By the end of this email, you’ll know:
How to win by solving one specific customer problem
The faster, cheaper way to understand customers
3 places you can learn about customers
🧠 The Customer Advantage
Your customer’s problem is your advantage.
If your customers are young adults trying to smell better:
Offer cologne or perfume
Offer sweat-resistant clothing
You need to go beyond problem and understand the vehicle (how your customers want to solve the problem).
The clearer this is, the easier your marketing becomes.
Let’s get into how to do it…
📈 Customer Research (The Improved Version of Market Research)
Market research is understanding your market and customers to make better decisions. Most businesses do this through:
Industry reports
Competitor analysis
Focus groups
But this way of research is slow and not useful for many small or online businesses.
Customer research focuses on one thing: your ideal buyers.
Understand your ideal buyers:
The vehicle
How they communicate
Their objections to buying
By observing your customers online, you understand how they communicate and why they buy.
Here’s how you do customer research the right way…
🔍 Customer Research in the Wild
Observe your customers in their “natural habitat” on social media and through their reviews & comments.
#1: Competitor Reviews
Look at reviews on your competitor’s website.
The low-rated reviews tell what your customer dislikes. Use this to reduce the things your customer dislikes.
The high-rated reviews tell what your customer liked. Make sure you include these positives in your marketing.
A great way to do this is customer echoing.
If John gives a 3-star review on a weighted vest: “good for running but I hate the foul odor” then use his review on your website.
“The all-in-one weighted vest without foul odor.”
My favorite place for reviews: Amazon is an amazing source of reviews if you are selling physical products.
#2: Content Creators
This is my YouTube home page.
You can probably tell what I liked based on this page: entrepreneurship, sales, documentaries, and basketball.
Your audience spends hours every week with these influencers.
They trust them
They communicate and act like them
If you understand how these influencers communicate toward your ideal buyer, you can use the SAME tone and language in your own marketing.
So spend time looking at the content creators that your ideal buyers watch and pay attention to
The audience’s comments
The communication style
The design
The closer you can make your marketing to these content creators, the more trust you will build.
#3 Reddit
Reddit is a forum where people give their unfiltered opinions on topics.
Their subreddits (discussions on a specific topic) are places where you can find your ideal buyer.
If you are selling an AI product go onto subreddits like these:
You can look for competitor reviews and specific problems your customers have.
It is also a great place to find objections and things your ideal buyer doesn’t like about your business.
If they are complaining about bad service, then show your priority chat support and one-hour response time on your website.
Counter their objections and sell them the solution to their problem.
🎯 Today’s Customer Research Challenge
Deep understanding of your customer is powerful. How will you use customer research in your business?
In my case, it’s actions such as:
Explaining how Business Deconstructed solves the problem of inactionable business advice in my marketing
Adding a paragraph on my website to address customer objections
Looking over reviews, content creators, and Reddit discussions within entrepreneurship
How will you use customer research?
If your business idea needs work, spend 30 minutes looking on reviews and social media to focus on the specific problem and vehicle.
If your marketing needs work, start watching the same content creators that your ideal buyers listen to and focus on their language and communication style.
🌟 Resource Spotlight
Website: Trustpilot. Thousands of reviews on businesses from real customers
Resource of the week (YouTube Video): How To Build a $10k+ Per Month Newsletter by Matt McGarry. This is the best guide I’ve seen on starting and growing a newsletter.
Until next week,
Warren
PS - For a more detailed look on solving painful problems: The painkiller framework. The marketing hack that always sells.