Using Surveys To Understand Your Database With Rob and Kennedy

Your Dream Business

English - February 25, 2019 00:06 - 1 hour - 113 MB - ★★★★★ - 34 ratings
Careers Business Marketing Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: A 7 Step Process To Launching A Product Or Selling A Service Online

Next Episode: Why You Should Be Creating Content Online and How To Create Content People Want To Engage With

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTYou should never log into your marketing platform, type an email up and hit send to your entire list. The more research you on your audience do the better.You need to speak to your customers in completely different ways, based on the data points you can collect on them. This means you’re only sending them information they’re interested in.Using surveys to find out exactly what your audience want is a great way to be sure you’re offering them exactly what they need. Based on the responses they give you, you can send them links that they have already told you they want.If someone has a bad experience you can automatically set up an email that offers them a discount or voucher, potentially helping retain a customer that would have otherwise left. Alternatively, if anyone says they loved your product, you can automatically take them to a page where they can review you on TripAdvisor, Google or whichever platform you use.Surveys make it look like you care about every single customer – which you do!Usually, three or four questions is enough to ensure you get the responses you need. Consider the key questions you need answered in order to offer them what they need.Finding out what topics your audience are interested in, or what their biggest problem is right now is a great way to reduce your unsubscribe rate.
THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…To get people to fill out your survey you can offer your subscribers a free gift in return. Alternatively, you can use an emotional motivator which will mean you’ll be gathering responses from people that are already emotionally invested in your survey, rather than people that are just there for the free gift.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSIntroducing Rob and Kennedy – 05:04Setting Up A Risky Business – 17:05Avoiding Marketing Faux Pas - 20:00About Response Suite – 25:20Surveys As A Marketing Tool – 32:30Getting Your Subscribers To Fill In A Survey - 38:00Finding Out What Your Audience Want Using Surveys 51:40
LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S EPISODEEpisode #46: My Ten Digital Marketing Predictions For 2019 Response Suite Response Suite Instagram
Transcript below

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. As always I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing and it’s an absolute pleasure to have you with me. Now I’m going to jump straight in.

I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to think about it. So how well do you know the people that are on your database might be a bit of a strange question to ask. You might think “What do I need to know about the people on my database?” Or you might think while I’ve created this customer profile my customer Avatar and I target those sorts of people so I’m assuming the people on my database match up to those people. Now the reason I’m asking this is because I did a prediction episode which I’ll link up to in the show notes at the beginning of the year and one of the things I predicted was that we’re going to become a lot more personal within our marketing. We’re no longer just going to send a big mass marketing big huge campaigns to everyone on our list we need to start getting much more specific, much more considerate of the people who are on our list and what they actually want from us.

Now I think one of the mistakes that most businesses make when they are looking at their data is they are making big assumptions about the people on their

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. As always I am your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing and it’s an absolute pleasure to have you with me. Now I’m going to jump straight in.

Now I think one of the mistakes that most businesses make when they are looking at their data is they are making big assumptions about the people on their list because if you’re anything like me when you ask someone to come onto your list, you are asking the most minimum details from them because I would tell you to. I would say to you if you were doing a lead magnet or you were doing something where you were asking people to sign up, you don’t want to be asking them 20 questions or otherwise they’re not going to want to sign up because it’s too much effort. So I would recommend and I do myself that when someone signs up the only bits of information I get is their name and their email address. Now you might think “well of course I know about them because I know what they’ve signed up to. And surely if you weren’t interested in a social media check list or a webinar on content then you wouldn’t sign up to them.” But of course it might be that someone signed up someone else or in that job they were interested, but in that job they’re not. Or another thing that’s quite interesting is sometimes I will sign up to webinars just to watch the webinar process. I know it sounds a little bit weird but I would just want to see what webinar processor use, what emails they’re using, what technology they’re using. So it might not be that I want the actual thing; it might just be I want to see what the process is.

