Rory Stobo, Chief Copywriter at Sookio, writes:
Writing is hard. Crafting a message which grabs your customers by the danglers is tricky when they just never seem to be interested in the same things as you.
Disconnect between marketers and their audience is costly; New Coke, Google+, Cheetos lip balm (yes, really). Embarrassing, multi-million-dollar flops.
But how? These titanic organisations command more market research budget than most SMEs will ever dream of. How do you manage to soil the linen on such a flabbergasting scale?
See, here’s the thing… people lie. Especially when they’re in an environment like market research where they feel like their answers reflect who they are as people. Up to 80% of people lie to their doctors for this very reason.
Faced with this depressing human truth, what hope does the average business have? How can you get to the heart of your customers’ needs and use that knowledge to write better marketing?
Grab your swag bags and mask up, kids. We’re going robbing.
Everyone’s a critic
Social proof, the knowledge that ‘people like us’ enjoy the thing we’re thinking about buying, is a marketer’s golden goose. Providing this proof is its own billion-dollar industry.
Trustpilot, Tripadvisor, Google My Business, Amazon. Hundreds of thousands of people every day are having their say.
So steal it.
Take Euroloo reviews for example. For portable toilet hire in Essex, they’re easily number one or number two. If you’re in doubt as to what folk really want from their portaloo experience, ponder no more. The majority of five-star reviews talk about the service provided by on-site staff.
Now privy to this knowledge, their marketers can dump the irrelevant messaging. No more getting bogged down talking about, for example, their environmental footprint or the latest lavatory technology; folk don’t seem to care.
Let that sink in. Customers are willingly, nay, happily doing your market research for you, with their guard completely down. For free.
If you’re not currently getting proactive about asking for reviews, begin immediately. And while you wait for them to roll in, your competitors are already proudly showing off their own reviews.
Steal them.
Read more over on the Sookio blog.