The classic mantra of successful marketing is find a demand and fill it. Checking the level of demand from any product on line is simple, due to the wealth of free tools that show what prospective customers are seeking. A well known example of this is Overture's keyword tool.
But just think how even more targeted and effective your data would be if you could conduct your very own personalised product demand research.
Not only could you design your products and your sales letters to precisely match your target audience, you could even get great ideas for brand new products.
Better yet, you would know with great certainty, even before you created them, these new products would find an eager market among your existing customers and prospects.
Taken together, not only would this result in more sales, but the greater perceived value you could build into your product would allow you to increase prices without any fall off in sales.
The magic key to all this is conducting surveys. Not only among your established customers, but also your prospective customers and customers who have requested refunds.
By surveying all three categories, you can determine their biggest problems, their worst dilemmas and their deepest desires. This is particularly valuable in the case of people who have yet to buy or have bought and then requested a refund.
By surveying visitors to your site who have not bought you'll be able to spot flaws in your sales copy and sales process. Plugging these gaps will allow you to make those extra sales that make the difference between a bad and a good week.
It's particularly instructive to survey people who have bought and then requested refunds. You can use this information to make improvements in your product. Then, by reducing the refund percentage, your bottom line will improve some more.
Remember people are always in a hurry. So your survey should contain carefully crafted questions to glean maximum data from minimum questions. You don't want people failing to complete your survey because you're asking them to wade through a daunting number of questions.
Your general questions should seek to establish the background of the people who visit your site: are they young, old, male, female and the type of employment and hobbies they have, plus their interests, ambitions and hopes for the future?
Among the specific information you want to discover is what actually induced your customers to buy your product. You also want to know how you can increase both the number and value of these existing customer sales.
Just as we learn more from our mistakes, than our successes, even more value will come from people who did not buy -- or bought, then asked for a refund.
Don't forget to ask what your audience want from a new product. This can be the most valuable information of all, with the definite added advantage of having a target group you already know are looking for just that product.
When asking people to complete your survey, always remember the extremely high value of a well thought out title or headline. In the case of a survey, you have to overcome the "I haven't time for this" objection. The way to do this is to use a title like: "The Two Minute Survey" or "Six Simple Questions".
When announcing your survey, always bear in mind, people invariably find it flattering to be asked their opinion. So, head your e-mail or other message along these lines: "First name, I would really value your opinion on this". Always try and offer a valuable incentive for completing the survey. For example, a free report or a discount voucher against a future sale.
The approach you use when asking for the survey to be completed is also important. Putting it in your regular newsletter is probably the best way, although you need to be careful if your newsletter goes to both customers and prospects. In that case, you'll need to devise a way to ensure both categories fill in different surveys.
Alternative, more targeted, methods include:
You'll get far more honest