Mind Reading Survey Secrets

Introduction 

In the last lesson we talked about The Smart Way To Use Thank You Pages.  We mentioned surveys but didn't fully develop the concepts and strategies. 

Until now!

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

Magic Tricks

Recently, I've been really digging into magic tricks.  Particularly card magic tricks. After my son and I played a bunch of card games during our ski trip to Colorado I discovered a persistent curiosity into card tricks. 

My day job is actually in CyberSecurity so I'm an analytical thinker and I'm always trying to figure out how an evil hacker would break things.  I'm also always thinking about how things work in general.

But here's the catch: I didn't know how to play half the games I wanted to teach my son.  So I went to Youtube and starting watching tutorials on playing War, Speed and Go Fish.  This lasted for a few hours until I got sucked in the Youtube universe of suggested videos and eventually ended up on how David Blaine does his magic tricks.

I was utterly fascinated by how simple and easy the most amazing mind reading tricks were actually pulled off.  I realized that almost all card tricks are based on slight of hand and misdirection.  Even when the deck is shuffled (it's not really shuffled) or it really is shuffled but it doesn't matter because of how the deck is shuffled. 

It's pretty amazing stuff.

But today we're not going to learn any mind reading card tricks (as fun as that would be) because I am going to show you an age old secret for reading your email subscriber's minds.

Are you ready for this?

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Mind Reading For Mere Mortals 

What if I told you there is a way you can read the minds of the people in your target market and gain deep insights into their needs, wants and fears?   

And what if I shared proven strategies that helped you understand the data in such a way that you were able to inject the survey results back into your email copy, marketing messages and product announcements such that it made them feel like you understood their situation better than they could even describe it? 

We're about to do that now.

Our Goal 

Our goal here is to find out exactly what people really want to buy by discovering and studying the language they use to describe their needs. 

You see the bottom line is although your website is designed to serve a specific niche, (see Finding Your Great Idea for details on how to do this) your market is actually comprised of segments and sub-segments that have particular needs in that niche. 

The point of the survey is try to figure out which bucket or segment your people fall into so you can customize your copy and content to meet their specific needs. 

Survey Savvy 

The best way to start your survey research is to ask a softball question like this:

“Are you a guy or a girl?” 

Now let me explain why this is a smart approach to your survey.

To some degree I care if my audience is mainly men or women but my chief reason in asking this question is really just to get the click momentum going.  I need to ask an easy question to start so I can get prepared to ask the most important question of the survey: 

"What is your #1 Single Biggest Challenge as it relates to X?"

This question helps to dig up what people really want by focusing on what they DON’T want.  The reality is most people simply aren’t aware of what they really want.    I think it was Henry Ford who once quipped: 

“If I would’ve asked people what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses” 

People didn’t even know that such a thing like a car could improve their lives as much as it has.   

The other nice thing about the question is that it helps you to filter out irrelevant results.  Notice the question says: “...as it relates to X”.  

So if X is “Basket Weaving” or X is “Passing my CISSP exam” or X is “Spending More Time With My Kids” or X is “Buy A New Home” you immediately cut out everyone who isn’t interested in that problem. 

Analyzing The Results 

The screenshot below shows the results of a survey I launched for my email list with my fixedByVonnie.com brand.  

It also shows the answers to my "What's your #1 single biggest tech challenge right now?" question.  The X was "tech" in my case but yours will most likely be different.

When the results start to flow you in you’ll notice patterns but the most important thing to keep in mind is that not all responses are equal. 

Here’s a few things to keep in mind 

• You want between 100 and 1000 responses before you start analyzing the results otherwise your sample sizes will most likely fail to represent your market opinion.
• You want to pay extra attention to the responses that have the highest character count.  In other words, response depth beats frequency because depth equals passion and passion gets to the core problem people are struggling with. 
• To analyze the responses, carefully read each one and look at the top 20% of your longest open ended responses.  Then use the exact customer language people are sharing back in your email copy and sales copy.  So if someone says, “I feel so stupid trying to learn the guitar.  It takes me forever and it feels like I’m never going to get this” your email subject line to your email list should begin something like: “I’m never going to get this...”  Do you see how I just copy and pasted that in?

Then what you do is for every person who doesn’t buy or open your email you want to send a follow-up email that basically says something along the lines of “Hey, are you mad at me 😉?" 

Props goes out to Ryan Levesque’s Ask book for taking the time to figure out and explain this method.  You can buy it on Amazon here:

Ryan Levesque: Ask Book

I read it three times and I can say it truly has the potential to revolutionize your business.  

