Strengthen your offers with the RIGHT survey questions (and avoid the biggest survey mistake)
When you’re done reading this post, you’ll know:
How to market yourself based on facts, not assumptions
What survey questions to ask before you craft your offer
The mistake many surveys make and how to avoid it
If you’re a business owner thinking of creating a new offer or strengthening your current offer—or you’re just not attracting the right prospects—this post is for you.
Surveys are a powerful marketing tool that help you avoid:
Making assumptions about your ideal client that aren’t true (!)
Making business decisions based on your own unconscious biases
Making costly mistakes when developing a new offer or cleaning up an old one
Let’s get into how specific survey questions grow your business by helping you shape better offers.
How the right survey questions can point your offer toward your ideal client
Picture this:
You're a dissertation coach who helps PhD students finish their dissertations.
And you're thinking of expanding your offers.
Because after these students benefit from your mentorship to finish their degree...
you rarely hear from them again.
Not ideal when you could continue mentoring them as they navigate their early careers. 😬
Which is why you're thinking of creating a follow-up offer to re-engage clients.
But...
what actually happens to these students after they finish their degrees?
If you asked their families, they'd tell you they were professors. (Because families of academics think everyone who teaches at a university is a professor.)
If you asked their friends, they'd tell you they were professors. (Because friends of academics never remember their exact title.)
If you looked them up on LinkedIn, their profiles would tell you they were professors! (Because it was easier for them to choose that title from a pre-selected list rather than enter a new title.)
You, however, are familiar with the dearth of professorship jobs on the academic market and know that not all of your clients become professors straight out of the gate!
More likely, they are temporary instructors like adjuncts and lecturers.
No matter what their families, friends, and LI profiles say.
Since those are untrustworthy sources of information, you know there's only ONE reliable way to find out what happens to your clients--
and thus only ONE reliable way to create a follow-up offer that will resonate with them--
you reach out directly and ask them what their new title is.
(Annnd...that brings me to the point of this story. 👇)
You can’t afford to skip asking your ideal client how they see themselves
This insight comes directly from client work I've done.
While the exact example above is fiction, this insight most definitely is not.
Simply asking my client's audience how they see themselves via a survey gave us useful and surprising info.
Had we not asked and gone off of what we saw from external sources like LI, we would have made the mistake in the analogy above of marketing to university professors instead of people in more common positions like adjuncts and lecturers (whose families will tell you they're "professors" though that's not their technical title).
These latter folks face hardships like temporary contracts and lower pay, so messaging towards professors would not resonate with them.
If they read your social media, website, or any of your marketing geared toward professors, they’d skim right past you!
Which is why it's important you ask your audience how they see themselves, instead of relying on how other people see them, how they curate their LI profile, or how you think they see themselves.
When you get info directly from your client on how they see themselves, you can make decisions for your business based on evidence...rather than conjecture.
So how can you ask your audience how they see themselves?
Run a survey and ask!
4 example survey questions that get you useful info to shape your offers & marketing
Below are 4 examples of survey questions you can use for different industries with a variety of goals.
You’re welcome to swipe any of these questions for your own survey.
IMPORTANT: These are examples to give you ideas for how to use surveys--I'm not saying you should blindly send these out, though you certainly could if they supported your business.
Example 1: If you’re a dissertation coach per the example above
If I were writing a survey for the dissertation coach this blog post opened with, here's how I'd ask where her clients ended up post-PhD after they started the survey:
Thank you so much for taking this survey! Your confidential answers will help me understand where your career takes you after our work together.
Please select your current title:
Adjunct instructor
Lecturer
Visiting Scholar (VAP)
Assistant Professor
Associate or Full Professor
Other
This simple question, asked first in a survey, fulfills three jobs:
1) It lets us only consider responses from participants identified as ideal clients.
If we think targeting temporary instructors (adjuncts, lecturers, VAPs) would be more fruitful, we'd only consider those responses. Ditto if we thought targeting professors would be more fruitful instead.
2) It gives us a full picture of different career paths clients go on.
How? If anyone who selects "Other," we'd follow that choice up with a question about their current role so we gather info about clients who pursue non-instructor positions as well. You never know what interesting info you can find (and monetize).
3) It gives the respondent a "quick win" because it's an easy question to answer.
This is why you see multiple-choice questions first on surveys. Giving respondents easy questions to answer upfront makes them more likely to fill out the whole thing, even the open-ended questions later that require more work.
I know dissertation coaches, while they exist, are far and few in between so here are ways businesses can ask for info from clients to inform their offers and marketing.
Example 2: If you’re a pilates instructor, here’s what you might ask to determine which classes to offer
How much experience have you had with pilates?
Beginner (I'm a total newbie)
Intermediate (I do a class once in a while)
Advanced (I'm a regular and I come to get my ass kicked)
Based on the responses, you know how many classes of each level to offer to attract the most customers possible.
Example 3: If you’re a web designer, here’s what you to know what to tout most in your marketing
When you think about our work together, what would you say was the most impactful asset you received?
Logo
Brand colors
Fonts
Curated stock photos
Other
Based on the responses, you know which asset to emphasize the most in your marketing to attract more ideal clients.
Example 4: If you’re a course creator, here’s what you might ask in your survey to know which funnel to target most
How did you find out about my course?
Ads
Social posts
Referral
Speaking engagement
Other
Based on the responses, you know which funnel sources to spend your time and energy to draw in more course members.
Not sure what you should ask your audience
for the insights you want?
That’s where I come in.
I’m happy to design, write, and analyze survey responses for you so you can stop guessing what your audience wants to pay you for.
Message me through my contact form to discuss working together!
The MOST common mistake I see in surveys
BTW. The MOST common mistake I see in surveys is starting off with an open ended question like "Describe your current role" with a big, blank paragraph box right below.
That's a lot of work for your respondent and people WILL click away. Anything that makes a survey look too hard will lose people—in this article by Forbes, they found in their own research that 19% of respondents won’t complete a survey if it looks too long.
Help your audience help you by giving them an easy multiple-choice questions to answer first. Once they’ve answered this question, they’re more likely to complete the survey, even if you have a few open-ended questions later on.
TL;DR: Smart businesses make decisions based on information, not impressions
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
We do research so that we check our own biases--so that we can make decisions for our businesses based on information, not mere impressions.
Surveys are one handy little way to do this.
One question is all it takes to confirm how your audience sees themselves--because whatever other people call them, whatever their social profiles say... if you're not thinking about the way they see themselves, the offers and marketing you shape will resonate a little less effectively.
Something to keep in mind for the next time you're planning to do some customer research. :)
Stop guessing what your
ideal clients will pay you for
Work with me instead!
Hi, I’m Mimi!
As a conversion copywriter for coaches and course creators, I give you the words to connect with your audience without the guesswork of what they need to hear to become clients.
Here are a few ways we can work together:
💥 The Small Start, Big Win™ Copy Polish, where I optimize your webpages for sales
💥 The Quick Clicks Email Polish, where I optimize your emails for opens and engagements
💥 The Messaging Playbook, where I hone in on messaging that attracts the right clients
Questions? Want to chat?