So the reason I’m bringing all this up for you today is because today I have on the podcast Rob and Kennedy from ResponseSuite and we have a great conversation about serving your audience and how we can get to know and understand them better and find out more about them. And it’s something that after the interview I’ve been doing some work on and I’m gonna do a future episode on the process in which I went through and how well it went but I’d been working on creating my own survey for my own audience because like I said, I’ve made big assumptions about my audience. I’ve assumed they are a certain type of people because they wanted a certain thing. And as I’ve said all along, the more you understand about them, the more you can talk to them in a tone of voice in a way that they want to be spoken to and give them content they want to receive. So for me this is such a crucial episode with some amazing crucial stuff that we need to all be thinking about. The technology is a bad to start to understand our customers better. And like I said, since I recorded this episode I’ve been working with the guys they’ve been showing me how to put together my survey and how it connects with things like Infusionsoft and quite honestly, I’ve been propagating over it. I love it. So the technologies out there, these things are not uber expensive. You know we’re not talking thousands of pounds, you know we’re talking you know under 100 pound for some systems. So I definitely think this is a really really good one for you to listen to and I want you to be really open minded and think about how can you make this work for your business. Because I really do genuinely feel the more you know about someone, the more you can target to them. The more specific you can be, the higher the conversion you’re going to get if and when you actually go to sell them something. So I think you’re going to love this episode also. I need to mention that these guys have got quite a funny background and story. They are very entertaining so I’m sure you’re going to love it. So now I planted that seed.

Let me hand you over to the very lovely Rob and Kennedy.

So I am super excited today to welcome the very lovely Rob and Kennedy. Welcome to the podcast. Yeah. Wild applause. Crowd goes lot. It’s always nice so there’s a few of us because it’s like it seems like it’s a real party going on when there’s like two of you. I feel like I need to have the second person..

Like radio breakfast shows.. “They all go.. woooooh in the background. Yeah. Oh you’re have an official woooh-er.

I think I should. I’m going to bring em. The other day I recorded a podcast and I had an official dog barking in the background that wasn’t quite what I was looking for. But you know we could make it work. We Could try to make it work.

That too if you’d like. Colin could you make a dog noise *laughs*.

Welcome to the podcast. I’m so glad to have you on. I was very lucky to come on your podcast a little while back and I said that I would want you guys to speak to my audience because I know what you’re going to talk about is gonna be of real interest to them. I’m personally a part of marketing that I really love to talk about. So this is gonna be a great one. But you guys have got a very interesting backstory and where you’ve come from and how you’ve got to do what you do so I’d love if you’d share with my audience who you guys are and how you got to do what you do now.

To do the short version.. *laughs* We were abducted by aliens and struck by lightning. Magic powers no. Perfect.

That’s the story I like to tell. So we’re both entertainers by background. We both got... We both weird children and we decided that we learned to be entertainers. So we both came through an obscure route. So I’m actually a hypnotist and I’m a mind reader.

So very bizarre looking at me like he knows what I’m saying.

This is terrible. It is not barking like a dog. By the end of this podcast you know what. You will ask him for dog barking noises and we’re going to arrange it.

We’ve been entertaining people at events and things for a really long time. And over the course of that it sort of turned into this business trip where we wanted to create something where we could effectively build something it was bigger than us because obviously when we’re on stage that’s great. But when we come offstage or if we can’t perform for whatever reason that everything ends there like that’s all there is to it. So we wanted to create something it was a bit bigger than us. So we both started online businesses sort of separately in our own way and didn’t really talk very much about it.

And then eventually we started to kind of share ideas and secret online entrepreneurs were closeted and then so a few years went by.

And then eventually I run into a problem with something I was trying to do in my business. We were both selling infill products online and myself with marketing and hypnosis and personal development. You have a business where you teach effectively entertainers how to improve their entertainment businesses. And whilst we’re doing this I run into a problem with something that I was trying to do. I wanted to run a survey to my audience and I ran into a couple of issues with it and we ended up talking back and forth about the problem. We both experienced the problem for different reasons and eventually that led us to where we are now which is this lovely journey of starting a software company.

Yeah it’s amazing. I like the fact that this wasn’t just like one day all right how we’re gonna get rich then well idea number one: let’s start a dog impersonation but I’ll do what you while do a beagle.

It was more about we really wanted to...

It was like it was literally solving a problem that we really had. And then I didn’t know that Rob had this problem. And similarly he he didn’t know that I was sort of looking for a solution like to do this as well which was basically all we wanted to do was take us put a survey into our businesses which allowed us to then use the results of that survey in a meaningful way, automatically rather than having to log into my survey account download the results, figure out what Excel does. I don’t remember because it’s a long time since I was at school and my IT teacher was pointing at graphs ago you’re doing it wrong.

