For today’s Strategy Thursday, a lesson that on its surface sounds like yet another copywriting rant…

But I’m going to challenge you.

I’m going to challenge you to think about this before you write copy. Before you look at media or mailing lists or online traffic sources. Before you even START your business, if possible. At the very least, before you spend the next 48 hours fervently repositioning your business, products, and services…

Because the list of questions I’m about to share defines your business success. Not so much the questions, of course, but your answers to them. And that’s true whether you’re answering the questions consciously or not…

ultimate-sales-letterFrom Dan Kennedy’s The Ultimate Sales Letter, his “10 Smart Market Diagnosis and Profiling Questions.”

First, the list. Then, the explanation of how to use these questions to define your total business strategy.

Here are the questions to ask about your market…

1. What keeps them awake at night, indigestion boiling up in their esophagus, eyes open, staring at the ceiling?

2. What are they afraid of?

3. What are they angry about? Who are they angry at?

4. What are their top three daily frustrations?

5. What trends are occurring and will occur in their business or lives?

6. What do they secretly, ardently desire most?

7. Is there a built-in bias to the way they make decisions? (Example: engineers = exceptionally analytical.)

8. Do they have their own language?

9. Who else is selling something similar to them, and how?

10. Who else has tried selling them something similar, and how has that effort failed?

 

Pretty good list, huh?

Now imagine for a moment that before you even had a business, product or service… You picked a target market and asked these basic questions about them…

Instead of saying, “I have an idea!” and sinking months or years of your life into its development, before even knowing whether anyone would buy or not…

You’d be able to get inside the hearts and minds of your target market. And build your product, service, and marketing to them…

To their problems… Their pressing desires… Their wants and needs…

You’d be able to speak directly to their fears and frustrations…

Help them overcome them…

And have the perfect solution for them.

Simply knowing the right answer to just one of these questions and building your product to suit can completely change your life…

One of my very first clients sold IT training videos. For career computer geeks who need an advancement, a new job, or even just to be competent on the latest tech, there are a whole mess of certifications.

It used to be that it was expensive and time-consuming to send folks to classes or boot camps. And if you trained an employee and they got a job offer next week, your investment was out the door. We’re talking $4-, $5-, $6,000 or more, out the window.

My client recognized this big problem.

And so he sat in his basement, with a white board, and trained the same material you’d learn in a class. He walked through it all as if there were students watching, and simply caught it on tape. This way, the same training could be delivered via video to thousands, with little incremental cost.

This may not seem revolutionary today, but when he did it, it was in that industry.

At least in terms of training, he knew the top frustrations of his prospect. And he built a solution that alleviated these frustrations.

This didn’t take exceptional copywriting or marketing ability to sell. Simply letting the prospect know that you understood their frustration and had built a solution was all it took.

The process was systematized and rolled out across dozens of training titles, and a multi-million dollar business was built as a result.

All business success starts with a market. Not just the market itself, but your understanding of the market.

These questions will give you that understanding.

And, done well, it will resonate through everything you do…

The products and services you offer…

The positioning of your business…

How you communicate with your prospects…

Everything!

And if you’re an employee, consultant, or copywriter, this list of questions can make you a superstar…

The better you understand your client’s market, the more sales you will be able to generate.

The more positive and especially negative hot buttons you can push (NOT just fear and greed), the more persuasive you’ll be.

And this makes you absolutely, totally indispensable…

Not to mention, worth higher fees, royalties, and performance bonuses — because they will be happy to pay more to keep you around.

This is a large part of what we’ll be diving into in November, at my Advanced Direct Response Copywriting Workshop.

It’s not writing ability that sets the pros apart from the rookies. It’s thinking ability.

Understanding your customer, your client, your prospect, your reader, your market is at the core of all successful sales thinking.

So if this resonates with you…

If you’d like to apply it on steroids to writing more powerful, more profitable sales copy… For your own business, or as a service to clients…

Go ahead right now and read more about the November workshop.

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr

Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets