We've all heard "the customer is always right" at least once in our life. And while that might not always be the case, we all know that without customers, our businesses wouldn't exist. So, how can we learn from our customers and improve not only our products and services but our marketing?

In this episode, Angela shares how to:

• Gather customer feedback (step-by-step).
• Build your prospect's dream offer.
• Make more sales using customer feedback.

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About Angela

Angela Frank is a fractional CMO with a decade-long track record of generating multimillion-dollar marketing revenue for clients. She is the founder of The Growth Directive, a marketing consultancy helping brands create sustainable marketing programs.

Her new book Your Marketing Ecosystem: How Brands Can Market Less and Sell More helps business owners, founders, and corporate leaders create straightforward and profitable marketing strategies.

Angela is the host of The Growth Pod podcast, where she shares actionable tips to help you build a profitable brand you love.

Welcome to The Growth Pod. Today we're checking in one on one to learn how to improve your marketing by learning from your customers. I'm your host, Angela Frank.

On The Growth Pod, I, along with some of the coolest experts in business, share tips designed to help you build a profitable business that you love. So if you're like me and love learning about how to grow your business more efficiently, you've come to the right place.

We've all heard the saying that the customer is always right at least once in our life. And while that might not always be the case, we all know that without customers, our businesses wouldn't exist.

So how can we learn from our customers and improve not only our products and services, but our marketing as well?

Well, today I'll be sharing the best ways to gather customer feedback, how to build the offer your prospects dream of, and most importantly, how to make more sales by your customers Feedback to improve your marketing this may sound daunting, but it's actually really straightforward when you break it down. The easiest way to gather feedback is with customer reviews.

You've seen reviews when you're shopping online, but they can be implemented for many different types of products and services.

The benefit of using reviews is that they're really easy to gather, but there is a downside and it's that as you scale, fewer people will leave you a review.

And on some review platforms, customers might not need to leave comments in order to leave you a review, so you're losing out on the insight of their feedback. In addition, you can't ask for specific feedback on a review.

However, when reviews do happen to have comments attached, there is a treasure trove of information in there for improving not only your buyer journeys, but also your product or service. The other thing that you can start to understand by reading reviews is the type of language that your customers use.

This is something that you'll be able to get from all of the methods that I highlight today, but I want to stress the importance of really paying attention to trends and overlapping pain points that your customers share with you in their feedback. Once you start paying attention to this, you might find that your customers have a completely different use case than the one you intended.

And when this happens, you might find that there is an entire market of untapped potential available to you now that you've taken a look at your reviews.

Let's take it up a notch with a post purchase survey A post purchase survey is a short questionnaire that's texted or emailed to a customer after they buy from you. These are great because they can be completely automated and they're a great way to continually solicit customer feedback.

However, just like with reviews, there are a few downsides, the main one being that completion rates are usually pretty low and also results tend to be skewed. Just like with reviews, surveys usually are only filled out by someone who has something to say, either really bad or really good.

And very few people who have good experiences will take the time to fill out a post purchase survey.

But there is a benefit of using surveys over reviews and that is that you get targeted feedback on specific areas of your offer and you can ask open ended questions about customer service, your offer itself and even if they'd like to change anything about the buying process. There's also another version of this that you can send out as a market research survey which we will discuss shortly.

But post purchase surveys and reviews are really the two things that you can automate to get customer feedback.

But there's an even more powerful way to gather feedback from your customers, especially those who might not otherwise otherwise complete a review or fill out a survey. And that's by actually talking with them. So to do this, it's really straightforward.

You'll just email customers personally and ask if they would be comfortable providing their thoughts to help improve your offer. Make sure you're upfront and honest about how their feedback will be compiled and how it will be used.

In addition to that, share any incentives that you're providing for completing an interview if you're providing them. And here's a pro tip, if you do decide to offer an incentive, make sure it's worth someone's time.

Don't expect someone to take time out of their day to complete an hour long interview in Exchange for a $25 gift card to Starbucks.

Not only is this kind of insulting because it shows that you don't value their time very highly, but the insights that your customers are giving you in this interview are invaluable and they will go on to help you make more money.

So either don't offer an incentive, which is totally fine and you will still have people to interview, or offer an incentive that acknowledges the value that they are giving you by taking the time to complete this interview.

