“One of the primary things that you should be doing when researching what you should add to your membership site is simply ask your list what they want and what they need and what they’re interested in.”
This article will be a little different, it’s about a research strategy.
As you know I do monthly Q & A calls with my coaching students. During the call they can raise their hand. I open their microphone, and they can then ask me any questions they have. One of them asked me this question…
“I was searching and researching about what I should put into my membership site. I mailed my list and asked them questions about what they wanted to know. My question is, is there anywhere else I could ask?”
I told them it was a great idea asking your list what they would like to see in the membership site. One of the primary things that you should be doing when researching what you should add to your membership site is simply ask your list what they want and what they need and what they’re interested in.
Then I had to stop, for a couple of seconds, and think about where else they could ask about what to include.
What the person was asking was, should they run ads in order to find people’s questions or their burning desire and what they want to know about. The answer is, yes, they could, that’s a possibility. But the reality is there are other places that you can go to find this information.
One of the places that you can find this is Facebook.
Here’s how you do it. You log into Facebook.com and click on “Groups”, you then type in a topic, for example, “marketing.” You can then filter for just groups you belong to “public” groups. I set my filter for “public” groups.
You will then see a list of public groups related to Marketing. As I write this, I see groups such as “Network Marketing” 35,000 members; “Network Marketing MLM, direct sales group”, 72,000 members; “Affiliate Marketing” 55,000 members; “Smart Guys in Marketing” 13,000 members; “Online 24/7 Marketing Group”, 90,000 members; “Digital Marketing” 242,000 members.
I’m not going to go on and on, but in all of these different groups there are literally tens of thousands of people, and that’s just in a search under “Marketing.” (If you try this, you will not see the same numbers as me because they change on a daily basis.)
When you look at the groups, they will tell you how many posts they have per day. On less active groups the posts may be per week, month or even per year.
How do you use this?
First of all, let me clarify something very strongly. I’m NOT recommending that you go in and join these groups and spam them with offers for your product or services. That’s not my point in any way, shape or form. Don’t do it. You’re just going to get booted out and banned from that group. Always be mindful of what the groups rules are.
What you’re going to do, once you join, is just ask for people’s opinions.
You’re going to join some of the more active groups and you’re going to post something similar to… “Hey, I’m getting ready to put together a membership site on this particular topic. What are some ideas that you guys would want to know about this topic?” And then let people respond to you. You’re doing market research with people who are already interested in your subject.
All you want to do is get their opinions. You’re not looking to capture their name, email address or anything like that. All you’re trying to do is get their thoughts.
If you try to send them to a website to capture their name and email address, it might be against the group’s rules. So just be aware of that. Don’t try to be slick. Don’t try to be smart and put up an opt-in page trying to capture their name and email address or anything else.
As you can tell, I feel quite strongly about this, but let’s get back to my student’s original question.
When they asked their question, they were referencing placing ads in order to find out what they should include in their membership site.
I responded that he could have, in this particular case, gone out and created an ad. That’s a possibility of something that you could do in this whole process.…of course it’s going to cost you money.
The benefit of advertising is that by advertising to a specific page that you have or asking a person’s opinion is that you actually are building a group of people that are interested in what you have and that are willingly giving you their opinions.
The strategy is very simple. The strategy is called an “Ask Campaign”. Now, the reason it’s called an ask campaign is not because of the book by Ryan Levesque. Years before Ryan wrote his book, Alex Mandossian and Frank Deardurff, created a program called the Ask Database. It was a software program that would simply create “Ask” campaigns. They popularized this idea 20 years ago.
NOTE: The “Ask Database” is no longer available. Frank Deardurff has replaced it with his newer software program called Yurpl.com.
Here’s how this “advertising for info” concept works.
You send people to a page and ask them an open-ended question. The question might be something like, “What’s the biggest problem that you face in marketing products and services on the internet?” or “What’s the biggest problem you face in getting more mortgage clients?” or “What’s the biggest problem that you face when trying to lose weight?” depending on your market, of course.
Those are the type of question that could be asked. They’re totally open-ended. You’re not leading them on at all. You simply ask them the question, then have a box they fill in with their answer, then have a spot for their name and their email address.
So again, they see a question asked in the ad. They are taken to a page where they, once again, see the question and a box where they can answer it. They then leave their name and email address.
VERY IMPORTANT…do NOT lead them into answering what you want them to answer. In other words, don’t give them a multiple-choice question because that would only lead them in certain directions. You don’t want to influence their decision because it would immediately invalidate the information collected.
Simply leave an open-ended question and allow them to put in whatever they would like. If they want to put a short answer in, that’s fine. If they put in a long answer, that’s fine too.
Back in the day, when we started these “Ask” campaigns, we sent them to a “Thank You” page after they entered the information. Today, I would do it differently. I would make an offer on the thank you page.
Once they have given their opinion as well as their name and email address, I would probably pre-sell whatever it is that you are asking them a question about.
For example, let’s say I wanted to gather info on what to include in a course on ranking your videos on YouTube. I would send them to a page that might have a little video at the top of it. In the video, I would say something similar to…
“Hi, my name is Armand Morin. Thank you so much for visiting this page. I want to ask you a question. I’m getting ready to put together a product on YouTube video rankings and how to get your videos to the top of YouTube.
I want to know what your most pressing questions are about ranking your videos on YouTube. So again, I need your help. Go ahead and fill in what your biggest question is regarding YouTube rankings and YouTube videos in the box below.
I look forward to seeing you very soon.”
Here’s what happened. They follow the ad, arrive at this page and see the video. If they’re interested, they’ll fill in their answer plus their name and email address.
NOTE: I am not bribing them at this point.
Once they click the “Submit” button, they are taken to the Thank You page. On this page I would have a small video that says something similar to…
“Thank you so much for filling in your response and because you’ve helped me, I want to make you a very, very special offer.
I plan on releasing this product in the next two to three weeks. And what I want to do is offer you a pre order price for this product right now. Because you have given me your information, regarding what you would like to know, I’m going to give you a massive discount off the price of this product.
In fact, what I’m going to do is give you 50% off what we’re going to sell it for in the next two to three weeks. So again, you can get 50% off right now before the product is even created and launched. Once again, this is just for RIGHT NOW while you are here on this page. So, so ahead, place your order.
As soon as I am finished creating the product, I’ll send it to you along with your unique username, your password and instructions on how to access it.
Don’t wait, go ahead to do it right now.”
I’m sure you could do better than that. I just created this one off the top of my head during that call for my student.
Think about it. That was a very simple offer. What I’m sharing with you right now is absolutely a brilliant idea. I know. Yes— there is absolutely no doubt, I’m biased. But think about what I’m saying. You can go out, make a page with a simple video that you could probably make with the camera on your phone.
Just hold your phone out in front of you and tell everyone that you’re going to create a product on subject XYZ. And if they could help you out by telling you what they want and then fill in their name and email address you’d greatly appreciate it.
Once they fill in that information you take them to the Thank You page where you make an offer for a product that you haven’t even developed yet and which you will use their information to help you create.
Please let me know if you do this and what your results are so we can share it with the Marketing University family!
