Sending out a yearly survey is one of the best ways to understand what your audience is working toward, where they’re getting stuck, and what they need from you to accomplish their goals.
You’ll get their challenges in their words which you can then copy + paste right into your emails, Instagram posts, sales pages to make them magnets for your ideal clients and customers.
You can ask some multiple choice questions, but I’ve got 3 questions that will generate marketing GOLD. Give this episode a listen, test it out, and let me know how it works!
Resources + links
The Essentials membership (once you’ve got answers let’s turn it into magnetic marketing!): xosarah.com/essentials
This is something I’ve been doing for the last five or six years and second to talking directly to my students on coaching calls, this has been the best way to understand where my audience is at, what they’re working toward, and what they need from me to accomplish their goals.
I’ve changed the questions I asked as I’ve learned from the information that I’ve gotten back. I used to ask a lot more multiple choice questions and I’ve definitely sent some surveys with questions that received answers that were not super helpful.
But when you ask the right questions, you will get really specific information about your customers or clients experience that you can literally copy and paste into your marketing into your sales pages, Instagram captions, emails. And THAT is how you create posts where people are like you are reading my mind!
Years ago I sent a survey asking how people classified what they’re doing: Are they are blogger? Do they have a service-based business? A product-based business? And what I found out was that even though I was teaching blogging and content creation the majority of my audience did not have a blog! Sometimes you think you’re attracting a certain audience and then you find out they’re in a totally different spot!
So today I wanted to share what my audience survey looks like now, and some questions you can ask your audience that will give you answers you can actually use to create products, services, and marketing.
So what should you ask your audience?
There are three questions you can ask that will get you that specific feedback which will be helpful in improving your marketing. And those questions are…
- What is your biggest challenge right now?
- What is your goal for this year / next year?
- What is keeping you from achieving that goal on your own?
These should be open-ended questions so your audience can tell you about their problems and their goals in their own words. This is the key to marketing that really connects. Not only will you able to be able to use those words in your marketing, but it will help you to create more examples that will resonate with your audience.
You can literally send a survey with just those three questions and get so much information back from your audience.
You can skip the demographic questions like how old are you and where do you live because those things you can find out pretty easily through Google analytics and even your Instagram insights.
But you can ask more specific demographic questions like:
what best describes you – blogger, full-time business owner, side hustling. Or you could ask what best describes your business: services, physical products, digital products, not a business owner.
I also like to ask things like:
- How long have you been running your business?
- How much does your business earn per month?
- How many people are on your email list?
Create these as multiple choice questions so that Google forms or whatever survey tool you use will create a nice little chart so you don’t have to read through all the answers.
I also still like to ask some thing like, if I were to create a training on anything what would you want me to talk about?
And because I am teaching I asked things like:
- How do you like to learn – short videos long videos, e-books, screencasts?
- If you’ve purchased a course or coaching from me, what made you buy?
- If you were to tell someone about me and what I do, what would you say?
This gives me a really clear picture of how people view me, my marketing, my products, and what qualities stand out and make them want to purchase.
No surprise that it’s my straightforward way of talking and teaching that sells people most often. But also my audience replied that I feel like someone they could be friends with, which makes me really happy because that means me showing up exactly the way I am with all my flaws – no make up, crazy hair, dogs jumping on me, wearing band t-shirts – all of that stuff makes me come across as friendly and approachable. And since that has already attracted so many amazing students and clients I know that I just need to keep being me.
If you have a small audience…
You can DM or email people directly – Instagram followers, past clients or customers. Any information is helpful and then every year you’ll get more and more information as your audience grows.
If you’re part of a niche Facebook group, you could (if it’s allowed) post your survey there. Just make sure that the majority of the people in the group would actually be a good client or customer for you. If you’re in a general moms group or a general business group this won’t get you as helpful answers.
Google forms, Typeform, and Survey Monkey make it easy to create a survey.
This is actually one of the very first things I have you do when you join The Essentials membership. You’ll survey your audience so that you have information to figure out your brand messaging, what to send your email list, what to say on Instagram.
So do your survey and then come hang out with us in The Essentials so you’ll have a step-by-step process for taking that information and putting it to work.
If you have any questions give me a shout on Instagram at @xoSarahMorgan otherwise I hope to see you in the membership soon!
