Tag: Market Research

The Final Step In Marketing Research? 🏃‍♂️ (Take Action)

Posted on by brianjpombo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Good enough is good enough.

The value of not waiting for things to be perfect before getting started with something you want to do.

Transcription

The final step in marketing research?

I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Some people ask me why I use punctuation when I introduce the show?

To be completely honest, it’s usually for my producer, who takes the show, and then takes the title and adds it to everything. And so it’s just become a running joke that I’ll use punctuation.

I’m gonna come up with something really absurd and long one of these days and say all the different pieces of punctuation we’re using in the title.

Hi, welcome back, let’s talk about market research, shall we?

In business, especially at the beginning of a business, or at the beginning of a new product or service that you’re offering, you may be switching to a new market, you may be appealing to a market that you’re not used to, or a sub-market of the one you’re already playing to.

In that process, there are all these different steps you really should go through and most people don’t take any of those steps. But I highly encourage you to do as much market research as you can meaning find out as much about them and whether they would actually be interested in what it is that you’re selling, whether they’d actually buy it for the amount that you’re looking to sell it for.

Now, in the end, I’ll tell you that in a second, but if you can find similar products that are selling at, you know, to the same people, if you can find anybody that’s playing toward that same market, it may take doing surveys, it may take doing a whole lot of things, but there’s one thing that you can’t get past.

In the end, you’re only going to have a certain amount of money available to you and resources. And you’re going to have a certain amount of time to get that thing out the door.

So just today, I was working with Sean E. Douglas who is one the main producers here. And I was working with him on a new product. And we’re talking about, you know, well, it could be this and it could be that and we talked around a lot about the market research.

But in the end for the amount of money that we have, and the amount of time that we really want to spend, it’s going to be easier to go with this last step.

By this point in the game, we know enough about what we’re doing and who we’re playing towards, that this last step is what matters.

The last step is you just got to take a leap and get the thing to market, put it out there and see what the results are. It comes back to that whole concept of direct response marketing, which is testing, testing, testing, you have to get it out there, it has to be active. You got to put it in front of people, if you put it in front of people and they don’t buy, then you need to ask why you need to find out some more, you got to get in some conversations and see what’s going on.

See what the appeal is see if your marketing even works or not see the product may be good. But if the marketing stinks while you’re not going to sell anything, or you’ll sell very little.

And so you got to dig in there but it takes taking a risk. In the end, there’s always going to be a little bit of risk left, even in the best-case scenario, there’s always going to be a little bit of risk. There’s going to be the chance that something isn’t going to go right.

You’re never going to know what that is until you go for it. There’s no way to predict it.

In the end, you can’t.

I’m saying in the end, in the end, in the end, there’s no end to this. But when all is said and done, here’s another cliche when all is said and done. There’s not much more you can do.

You have to get it out there, you have to test it out, you have to see what the results are and be willing to just completely fail to fall flat on your face. And to start over again, take the product or service back, tinker with it, figure out what you need to change, change it, put it back out, and try again.

It’s the best situation the best circumstances. The people that make the most amount of money in the long run, are people that fail fast. It’s all about failing fast. If you look at any of the people known for making a lot of money over long periods of time, I’m not just talking about you know, oh, they sold a product and they became a kajillion error overnight.

It is people who are making money and continue to make money and continue to make money. There are people that fail fast and they hire people that fail fast. They have systems that go through failure fast, so fast oftentimes that people don’t even see the failure.

It’s most of the time it’s visible to the public. If you fast enough, you won’t even feel it.

It’s just part of the process but you got to get things out there.

That’s the final step. That’s the thing you got to watch out for.

If you want some steps to take over the whole process, not just within market research, but in developing a real good image out there in your content marketing. Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

It’s a short book. You can find it just about anywhere. You could type it into your search engine and find it, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, or you can go download a free copy, go check it out. AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s all I have for tonight. You have a good one, we’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Customer Research Methods 📚 (10 Smart Market Diagnosis & Profiling Questions)

Posted on by brianjpombo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Brian chats about Dan Kennedy’s checklist, The 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions from his classic book The Ultimate Sales Letter.

Transcription

Customer research methods.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I wanted to talk a little bit of a piece out of this book and it’s really good for research.

Sometimes it gets tough in the very beginning, especially when you’re getting into advertising, and you’re wanting to learn more about your customers. And that’s really the beginning of the good direct response advertising is really knowing about but who, really know about who you’re trying to reach, and making that kind of your primary start.

If you’ve at least got that in your mind, you’re on a good track and sometimes if you start there, it’s like, Okay, well, what do I need to know about him?

I mean, there’s a million things, you got your demographics, and psychographics, and all these different things.

Well, this is a great checklist from Dan Kennedy’s book, the Ultimate Sales Letter, I think this checklist is in a couple of other formats floating around out there also but this is a good book to begin with.