The trick behind that "are you mad at me?” email is just to get the attention of your subscribers.  Since no one wants to feel like a hater when they see your email, they'll probably open it.  And when they do that's when you ask them why they didn’t invest in your flagship product X.   

That's it. 

Then based off that answer you can pivot in a follow-up email and say, “I get it! this wasn’t for you so where should we go now?” 

Would you like to dig into:

A, B or C? 

What's A, B or C?

A, B or C come from reading your survey results.  Maybe you're noticing that people don't need help learning the guitar but finding bands to play in, or they don't care about the guitar really, they just want to use it as a mechanism for impressing a girl or they just want to learn a specific song.

This all comes from having a conversation with your audience and truly seeking to understand what they need.

Why This Works 

This is a unique way to survey because it helps you discover the natural language your customers are using so you can reflect that language back into your email copy, sales pages and even your products.  It means your market will feel heard and understood. 

The other thing surveys accomplish is they will help you understand the demographics of your market so you can get a handle on their fears, objections and challenges.   

I will admit this part of the survey analysis process takes a lot of hard work.  People will be using open ended questions here so you’ll need to sit and patiently read each response, categorize common responses into themes and then extract the true deep need each person really has (that is below the surface and often unspoken). 

It takes work but let me tell you NO ONE IS DOING THIS and you’ll know your market better than they know even their problems.   

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

But here's where the magic happens:

“When you can articulate a problem better than your market can, your market will immediately assume you have the answer to their problem.” 

Now It’s Your Turn 

Sit down this weekend and create an outline of your Thank You page survey form. 

The questions you ask your audience depend on your market but in general you want to try to ask more open ended questions so you can have more gold to extract: 

• Start with a low friction soft ball question 
• Ask your “What is your single biggest challenge as it relates to X?” question. 
• Also try this one: "What Have you been doing to address this challenge?" because it will help you gauge just how deep the need is.

Also, you might be tempted to get the age of the person answering your question so you can group your audience demographically by age.  This might be a good idea; however, I’ve discovered it’s often smarter to ask less questions because each question decreases the probability of the form being filled out. 

In your last question I recommend opening the door for people to talk with you via Skype or the phone.  Your purpose with this last question is to get people to talk out their problems with you.  You want to keep digging, keep asking why, keep listening.  It's super hard to do this but you'll need to force yourself not to interrupt silence or long customer pauses or the awkwardness of live conversation - just be patient and let your people get everything off their minds.

And just when you think they're done complaining ask them “how come?” or “tell me more about that”. 

Let them drain their pain on you and listen carefully to the words they use, take notes on how they describe their problems and then study their results after the call. 

Another thing to keep in mind is when people provide their phone number or Skype name you should call them back within 36 hours but not within the first 2 hours otherwise it will feel stalkerish.  You don't want your subscribers to think:

“Whoa, I just filled this form and got an instant call back?”  You don’t want that kind of thing happening because it's a little creepy.

Remember, the purpose of all this work is to glean deep insights into your customer base.  You’ll notice they’ll share private things like the kinds of books they love to read, the movies they watch, the responsibilities they have with their kids and more. 

All this information is pure gold because it means your market is writing your copy for you. 

You don’t have to guess anymore.  You can know what’s on your lead’s minds and can work your copy in a way to address those needs. 

Quick Action Result 

Log into Google Forms and build your first form based on your survey outline. 

After you have your form established we can add it to your New Kajabi Thank you page pretty easily. 

Sign into your New Kajabi trial account here:

> https://app.kajabi.com/r/Zv3MyAVF/t/prsuwmcx 

Then go to your Thank You page in your Pipeline by clicking the search box at the top of your browser and typing “pipelines”. 

Select your thank you page, drag out a button and copy and paste the Google form link as the button link destination. 

The graphic below is the Thank You page for this website.  I added a button, the purple "Ok, Sure!" button and then in the CTA (Call To Action) section I pasted in my Google Forms URL.

So whenever someone clicks that button it drops them directly into my survey! 

So that’s it! 

By the way, if you need help accomplishing this in New Kajabi just hit me up in the comments and I'll walk you through the process.  

In this next lecture we’ll dig into using analytics to track website growth.  We’ll also talk about email open rates and the analytics you need to pay attention to there.  Finally, we'll close out the lesson with why membership sites are so awesome and how you can create one in New Kajabi.

Talk soon!