Or that a competitor came in and ate their lunch because they were more tapped into what the market needs now. 

The good news is that just about everyone is leaving all sorts of clues online as to what they want, what they need, what they like, and what the hate. 

It doesn’t matter if you sell physical goods, SaaS, coaching + information products, or anything else — there is at least one major platform filled with honest reviews from real customers sharing exactly where products exceeded expectations & where they fell short. 

The go to place for physical products is obviously Amazon but you can see reviews on the sites of your main competitors as well. For SaaS there are sites like G2 and Capterra. 

For everything else, there’s a good chance there are reviews on sites like Trustpilot, Reddit, YouTube, or elsewhere that can be found with a Google Search.

There are also plenty of social listening and search listening tools that can help you to understand exactly what your market is thinking, feeling, saying, and wanting.

Part 2:
Your Offers

Your research should lead you to at least a couple of strong hypotheses for what your market desires.

The outcomes they want. The problems they want solved. The emotions and experiences they hope to have more of in their life.

Rank what you believe to be the top desires and engineer your offers and your marketing of your offers around them.

It will take some testing to truly nail it but you’ll know it when you hit on something that people in your market want.

There is a huge difference in the quality of response for something that someone needs compared to something that is a “nice to have”. 

And don’t hold back. 

You might only have one chance to get through to a perfect potential customer or client so you better lead with your best shot.

You may even feel like you’re going to offend some people or that you’re giving too much away up front…

Good. 

If it arouses some emotions in you when you think about sharing it, it’s usually a sign that it will capture the attention of people in your market as well.

The size of your team and the creative resources at your disposal will dictate how lean you need to be with testing offers and testing messaging around the offers. 

In many cases it makes sense to “dry test” before having to actually build a lead magnet or product or offer to gauge the interest before investing into actual development. 

You can have people join a waitlist or have a pre-sale for initial “founders” to get a special deal for paying before the actual offer is built. 

If you have the resources to do it, you can buy some paid traffic to a “dry test” offer to establish rate metrics on several offers and messages to know how your market responds to what you want to create.

Part 3:
Your Follow Up

Most businesses don’t give enough consideration to the fact that behind every visitor to their site and ever lead they generate is a living, breathing person whose attention is scarce.

We all have the entire internet at our fingertips on multiple devices. We all have jobs and friends and families and hobbies too.

There is an endless abundance of potential things to take our time, energy, attention, and money.

Even if your products are a perfect fit for someone and your initial messaging is strong, it might not land for someone because they were distracted or stressed or hyper focused in the moment they initially came across your business. 

This is why the fortune is in the follow up. 

Use the follow up to continue to address the top desires and needs from different angles. 

Give people multiple mediums to consume the content because some people are watchers, some are readers, and some are listeners.

If there is a clear face of your brand, they need to show up in images and in video. In this case, a large percentage of potential buyers need to know, like, and trust the person who is the face of the company. 

And lastly — challenge yourself to give value in the form of insight, information, and risk free ways to get a closer look at your offers.

Some people may take months or even years before they buy. Some of them will never buy. That’s just the way it is. But building goodwill always finds a way to pay dividends back to your company.