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Using Research To Improve Your Messaging

the launch playbook podcast May 02, 2022

Listening is your best copy strategy. Learn 5 ways you could begin gathering research all year long (and not just when you work with a copywriter like me) or in your annual survey. 

 

 

In this episode, I talked about...

  •  why you want to include collecting information into your regular workflow and not just save it for an annual survey 
  •  a story about why the timing of your message matters
  •  5 ways to gather research all year long
  •  the hidden power of your thank you page
  • using A/B tests to learn more about the words that entice your  audience to open their email
  • the reason you want to send more surveys this year 
  • why it's time to consider a quiz for your business

...and much, much more

Things mentioned in this episode

Read the full transcript so you don't miss a thing


You're listening to the launch playbook podcast, the weekly podcast for service based business owners to discover the starts, stops and tools, the transformation that go into launching their online offers. I'm your host, Sara Vartanian. And if you want to launch your ideas into the world faster, with more success and less burnout, Well, friends, consider this show your secret playbook to get you there.


Sara: In today's episode, we're going to talk about how to use research to improve your messaging for your next launch. But before we dive into the five ways that you can incorporate more research on a daily basis, on a regular basis into your workflow, I have a bit of a personal story for you. I don't usually get this personal on the podcast, and it's something I'm challenging myself to do through the year. It's something that I'm more reserved from an email list. So if you're on my email list have been around for a few years, you may have heard this one. But if you haven't, and you like to hear personal stories from your podcast hosts and your launch copywriter, then please definitely come on over and sign up.

So here goes. My family has been complicated since my mom died in 2015. If you're been around for a little while, you know that my mum passed away from breast cancer in 2015. And things got strained. There was these, I'm gonna call these micro fractures in relationships, they became valleys. And a few years ago, for one reason or the other. My brother and I hadn't seen each other for almost 15 months. And then it was my mom's birthday is November 14. And I was feeling raw. And I had felt heaviness of the years since our last conversation. And I still feel that every year on her birthday, when I look back and I realize how long it's been. And so I was listening to my kids reenacting this, like WWE match on my living room floor and realizing that the school was not happy the next day, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed and vulnerable. And that's when my brother texted me and he asked me to come over. And like I said, it's been 15 months. So it wasn't really the greatest time I was emotional.

My kids were rolling around fighting, really. But I said okay, and he showed up, we made some awkward, small talk. And then he gave me my belated birthday card. And in it were 41 scratch tickets. And with that gift, every drop of misunderstanding and anger deflated for me like a balloon. I couldn't even see in front of me for tears. Because see, since the age of 19, my mom had gifted my siblings and I a card stuffed with the same number of scratch tickets as how old we were. And then in our birthday night, we sit at the kitchen table with her drinking tetley's He, and scratching them. And the last card my mom gave me help 36 tickets. And what does this have to do with you? It's reminder that the timing of your message matters. Your clients and your customers will be so much more open to what you have to offer. If you can find the right way to empathize with them where they are at the moment you are trying to reach them. And that's why you must adopt a listening mindset.

So you're hoping to hear the actual word phrases, objections, barriers that are standing in the way of people making a buying decision. Because only when you know the words that matter, can you use them to offer your solution as the only choice. So saying yes is easy. It's kind of like how 41 scratch tickets got me to stand up and hug my brother, before I brewed a cup of Tetley Tea and got scratching. And so that's why I spend most of my time has launched cooperative listening, whether that's reviewing clients, course, videos, podcasts, IG lives, or going back through transcripts of customer calls or client calls. Listening first is really the best copy strategy.

I know, listening is your best copy strategy. But heck, I think it's really your best sales strategy to that's why when I work with clients, one on one, the launch, where the experience and why the launch playbook club starts there, too. We focus on what I call the hard to her phase. So this is where we talk about enter. We do interviews with clients, we send surveys, we review testimonials, and we go in what I like to call a listening tour around the internet. Because as I already mentioned, listening matters most and the timing of your message matters.

