Putting Yourself in the Shoes of the Customer
What makes people buy? Marketers across the world have been tackling this question with endless variations in different niches, trying to find out what inclines people to make the decision to purchase something, since marketing and really commerce began.
Before putting out a lead magnet, you have to put yourself in the shoes of the customer. Ask yourself some of these questions:
What does the customer want?
Does it provide any value to the customer?
What problem are you solving, and how does that show up in their life?
Are there variations on the problem? Meaning, does your solution apply to wildly divergent groups?
What could a customer possibly want so bad that they are willing to give their information out to sign up for something, enter a raffle contest, or turn over their hard-earned cash?
By fully understanding and fulfilling customer needs, your lead magnet can produce extraordinary results.
The key is to create funnels specific to a niche audience and their experience of the problem. We recently incorporated the brand narrative development techniques found in Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller. We’re not licensed practitioners or anything; we’re just huge fans.
What Miller did in his book is groundbreaking. It changed the game for us entirely and almost overnight. As an agency with a focus on start-ups, we were really driven by hero-brands, challenger-brands, pioneer-brands, and always putting the brand at the center of the story, making it the hero, as it were.
But, we’re ultimately looking for more customers, or investors, or partners, and those folks are the heroes of their own stories, and it’s important to keep that the focus.
Once we started positioning our brands as the “trusted advisor” in the overarching narrative, we saw massive results.
Perceived Value
Once you’ve identified your niche’s problem and shared it in a way that your audience knows you authentically get their problem, you’ve established trust, and you can move on to escalating value through urgency and empathy.
You can increase the sense of perceived value in your lead magnet when you make it sound like it’s the greatest offer that ever lived. Use those copywriting skills. Here are a few examples:
“Sign up for our astonishing hot yoga program today and get 7 days completely free!”
“Order between 5pm-7pm to get FREE delivery and 10% off your entire bill!”
See the offer of value (“FREE delivery”) in exchange for action now (“order between 5 and 7”)? If you didn’t notice this in ads before, you’ll see it everywhere now. It’s human psychology, and it works, once trust is established, and empathy is believed.
We have a saying around here. “Authenticity is always unique, and people always connect to authenticity.” Which means you’ll want to dive into the experience of overcoming the problem and its stages of heroic journey a customer can expect in an authentic voice. What was the journey like for you, the founder? Or for your first twenty customers? Share their testimonial, but not purely the victory. Share the dark moments, the doubt, the adversity. These are the things your future customers are concerned with today.
The more you can amplify these stages of understanding, the deeper your loyal fans and customers will connect with you.
Obviously, every niche has an offer that works better for them. (Which is why you’ll always have a job if you choose a career in marketing.) By providing free or added value, it yields additional perceived value. What’s so interesting is that perceived value instills a sense of fulfillment within customers. Not only have they taken action to satisfy their own needs, but also they feel happy that they won something, or received additional value for ‘being a good customer’.
It helps customers feel good about their purchases, good about themselves, and confident that they’ve made the best possible decision to buy something that meets their emotional and practical needs.
The Value Ladder
When presenting the perfect offer for potential customers, your clients might have objections of not willing to give away things for free. Refer to this value ladder. In any business, a customer needs to consider different options before engaging with your valued offer. Depending on your niche, throwing out incentives like discounts or free giveaways actually incline the customer to take advantage of these offers. The more bait you present towards the front end, the more upsell you’ll receive, resulting in linear growth in profit.
Make the most out of providing value to your customers. Remember, business is nothing without people. Whether it’s through conducting surveys or retargeting ads, gathering information to understand your customers more intimately is critical. It ultimately gives you that sense of reassurance to efficiently satisfy future customers.