And I know this sounds a little bit silly, but the number of times that I've gotten Interviews, soliciting my feedback in Exchange for a $25 gift card, or worse yet, to be entered into a drawing to Potentially win a hundred dollar or 250 gift card is insane. People are understanding that it's important to implement this customer feedback and to solicit it in the first place.

But they're missing this other key component, which is these are real people who are going to give you super valuable insights for your business that will one, either save you a bunch of time, because now you're going to shift away from something that you were developing and you're going to make something that's even better and you're going to make sure that you're saving a bunch of resources by making that pivot, or they're going to give you insights into new ways to message and to talk about your product that you didn't think about. Otherwise that's going to make you a bunch more sales down the road.

So make sure that if you do decide to offer an incentive, it really makes sense and values the person's time. Now, just a few more quick notes on video interviews with your customers. Make sure you record the interview, make sure you're totally present.

By recording the interview, you can put it into a note taking software and get takeaways and key themes from that interview so you don't need to take notes. And when you're totally present, you're paying attention to the conversation and you're able to ask better, deeper questions.

So with that, be responsive to the feedback that the customer is telling you. They are taking time out of their day to really give you these insights. Make sure that you are, you know, acknowledging their feedback.

Don't make excuses or become defensive. Just say, you know, thank you. That's a great point. I appreciate that you bring that up.

And on top of that, make sure that you ask follow up questions to dig into more detail when appropriate. When you're saying, you know that you would make the buying process easier, what does that look like for you?

What specific parts of the buying process kind of tripped you up and how can we make that better?

Really dig in, because when you take the time to do this, you'll get these really valuable insights that may have never even occurred to you outside of this conversation. So those three methods are a great way to solicit feedback from customers, but what happens if you have no customers?

I was asked this on a podcast recently and not only is what I'm about to share helpful to those who are just starting out, but I think it's super important and relevant information for brands of all sizes because you might be planning to launch a new offer in the future. And when that happens, you should definitely lean on these tips. So let's discuss ways to get feedback on your offer if you have no customers.

And this is where we go back to that post purchase survey.

But instead of creating a survey that focuses on purchasing your product or offer, you will create a survey focused on the needs of your target market and how they would solve them. And this is what's called a market research survey.

This type of survey is great whenever you're starting a new venture or looking to launch a new product offering. In fact, I just did this to prepare for a launch of a new service for my consulting business.

In a market research survey, you're going to ask your prospects about their ideal state.

For example, if you have a product that improves sleep, you can ask about what their ideal energy levels are, or how someone would like to feel in the morning when they wake up. Or you can ask just in general what a perfect night's sleep means to them.

This is called future pacing or getting someone to think about an ideal outcome for them. And that's really the purpose of this market research survey.

After you get them to future pace, you'll ask about what's currently preventing them from achieving that perfect night's sleep. We'll continue using this example. So you'll ask what's currently preventing you from achieving that perfect night's sleep?

Then you'll ask, what have they tried to get better sleep in the past? What have you tried that hasn't worked?

Then ask if they could wave a magic wand and create the thing that would give them the perfect night's sleep, what would that look like? Because that's going to look different for people within your target market.

Maybe you're trying to help young professionals achieve a better night's sleep.

Well, for someone, that might mean, you know, I want something like Melatonin that doesn't give me super crazy dreams, or I would like to find a way to use a breathing technique that would help me sleep. Or I would love a more comfortable bed or a better pillow. So it's really going to vary based on who you're asking.

But by asking it in this way, if you could wave a magic wand and create the one thing that would give you the perfect night's sleep, what would that look like? Now they're telling you what that solution would look like to them. And that's really all there is to a market research survey.

But I like to ask one more bonus question that's focused on getting them to visualize the outcome of using the dream solution that they just created. So taking this sleep example, you could ask, if you got a perfect night's sleep every night, what would your life look like?

How would it be different than how it is now?

And it's this question that's really going to give you some marketing gold to work with, because now you're able to see your offer within the context of someone's life. Sure, maybe you're selling a workout program, and of course that's going to make someone more fit and feel more energetic.

But what does that mean to them? Are they using it perhaps to rehabilitate from a surgery so they can run around with their kids again?

Is someone using this program so they can feel like they can say yes to everything they want to in retirement, regardless of the physical commitment that that require? Or are they using it to get rid of that lingering neck pain from work so they can just live a life free of pain in their off time?

When you ask about what a perfect solution means to someone, it creates an aha moment where now they're telling you what it means to them in a way that you have maybe never considered before. But now that you're reading it, it's so clear to you and it's so impactful.

Now that you've done some market research, you'll have an idea in mind for what your offer will entail, and now's the time to start giving it away. If you're a new business, you'll do this completely for free.

And if you're an established brand, you can promote your offer by just starting with a waitlist to see if anyone is interested. And then you could offer a launch promotion.

But the too long didn't read or the TLDR here is that if no one wants what you're going to sell for free, they're not going to pay for it. And this is actually something that I did when I was starting my consulting business.

I saw that there was a huge gap in the market for financial advisors. And having a little bit of experience marketing for a financial advisor in the past, I thought this might have great market fit.

But when I started to give away my services for free, I found that though financial advisors were really into the services that I could provide, they had a broker who they essentially, even if they were an independent advisor, still had to go through for all of their marketing approvals because there are so many strict regulations around how you can market financial products.

And so even though it did seem like there was good market fit, a lot of the financial advisors that I spoke with were like, you know, I really do see the need for this and I in fact need it and would love to work with you, but my broker is not going to let me do that. And so that was clue to me to switch and pivot into the niche that I am in now, which is health and wellness.

And the reason I didn't originally go health and wellness is because I felt that there were a lot of service providers offering marketing solutions in the health and wellness space specifically.

So even though I felt like the health and wellness space was more crowded, there was actually a lot of appetite for the types of service that I offer, which was at high level marketing strategy and creating a profitable marketing program for these brands.

And the moral of the story here is even if you have experience working in a niche or an industry, you offer a product that's really related to the one that you're looking to launch. You do not know until you start having these conversations with your customers and then people who would be buying those products.

But we only launch new offers once in a while. So let's bring our conversation back to existing customers and how we can use their feedback to improve our marketing and make more money.

There's a quote from Henry Ford that comes to mind when chatting about implementing customer feedback that goes, if I had asked what people wanted, they would have said faster horses. And apparently he never said that.

But you understand the sentiment and as a founder, it is your role to make sure that it's you who's in the driver's seat and not your customers. Because you're the visionary and the one who can take this feedback and now reimagine it as something new.

So to make sure we're implementing the right feedback in the right way, we're going to use a very straightforward three step process, which is find the overlap, test the theory and implement winning feedback.

When you find the overlap, what you're doing is looking at all of the feedback that you've received and finding those aha moments and specifically searching for the aha moments that now overlap. So if someone's saying that the perfect night's sleep for them would be a way to make their mind be quiet before bed so they can drift off to sleep.

Maybe you're seeing that overlapping a lot in what someone is telling you would be the right product solution.

Or if you're reviewing customer feedback, maybe someone's saying, you know I know that this E bike is sold for commuting to work, but I'm retired and I just had knee surgery and this E bike is helping me get back on the trail and do the thing that I love, which is riding bike. And so what you're looking for are these aha moments that overlap and provide a new use case or a new way to talk about the product that you offer.

The next thing that you're going to do is test the theory.

So using the E bike example, perhaps you are targeting a younger crowd currently and you're going after the commuters and someone who lives in a city and doesn't want to own a car, but they have a little bit of a longer commute where it wouldn't make sense to walk. But when you're looking at your feedback, you're finding an overlap for that retired use case.

A lot of people are using it to rehabilitate themselves from surgery. So now you're going to test the theory.

And you can do this very straightforward by running ads to a standalone landing page using all of the messaging that you've uncovered through your feedback. And when you're doing this, you are quickly learning if this is going to be something that's going to work for your brand or not.

And you're able to do it in a very short time frame. So once you found the overlap, test it and see if it's going to work. And then if it's working now, implement that feedback and roll it out widely.

If you find that it doesn't work, that's fine. Find a new overlap, see if that works for you. Continue testing and iterating and improving over time. And so now it's time to take the first step.

We discussed three levels of gathering customer feedback today. From reviews to surveys and interviews. Wherever you are at in your business, you need to make a plan right now to take it to the next level.

So if you're currently only using reviews, roll out surveys. If you're using reviews and surveys, conduct some interviews, really make a plan to take it to the next level.

Then review that feedback that you already have because everyone has feedback in some form and begin running it through that three step process that we discussed. Finding the overlap, testing the theory and implementing the winning feedback.

And this is important because if you're looking to unlock that next stage of growth for your brand, implementing customer feedback is not optional. So go out there, ask good questions and start implementing that feedback. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Growth Pod.

I look forward to seeing you in the next one.