3 Ways to Realign Your Marketing Efforts For Better Results

Marketing is exhausting, but rewarding - right? As business owners we love it, we hate it, and we love to hate it. But what if we could love it all the time, trust the process, and rest in the knowledge that what we are doing is truly effective?

In today’s episode of the Product Powerhouse Podcast we are covering the three things you can do for more effective marketing. The three things we will be covering are all founded on one core marketing foundation, but putting these three pieces in place will help you ensure you’re speaking your customer’s language, hitting their pain points, and directing them to the best product for them. Ready? Let’s go!

The key to making sure your marketing is effective - knowing your customer

Effective marketing comes down to one thing - knowing your customer. We have all heard it before, “know your ideal customer.” We’ve probably completed dozens of “ideal avatar” worksheets and have mapped out our ideal customer’s daily routines and coffee habits. In fact, we’ve turned a fictional character into a fully fleshed-out idea that they almost seem real to us. That’s the point, right?

Well, without proper information, data and research we could be propping up a wrong picture of our true ideal customer (and in my case, a literal stock photo of a random internet person epitomizing my ideal client) - the real life human being who needs/wants our product, like, yesterday. 

Knowing your ideal customer as a real life human being requires objectivity - we have to pursue actual facts, information, and knowledge about this person. Traditionally, most customer avatar worksheets have you work from a place of subjectivity, or, what you perceive to be true. 

This could be detrimental to your marketing and to your true ideal customer. Your marketing messages and strategies could be heavily missing the mark, attracting the wrong audience and turning away the right one!

The 3 missing pieces of your marketing routine to help you speak to your ideal audience member

So what’s the answer? How do you gain objective facts and vet subjective ideas as you create your marketing messages, hoping to speak to the right person? Here are three simple actions you can take regularly and consistently to tighten up your message and increase its potency. 

Conduct market research

If you’re an introvert, you may be tempted to skip this - but I highly discourage you from doing so! Market research calls - or, ideal customer interviews - are incredibly important and can form relationships that fuel you as a business owner.

Simply reach out to people you know in real life who you think would benefit from your product, or put out a call on social media, email, etc. Book a call, send them a Starbucks gift card to say thanks, and ask them these simple questions:

• Tell me about your relationship to/with [problem your product addresses]. For example, if you sell coffee mugs and you know you help your customers have great morning routines they love, you can say, “Tell me about your relationship with morning routines - what does having a great morning routine mean to you?”
• What do you struggle with the most when it comes to [topic]?
• What is [topic] important to you?
• What have you tried so far in pursuit of [topic]? What worked for you, what hasn’t?
• What influencers are your favorite to follow, and why?
• What brands fill your home?
• How would you describe your style?

Customer surveys

Market research interviews are great because you get to hear first hand the language a potential customer is using to describe their own pain points, goals, and interests. Another great tool to support your marketing efforts is customer surveys. These surveys are sent out to current and past customers who have purchased your product at one point in time. 

Some great survey questions for product purchasers include:

• What are three things you love about [product]?
• Why did you purchase [product]?
• What did you hope life would look and feel like when you purchased?
• Does your experience of [product] match that expectation/hope?
• What about [product] has or hasn’t met your expectations?
• Will you purchase from us again? Why or why not?
• If a friend were to ask you about [product], what would you say?
• If a friend were to ask you about our brand, what would you say?

Hotjar, a marketing research company, has over 100 great customer survey questions you can pull from. I’m linking them here!

Social listening

And lastly, the third action missing from your marketing routine is social listening. This is kind of like market research, but “taken to the streets.” 

Social listening is a research method based on tracking conversations happening around your brand, product or industry. While surveys and interviews help you understand what your audience is saying to you, social listening helps you understand what your audience is saying to each other. 

Getting started with social listening can be as easy as following your customers on social media. It can also be as techy as using social media monitoring tools and software, like Hootsuite, SproutSocial and BuzzSumo.

The easiest way though, is to just listen. And, to listen you need to engage, interact, and observe. You can use software to help you learn more, but just by being a social human being on social media, you can learn a lot!

The best way to make your marketing the most effective as possible is to take ample time to research, listen, observe and realign your marketing messages to speak directly to your target audience. We do this primarily through market research calls, customer surveys and social listening. 

Once you do this it’s going to be so much easier to create social media posts, newsletters, and website content because you know what problems your audience is looking for and what, specifically, they want out of your product. 

Your next step is to get these things on your calendar and to-do list - book a market research call, craft and schedule a customer survey, and start social listening a few dedicated times each week. Your marketing strategy, and future customers, will thank you for it!

Social listening helps you:

• See gaps in your messaging and in the marketplace that you can fill
• See how your customers are talking about your product in “real life”
• Learn how your customers are using your product and sharing with others
• Learn what is important enough to your customers to share with others
• Tap into the language your customers are using

And, identify opportunities for collaboration with customers or other brands - here’s a podcast on how to do it!