by Sabri Suby
This gap is your winning ticket and a way for you to tap into the hearts and
minds of your audience.
We’ll be using all this research in the next Phase to attract your dream buyer.
To read the mind of your prospects and know exactly the questions they’re
asking during the research and buying cycle, the auto-suggest results
provided by Google and Bing are a goldmine of insights.
As you type into the search bar, you’re presented with an aggregated view of
the questions and therefore a hint of the motivations and emotions of the
people behind each search query. It’s perhaps one of the best but most
underutilised sources of research for content ideas.
Answerthepublic.com
The next best thing to actually reading your customer’s mind is
AnswerThePublic.com. This tool is one of the best-kept secrets in the sales
and marketing industry, and it will give you invaluable insight into what your
customers are thinking.
At AnswerThePublic, you type in your keyword or search phrase and the tool
generates a diagram of related searches. Depending on your search term, you
can get hundreds of results that give you direct insight into what your
audience is thinking, the kind of questions they’re asking, and the hot-button
issues they’re struggling with. And once you know their questions and issues,
you can provide the solution.
At the time of writing this, the tool is free, but I’m sure they will be coming
up with a paid model shortly.
It’s an absolute goldmine of data for the modern-day marketer and perhaps
one of the best but most underutilised sources of research for the questions
that plague today’s markets. Read on to learn how to get the best out of this
tool.
Let’s use ‘homebuilder’ as an example. If we start to search for
‘homebuilder’, this tool spits out all the questions people are having related to
this query:
‘HomeBuilder’ Questions 42 Visualisation Data
How to choose a homebuilder
Will homebuilders negotiate on price?
What questions to ask homebuilder (this one is great!)
What is owner builders home warranty insurance?
Which homebuilder to choose?
These are the questions most prospects have when thinking about engaging a
homebuilder. We’ll be using these hair-on-fire questions in the next step to
attract our dream buyer, and you will do the same in your market so you
know you’re solving real problems of real people looking for your products
or services.
Other great places to look are Facebook Groups and pages around your
market and niche. These are goldmines for valuable information.
These are what you want to look through:
All posts by the page owner
All posts by visitors to a fan page
Count of engagements for a post by page owner
Count of engagements by post type
You don’t need to scroll through pages and pages of comments. You can
simply look at the most popular ones and read what the market is discussing
and thinking about.
Another incredible source for market intel is to look at threads on Reddit and
question platform website, Quora. These are like walking into a golden
palace of customer insight and eavesdropping on thousands of conversations
that are taking place behind closed doors about your market.
After you’ve used the Halo Strategy, it’s now time to use the marketing intel
and research you’ve gathered to create your dream buyer avatar.
Creating Your Dream Buyer Avatar
Knowing your dream buyer changes everything – your product and service
offering, your marketing strategy, value proposition, pricing, tone of your
copy, what channels you advertise on, and more.
No one can afford to address everyone’s problems, especially in today’s
market conditions where the media we use to reach our customers is so
highly fragmented. If your business is going to compete with the big guys,
you have to zero in on your dream buyer.
A lot of business owners simply say, ‘I’m targeting whoever is interested in
my services’. Some say that their target is business owners, homeowners,
property investors, or mothers. It’s a good start, but these targets are much
too general to go after. Specificity is key.
And while defining your dream buyer might seem like you are excluding
other audiences who might buy from you, keep in mind that targeting a
specific dream buyer doesn’t mean you have to exclude anyone who doesn’t
fit that criteria.
The purpose of going after a dream buyer is to focus your message and
marketing budget on whichever market is most likely to buy your products,
as well as those prospects who would be your dream customers.
Focusing on your dream buyer brings clarity to your marketing message, and
your copy becomes sharp and hard like the tip of a spear that cuts through the
noise in your marketplace, which ultimately leads to a more profitable
business.
And look, while you might be thinking that creating a dream buyer persona
isn’t the sexiest thing, let me tell you this:
Advertising channels change. Landing page builder software changes.
Algorithms change. Tactics change. But the fundamentals of learning what
people want, understanding exactly where you can help them, and then telling
the right people about it in the most persuasive way are timeless strategies
that worked 100 years ago and will work 1,000 years from now.
This chapter is about getting to know the right people – your dream buyers –
who will benefit the most and pay you most for your products and services.
Here are the nine essential questions to ask in the process of defining your
ideal customer. Let’s get started.