And the only way you can figure out when to send those messages is by listening. And honestly, well I know my clients love the copy I produce they get extra excited about all the research because it can be used for so much more messaging, offer creation, content, strategy and so on. But something I've noticed when working with these one on one coffee clients, is it beyond some onboarding forms, and the occasional survey, collecting this invaluable info isn't done frequently. And so today, I want to share with you five ways you can begin gathering research all year long, and not just when you work with a cooperator like me or in your annual survey.

Let's dive into number one. So the first way would be to connect with more people make time in your calendar for Heart to Heart conversations with the people you love working with most. So that could be regular interviews, it could be Aubrey opening up your calendar for coffee chats, whatever works for you, then you transcribe those conversations, you can read through all that super valuable information, that conversation. And it'll help inform you about what folks need from you. Because when you start with that human connection, your messaging always improves. And those leads and the sales that you want, they follow. Number two, would be to get a feedback where you can. And so my favorite place to do this is actually on thank you pages. So if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you've often hear me talk about how when people take action on an email, or when they purchase from you, we want to acknowledge that action with a thank you page. And so on that thank you page, it's really easy to add a question on every thank you page to find out why they signed up, or why they took this action.

And so it could be an open ended question. Or you could do a multiple choice question. I do find it works best. If it's just one question. I feel like it's really simple and quick for people to answer they do. And so I love to use type form for this because you can embed it into the thank you pages. And if you're delivering a one to one service, and someone doesn't book with you, another option would be to ask them why let them know it'll help you improve, and would be so appreciated. And as much as it can be hard to hear that information. It will help improve your sales calls your and your messaging when you find out what was missing for them. In my onboarding process, whether it's for my signature done for you launch with the experience or for my VIP sales days, I always ask what would make this a success for you? What is the goal and why right now. And I do that because I'm interested. But also that helps me understand the urgency for folks and what brought them to my door at the time, and allows me to create content that can talk to that more. This episode of the launch playbook podcast is brought to you by my free launch maps, your complete step by step map of all your launch assets.

So you know exactly what messaging notes to hit, and when to share each piece of copy. Because I know that you have signed up for many freebies over the years only to be disappointed with the Canva. PDF there are Lee gave you any info. But I promise you the launch maps aren't that when I showed these to my OBM, she literally walked off the screen that I was giving away this for free. This is the exact launch Map Template I use for every single one of my one on one clients. And inside, you'll be able to personalize tweak and repeat a strategy for your messaging for each and every launch. From pre launch to post, go and get your free lunch map at WWW dot Sara vartanian.com/launch.map. Number three would be to split test your subject lines with a one to one clients, we almost always test our subject lines. If this isn't something you've done before, let me walk you through it.

I use ConvertKit, as do quite a few of my clients. And maybe you do at home too. And if not, you can still do versions of this. So when we're talking about split testing, that means that we have an opportunity to do what's called an A B test. When you're sending out your email, you're able to send out two different subject lines. And what will happen will be a portion of your email list will be served up subject line A and several guests have declined B. And depending on which one does a better, after a certain number of hours, your email provider will then send out the winning subject line to the rest of the people on your list. So that is something that I do almost all the time with clients because it allows us to understand which subject line does better, and by how much. So we can write more subject lines like that. And we can see what type of subject lines and messaging is again, resonating with the people that we want to work with and that we love connecting with.

So if you can't set up that A B tests, another thing that you could do is try a different subject line for resend. So if you send out your newsletter with a subject line a that maybe four days later, you resend to people who did not open using a different subject line. And again, you compare those open rates and see are there certain types of subject lines, certain types of words and messaging that are resonating with people and getting more of them to open? Number four, would be to send more surveys. You know, not only that once your survey that you maybe do kind of that state of union to check in, but what's going on with people before you maybe change your pricing or launch new offer, but you can send surveys so often. So think about sending them when people didn't by the end of a launch or at the end of an evergreen sequence or promotion. You can send one to your email list every few months event But just keep it light with a few questions.