I mean, this isn’t a complete review of this book but it’s an awesome book. It’s not just about sales letters, it’s about communicating a thorough message when you’re trying to sell something to anyone in any way, especially online, where you have actually sales letters printed on pages. On websites, you’ve got video sales letters, in a sense, you have audio coming through and podcasts and other formats.

There are a million ways to be able to sell people now more so than ever before. And it all really originated with mailers, and direct mail, and, and advertising that way and through magazines and newspapers.

It’s moved to today, but at the same time, the same things are true. And so when we’re looking to find out more about potential customers, we’re wanting to do research and really find out what they’re all about so that we can communicate properly to them, and be able to speak their language, then this is a great way of going about doing that this is from chapter one.

It’s the first step in his process of creating a good sales letter, and specifically a good sales message.

He says step one, get into the customer.

And he has this list. It’s called the 10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions.

Okay, so there’s 10 of these, let’s go through them real quick, shall we?

Number one, what keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?

And what keeps them awake at night is all bolded. It’s what really has your customer on edge, you got to at least know that whether it has anything to do with your product or not, you got to know where they’re coming from.

In general, once again, a whole lot of this is guessing unless you already have a customer, or unless you are already familiar enough with the market unless you know them personally. And you could base this off of one person to begin with if you needed to.

Number two, What are they afraid of?

There’s a very common thread throughout all of this. We’ll hit on that at the very end.

Number three, and then once again, that could be number one. Number two could be the same thing, right? It all depends.

Number three, What are they angry about? Who are they angry at?

That’s number three.

Number four, What are their top three daily frustrations?

Real similar trend throughout this whole thing, but you might be able to pick something up. And you may not have an answer all these questions, but you may be able to pick something up off of one or two or three of these questions.

Number five, What trends are occurring and will occur in their businesses or lives?

Number six, What do they secretly ardently desire most?

Number seven, Is their built-in bias to the way they make decisions? Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions?

Okay, for example, engineers are exceptionally analytical. So that’s kind of their bias is in a very heavy analytical side. So is that true of your market also?

Number eight, Do they have their own language?

More than likely they do depending on how defined you have your market down to if it’s a specific career choice if it’s a specific religious sect if it’s, you know, whatever it is that makes your people unique.

What is that language and they’re not just talking English versus German versus whatever, that’s not the type of language that Dan Kennedy is talking about is do they have certain terminology and everything else that other people may not even understand if you brought it up, it’s very important to know.

Number nine, Who else is selling something similar to their product and how?

So to your product, you know, is something is someone selling something similar and how are they doing it?

It’s a tough question, but it’s something you really need to know.

And number 10, Who else has tried selling them something similar and how has that effort failed?

Not that easy to find out. But if you really know the market, well, you may already have that answer. Or it may have been you maybe you’ve already failed at trying to sell something similar up until now. But those are very, very, very important questions.

Those are the 10 Smart market diagnosis and profiling questions when it comes to your market when it comes to your potential customer or client. Very important stuff.

That what’s the common trend. The common trend throughout almost every single one of those answers is emotion.

Okay, we’re focusing very, very deeply on the emotion that runs through your marketplace.

What are they feeling?

What are they angry about?

Where what gets them going?

What are they excited about?

These are all emotional ideas and emotions. You know, we are not our emotions as people but quite often we let our emotions drive us.

And especially when it comes to purchasing when it comes to separating from our money. A whole lot of that is an emotional process. In most cases, it was one of the things I fought a lot.

When I first started getting into the marketing arena, they kept saying that I’m like, Yeah, but it shouldn’t be that way. You know, people should be more logical about this type of thing.

I’m more logical, why can’t everyone be more logical, and you can’t get caught up with the way things should be. You have to focus when you’re coming out from a scientific perspective.

The whole Claude Hopkins, you know, Scientific Advertising, you come out from a scientific perspective, you have to look at the way things are, and not the way you want them to be.

And the plain fact of the matter is, you go out there and try enough times you’re going to find, you’re going to get a motion back over and over and over again, as the main reason why people do things.

And if you ignore that, you do it at your own peril. You’re gonna have a really tough time getting anyone anywhere, and getting anyone excited about what you’re doing.

If you don’t, at least acknowledge that that’s where they’re coming from. Now you can help redirect them and help help people to think better if you want, but you have to meet them where they’re at. And where most people are at is in an emotional state.

Especially if they’re going to be purchasing anything from yourself.

Hopefully that’s helpful. Like I said, great book.

I’ve got my own book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Just one book so far, but this is a good one. Go check it out small lots more than this one.

It’s a quick read, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com. Go there right now for a free copy. AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back here tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Don’t Feed Them Snowballs ☃️❄️

Posted on by brianjpombo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

What does two dogs, snow and an almost 2-year old have to do with your business?

Well hit the play button and findout!

Amazon-Proof Your Business➡️ https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook/

Transcription

Don’t feed them snowballs.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

The whole title of today’s episode is based off a situation that I had earlier today with my family. So if you follow along with these episodic adventures, you’ll realize that on Saturdays, I usually have a full workday and Sundays, I spend all day with the family just regardless, we just for the most part, all business usually takes the backseat.