Nine Questions To Define Your
Dream Buyer
1. Where does your dream buyer hang out and congregate?
Name both online and offline places where your dream buyers hang out and
congregate. The more detailed and specific, the better.
‘Hangs out on Facebook’ is too general.
‘Hangs out in the Mothers of Melbourne Facebook group’ is more precise
and actionable.
‘Likes the outdoors’ is too general to mean anything insightful and
actionable.
‘Likes going to the park every Saturday morning with her two kids’ shows
habits and values and is specific.
‘Reads blogs’ isn’t targeted enough.
‘Obsessively reads Rockin Mama, Mamavation, and Reddit’ is defined and
revealing.
Knowing exactly where your dream buyers are hanging out influences a lot
of things including where you should advertise, what you should advertise,
the tone of your copy, and vernacular to use.
2. Where does your dream buyer get their information?
When your dream buyer is in research mode, where do they go to find the
answers they seek? Is it Google? A particular blog? Books? Magazines?
YouTube?
Write your findings as a simple sentence: ‘When Sally is curious about a
topic, the first place she goes is Google search on her iPhone’.
3. What are their bi
ggest frustrations and challenges?
Truly understanding and empathising with their biggest frustrations and
challenges are the most important keys to defining your dream buyer avatar.
By knowing what it’s like walking in your customer’s shoes, you’ll be able to
create better products and services that address their specific pain points and
problems.
Here are a few examples to get your creative juices flowing:
‘I wish someone would just write this sales copy for me’.
‘I need to lose ten kilos before my wedding’.
‘Ugh. I wish I could just have someone run my Facebook ads for me’.
Your dream buyer’s frustrations and challenges are integral to the products
and services you offer. Whatever it is you are selling has to solve a problem
large enough that your dream buyer will happily part with their hard-earned
money for you to solve it for them.
Knowing their biggest frustration and challenges also will determine the
emotions you speak to in your copy and advertising. There are a number of
emotions behind the challenges and frustrations your dream buyer is
experiencing – they could be sadness, anger, fear, remorse, hope, a desire for
something better. By speaking to exactly what your dream buyer is feeling,
you’ll be able to connect with them emotionally on more than just a rational
level.
It will also reflect the types of stories you tell. The logic here is simple. When
your dream buyer sees a testimonial from a customer who solved their
biggest frustrations and challenges with your product or service, then they are
more likely to buy from you. They can see this positive transformation take
place in someone else.
4. What are their hopes, dreams, and desires?
Knowing your dream buyer’s hopes, dreams and desires helps you paint a
vivid picture of what life could be like after using your products and services.
Think of it as selling the dream and painting a picture of the Promised Land.
When your products or services help your dream buyer attain their hopes,
dreams, and desires, it becomes much easier to write copy for your landing
pages, website, ads, and other assets you leverage to sell more goods and
services.
Here are a few examples of copy written to speak to a dream buyer’s desires:
CUSTOMER DESIRE COPY
COPY SPEAKING TO
THEIR DESIRES
‘I want to lose 10kgs before
‘Our exercise program is specifically
my wedding day’
designed to help you get shredded
FAST and drop 10kgs-15kgs in 60 days
guaranteed!’
‘I want to have my
‘Guaranteed Google rankings in 90
website ranked higher on
days or we work for free!’
Google’
‘I’m worried someone will
‘Our 24/7 security service makes your
break into my house and
home almost impenetrable by crooks,
steal all my possessions that
thieves and robbers. Keeping your
I’ve worked so hard to get’
belongings and family safe’
5. What are their biggest fears?
What are your dream buyer’s deepest fears? What keeps them up at night,
tossing and turning, unable to sleep? What do they worry about in their mind
but never tell anyone? Fully understanding your market’s deepest and most
primal fears is an often overlooked component to crafting a customer avatar.
However, in my opinion, it’s equally as important, if not more, than
understanding their hopes, dreams, and desires. Why? People are motivated
more by pain than they are by pleasure. They are more motivated by fear of
loss than they are by the desire to gain something. Therefore, calling out their
fears in your copy and ads is an incredibly important element to get your
dream buyer to take action and motivate them to move away from what they
fear most.
A good example of fear used to motivate people into taking action is the
approach used by insurance companies. They call out their prospects’ deepest
fears more than they do the benefits of getting covered.
