🧠 5 ways to enter your customers' mind

Hey there 👋 

Welcome back for the 7th edition of Brandish

Your guide to crafting an iconic brand

I hope you’re having a fantastic weekend and are ready to spend the next 3 minutes and 6 seconds with me.

In this week's newsletter, I'll talk about customer research.

Why?

Well - here are two damn good reasons

First - let’s hear what the "Father of Advertising” has to say about customer research…

"Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals."

That should be enough reason for us to talk about it.

But…

Besides that, research also shows that 65% of marketers rarely (or never) do customer research AND 63% of consumers think that marketers are trying to sell them something they don’t need. 

This is not ideal for anyone…

Therefore I'll break down 5 different ways you can go about customer research in today’s newsletter.

Kick your feet up, grab your Brez, and let’s get right into it

1. Talk to your customers 1:1

A lot of founders and marketers rely solely on quantitative data and are too afraid to pick up the phone and call their customers.

… and for this reason - they miss out on valuable insights that they could get directly from their customers

The best way to learn about your customers' desires, pains, buying objections and failed past solutions is by asking them about it

Not only do you get the value of the answer, but you also get to understand "the way" they say it.

Meaning the words they use.

This is also super valuable for informing your copywriting/marketing team on how to write in the words of the customer.

From a cost perspective, this is the best way to do customer research - because more often than not, customers are willing to talk to you for free.

From an effort perspective, it'll probably take you 30 minutes per interview, which I'd argue is time well spent.

2. Study your competitors - but not in the usual way

Next up is…

The most used trick in the book

Competitor analysis.

There's no doubt about the importance of studying your competitors and understanding what they do AND don't do.

The latter is the most interesting part for me.

Because, yes - I can learn from what my competitors are doing.

And if they're doing something successfully (for example, running ads on Facebook) - I'll probably be able to do so too.

But

I find it way more interesting to study what they're NOT doing because this is where I can find a gap in the market and fill an unfulfilled need.

The best example I can give about this is from my own brand - Obvi.

Vital Proteins already dominated the collagen industry.

… but - after studying what Vital Proteins was NOT doing - we were able to find "the gap".

Namely: Flavoured Collagen

So, don't just study what they're doing. Also, study what they're NOT doing.

3. Customer Surveys

If you don't want to do 1:1 calls but instead want to gather A TON of qualitative data with very low effort - then customer surveys are the best way to do it.

The way we structure our surveys is as follows:

- Keep them short (max 5-6 questions)

- Keep the questions open-ended for maximum information

- Incentivize them to fill out the survey (either free product or money)

We're using KnoCommerce to send out our customer surveys. It's easy to use and set up - so if you need a tool, then check them out (not affiliated in any way)

4. Heatmap analysis

Heatmaps are helpful for understanding two things;

1) Where users click

2) Where users don't click

Using this information, you can design your page in a way where the most important / most resonating messages are mentioned first.

Likewise, you can also remove any sections that don't add value to the user.

5. Copytesting and A/B testing

This is by far the most used approach in the online advertising space, so I won't dive too much into this.

What I will say, however, is that regardless of how well-optimized you think your page is - there's always room for improvement.

Even the slightest changes in how you write can have a big impact on the performance of your website.

So, Keep testing your copy to figure out what resonates and what doesn't

Thanks for reading along

Thanks for reading along.

I appreciate you took the time to read what I had to say.

I also hope you found this newsletter valuable and will continue to read along every week.

Till’ next time

Ankit