Well, this Saturday, we did a little switcheroo because Kate’s friends, were having a bunch of people over at their house, which is quite quite a ways away from here. And they were going to have a big snow day where the kids can go play in the snow. So I’ve got three kids. And we all went out today and I traded. Today set being Saturday, for typical Sunday, tomorrow, I’m going to be doing more work than I do on on most Sundays. So fast forward, we’re out there playing in the snow.

Some folks have their dogs along with them. And we’re eating or eating lunch, and just kind of little picnic type thing. And my youngest son who’s just just he’s almost two years old. And he’s he’s sitting there eating, he doesn’t quite. He gets things, but he doesn’t know how to communicate perfectly, doesn’t really speak all that well.

And so he, it’s funny, try to communicate things to him and seeing how his mind works and so forth and he was eating eating some food. And then the dogs came up, and they’re trying to find the food that he had already finished.

And they’re kind of their kind of sniffing around his hands and everything else. He had some snow in his hand. But it was in the same hand that he also had some food, he had some food leftover in it, and it was probably sitting there on his glove, and the dog comes up, he’s licking his hand and everything you could see what he ended up thinking is the dog wanted the snow.

So from that point on, he kept trying to feed snow to the dogs, the dogs would come around and pick up a whole snowball and try to feed it to the dog.

So what’s this have to do with you? What’s this have to do with business?

I thought it was hilarious, because so many I mean, it was instant. As soon as he was doing it, I saw the mentality behind it. I’m like, Boy, that’s familiar. Because as business owners, what we tend to do is we tend to think we know what the customer wants. And we start, we start developing our entire world around one reaction, or a just a handful of reactions to something that we did.

We think that it’s about one thing, when really it’s about something else and so we try to feed snowballs to people, when the dogs didn’t have any interest in the snow whatsoever.

They’re surrounded by snow, they can eat the snow anytime they want, why would they need it, this little kids and they wanted the food that was in his hand. They don’t want the frozen water.

A lot of times we’re out there presenting frozen water to people who have no interest whatsoever in what we’re providing them. But we think because we saw some reaction at some point, maybe not even from us, but from somebody else, we think that their desires for this.

So here’s what it all comes down to what you have to do is know that there is a need a designer more than a need, there’s a desire, there’s a want us very strong want for what it is you’re providing. Either there is or there isn’t. And there’s no two ways about it. And you’ve got to get it out there enough.

That’s why so many people say that when you’re starting with a new product or a new service to get it out there, even if you have to give it away. So that you can really see what it is what the true benefits are, from what you provide. And that there is an actual market that once those things, then you can go about communicating to them via your marketing and everything else. On Hey, I’ve got this thing, this is why you already want it.

Here it is, come and get it. It’s the simplest thing in the world and quite often, entire businesses are built on the wrong concept. They’re built on what you want, and not what the customer wants.

Or they’re built on what you think the customer wants. when there isn’t a human alive that wants what you think they want. You see what I’m saying? And happens over and over and over again.

You see restaurants come up out of nowhere and then they fail within six months that are gone. Just any type of business you can see these they come and they go and you say why would anyone even start a business like that?

Is there even a need for something like that and to the person that started there was, and to a lot of the people involved they think there was. But it that doesn’t make a business, the marketplace has got to want it. It’s got to be more than just snowballs.

And sometimes it’s not rocket science, sometimes it’s just, they want the food, you have the food, give them the food. It’s very simple. So hopefully that helps. It’s this simple ideas that usually it usually gets past us. And it’s I’m not, I’m not trying to talk down to you or make you think that you’re stupid. It happens to all of us, we do it over and over and over again.

The thing is, is to recognize it in yourself be able to pull back and go, Okay, how do we keep this from happening?

Well, one of the ways is to constantly to immerse yourself in the concept of strategy, business strategy is a whole field that can help you to recognize these problems before they even happen. And to be able to redirect quickly. It’s not that there’s problems it’s that you need to be able to adjust quickly without without feeling the hurt from it, right?

And one of the one of the ways of doing this I recommend my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. It’s a it’s just nine simple ways. It’s a simple book, straightforward, quick, easy to read. You said, read in one night if you want. And you can get a free copy.

I mean, how do you beat that go to AmazonProofBook.com for your own free copy, if you want a digital copy, you want a physical copy, there’s also an option on there to get one or if you want it even quicker, you can go through amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com all the different places that sell books, just type in 9 ways to Amazon-Proof your business or my name, Brian J. Pombo.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another tip, either a strategy tactic or principle that can help you explode your business. You have a great night. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Why You Should Never Trust Yourself

Posted on by brianjpombo

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

While suvery’s may seem boring, they can be a terrific tool in helping you make informed decisions in your business.

Sign up for a Strategy Session Today➡️ BrianJPombo.com/Amazon