Don't bombard them with 1015 questions, do three or four, check in with something, perhaps it's for a Black Friday event. And you want to know, what are they needing most before they go into the next year? For example, when you're onboarding a client, give them a little survey, to learn about what worked for them, what didn't? What would they like to see improved? What would have made experience even better? What what's next for them. So you can think about that picture. And you can learn about maybe how you can refine your offer, again, tweak your offer, improve your messaging, is there something they felt was missing, so maybe there was a disconnect between what you were selling what they thought they were going to get. And so you can, you know, tighten that up and improve that, but also where they're going next. So you can talk about that as well, or maybe even create a different type of offer. And then, of course, when people leave your program or membership, so whether that's because they've decided it's no longer for them. Or when it's time to offer them at the end of let's say, each session or cohort, it's a perfect time to send a survey and gather information, similar to when you're onboarding a client. Like why now, what resonated with you what worked for you? What didn't work? Would you like to see more of those types of questions.

So send more surveys, you can use Google Forms, I love to use type forums, also air tables, fantastic for this, there's lots of ways to collect that information. Number five, be the thing that I would say takes the longest. And that would be to create a quiz. Quizzes are, of course, an amazing lead magnet. But that's a discussion for another day. What I have found, though, is that the insights from quizzes can be really helpful. So when I write quizzes with my clients, we use the interactive software, because the insights are incredible. They tell you, where people drop off from certain questions. They let you know which questions had more answers. And so it's so informative because you start to understand the path.

And you start to see the kind of customers and people who are coming in through this quiz, right like, whereas the majority, maybe there's something surprising, you thought more people would say this. And actually 80% of people said this. So again, you can refine your messaging your content, so that it is speaking to the people who are actually coming to you if that's the audience, of course that you want. But also, we found when I wrote quizzes is that all of the questions don't actually have to be linked to the result of the quiz. You can include many questions in your quiz that are actually more like data collection. So you can ask for really specific things to help you understand more about your clients. So for example, I wrote a quiz for one of my clients, and they have a digital download contract shop. And we included a couple data collection questions. And one asked how people felt about the topic. We wanted to know her audiences comfort level, so she knew what type of content to be creating to call them in. So was it more that they felt like really in control of the subject? Or were they like, it's okay, or were they like, yeah, I got this no problem. I'm basically an expert, but I just need x. So we were trying to figure out where they were.

And you know, ended up for this case, they were more in the first and second place. So that's type of content we started creating. And then two, we also asked what they felt they needed most for their business in relation to this topic. So for example, if it was a quiz in my business, the question might be like, Ring Ring, thanks for calling the coffee hotline. What can I help you with today, and it would include a list of things I believe someone might need. And I would ask them to either choose all that apply. If I want to know all the things I think that I might need do with coffee. So maybe it's like you want open cart sequence, you want a welcome sequence, you want a sales page, you want to optimize your sales page, you want a funnel audit, or maybe we just be like the number one thing that would be dependent on what the goal of my quizzes. But the point is, if you write a quiz, you can not only warm people up have an exciting lead magnet, you can have so many beautiful insights into who was taking the quiz, their answers, but then also using some of those questions to help you gather information without sending a survey out.

So there you have it, five ideas to help you gather more research and get to know your clients more deeply. So that you can send messaging that connects with them. And when the timing is right, kind of like how my brother showed up with those scratch tickets on my on my mom's birthday, the right time. So when you make it a habit to listen, writing in your any of your launch copy becomes so much easier. You'll start to understand the people you want to work with or bring into their buying experiences. Things like what they bought that didn't work out their values and beliefs, their family dynamic stuff that has been said to them, and what maybe what this person brings up to them.

And when you know more about the people that you love to serve well you can refine your message, and your offer so genuinely resonates with them. That's it for this solo episode. I'll see you back here soon launches. Thanks for tuning in to the launch playbook podcast. If you want to get weekly launch secrets in your ears. I hope you'll hit switch Subscribe on iTunes you'll never miss an episode. Because who knows? It could reveal just a thing you've been looking for to make your next launch a success. And be sure to leave a five star review on iTunes telling me how this episode inspired your launch plans. Until next time, keep putting your big ideas out into the world. I'm rooting for you.

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