Example:
‘Life insurance can help ease your worries that your loved ones will be taken
care of and may not have to deal with the financial strain that could arise
from you no longer being around, or the financial hardship that can impact
your kids through their surviving parent. If you have a partner, would he or
she be able to take care of the kids without your help? Prevent your partner’s
financial hardship affecting your kids’ welfare and future’.
6. What is their preferred form of communication?
Email? Text? Chat? Facebook Live? Or do they prefer physical mail? This is
a matter of where your audience wants you to communicate with them. The
fundamental lesson here is to communicate with your customers where they
already are. Don’t try and move them onto something that is more convenient
for you rather than where they already are.
7. What phrases, exact language, and vernacular do they use?
As previously mentioned, Robert Collier has this fantastic quote: ‘Enter the
conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind’.
You see, there is already language and niche-specific terms being used in
your customer’s mind for their hopes, dreams, pain, fears, and desires. Your
job is to listen and write them down. What industry terminology are they
using, what specific vernacular and niche-specific terms?
When using The Halo Strategy to conduct research on where your buyers are
hanging out and congregating, you must document the exact phrases and
terminology they use and store them in a spreadsheet to spark ideas for
website copy, landing pages, and ads. Take specific comments from Reddit,
Facebook Group, or YouTube, and document your audience’s word-for-word
responses.
In today’s day and age, scepticism is rampant. Now more than ever, people
are attracted to people (and businesses) who speak their language, get their
sense of humour, or share the same point of view. Every time they read your
copy, your goal is for your dream buyer to say to themselves, ‘Whoa, it’s like
they’re talking directly to me’.
8. What does a day in your dream buyer’s life look like?
7:05am - Mike wakes up to the sound of marimbas on his iPhone’s alarm
clock.
7:15am – Checks his inbox to make sure the world isn’t coming to an end
from any emails that came in overnight. Then opens up Instagram to see
who’s commenting and liking his latest post.
8:10am - Brews the new Colombian roast using his shiny new French press.
8:32am - Stuck in traffic on Punt road listening to his favourite Drake
playlist on Spotify.
9:03am - Gets into the office.
9:18am - Checks email and calendar.
10:01am – Checks the stats in Google Analytics, Facebook Ads, and custom
dashboard.
10:40am – Has a meeting with his team about current week.
12:05pm - Eats favourite Poké bowl from new hipster joint on the corner.
1:12pm – On his way back to the office, checks Ins
tagram, Facebook, and
LinkedIn.
2:04pm - Afternoon lull, wishing his office had a nap pod for him to have a
siesta.
2:38pm – Write new Facebook Ads and email sequence.
4:05pm - Brainstorms how to generate more leads to meet quarterly growth
goals and revenue targets.
6:15pm - Drives home ready for a House of Cards marathon on Netflix.
Imagining what your ideal customer’s daily life looks like adds an incredible
personal element to your marketing. It also becomes practical – when is the
best time to email your prospects? When are they most likely to respond?
When are they most attentive?
Your dream buyer is a completely different person at 8am on a Monday
morning than at 6:30pm on a Friday. Be aware of this and use it in your
marketing.
9. What makes them happy?
The customer journey is more than the exchange of money for goods and
services. Your clients are emotional beings, and people want to interact with
companies and brands that make them feel good about themselves.
Where are the touch points in your dream buyer’s journey where you can
insert surprises, do the unexpected, be remarkable, and bring a smile to their
face? Maybe it’s a handwritten thank-you note after signing up for your
service, a personalised email sent on their birthday, or a free box full of
company swag and cookies (who doesn’t love cookies?).
Inserting happiness into the buyer’s journey can create a deeper level of
emotional connection that cultivates loyal and raving fans for the long term.
The End Result
After answering all of these questions, write a paragraph summarising your
findings. It could look like this summary of Sally, the dream buyer for a new
app focused on environmentally-friendly mothers:
‘Sally loves spending time reading stories and getting tips from other mums,
and learning about parenthood in the Mothers of Melbourne Facebook group.
It’s a much cherished pastime of hers. Her biggest frustration being a mother
of two is simply that there is not enough hours in the day to do everything.
When she’s in research mode, the first place she goes is Google on her iPad
in the kitchen. She’s a frequent (kinda obsessive) visitor of mummy blogs
like Rockin Mama and Mamavation. Her life-long dream is to start her own
interior design business, so she can have a creative outlet and more ‘me