And then and then actually just be able to do things automatically with those results like segment people based on their answers or whatever it might be. So we couldn’t believe that at the time we just couldn’t find a way of doing it and really need to do it.

There was a similar problem as well which was I wanted to send an email to my email audience and tell them about this survey. Get them to go in for that. And so I did. And as soon as I did it and I thought “oh I’m gonna have to email them again tomorrow to catch the people who were online at this time of year 80 percent. Yeah exactly. Yes. I have to email them again tomorrow” and I thought “Hang on a minute I can’t exclude the people who fill out the survey.” Like when you sell somebody a product or service you would exclude them from any culture so you don’t bother them.

Yeah. And I thought Oh my God I can’t do it.

You would just end up punishing the people who took action and you’re you’re most active people you end up beating over the head and they’ve already to end up doing the two things I hate the most which is either you send the email which has that really ambiguous in case you didn’t take the survey it was like even though you don’t think notice consciously subconsciously it’s really irritating but yeah just not that much or again you have to do blanket marketing thing just well I just e-mail everybody and hope for the best. Yeah you know unsubscribe some of the people who’ve probably taken the survey.

Yeah. I mean getting people to complete surveys is challenging enough for some people and people talk about the response rates to those so they do need follow up. So the idea that you couldn’t follow up on a survey is just absolutely bonkers. So that was the fundamental thing that started it all off. I suppose that’s where we are now and that’s why we have you know a UK based software business right here in the northeast of England our staff are all right here in this room and yet we work together really collaboratively to build the solution. That’s right. It’s all come out of that frustration isn’t it just really nice when you know your businesses and outgrew growth out of yourself.

Yes that is the case. Like if you read like the E Myth by Gerber we know that we start off as the technician and we go to do this thing because it serves my purpose or whatever it might be or it helps me fix my problem.

So it’s the same for us. For years there was a lot of people said to me Oh Robbie you really need to start selling software you need to make and sell software apps because that’s where there’s loads of money and that you need to start you’re not having any good ideas like free software. If I have a good idea for one and then and then this idea came along I realized this has to be a thing. So let me ask you Did you two know each other before? When did you two get together and then decide to do this together?

We met about 14 years ago at a convention of entertainers. Yeah at a Magic convention.

I could only imagine what fun that might be like.

You can’t imagine how lovely it is to spend the weekend with 3000 people with with ties with bunny rabbits and playing cards on. A dream you’ll never experience. A nightmare you never want too...

We met. We sit at the bar both realized we were that we lived on on either side of the same city of Newcastle. We live just north of Newcastle I live south of it. And yes we became we became pals.

So that was really lucky. Obviously you both worked together, you both as well. You knew each other using a similar ish industries and then both with a similar progression path that led you to this point where you went. Now we’ve got this problem and actually I think the software companies that I have engaged with the most in terms of their marketing are the people who when I needed this. No one did it. I did it. You know, I am in awe of you guys because the set up the software company and your background isn’t software. I mean you might be tech geniuses for all I know but you know your background wasn’t software to set it up. You were brave man like that is is ideal. I don’t know me some cool I’m from a forward slash but we neither have another of us have and that’s what is really interesting.

I mean you know what. I think one of the things when you try to build a team around you whether they’re just outsourced workers or they are in-house staff are you going to employ. You always have to employ people who are better than you. Then you have to get to go out of the way because it’s not that difficult for us no matter. What’s the point. So we had to first hire was Colin. Our developer and the big thing for us was we didn’t know what we were looking for we didn’t even know which languages you could program software like knowing a language we didn’t even know us. So I think we’ll C sharp was it C sharp?

PHP did not see shops that thing were gone. So I think what was the other one that we were we weren’t dot net dot net. That was a useless thing in my life. We’re not we’re not we’re not on an act.

It’s a sound clueless like this is what we get on and we literally had a guy who was trying to tell us “Oh no actually we should build dot net because of that because and then we go somewhere else comes in says no we need to build PHP because of this and this and that.

So we decided basically what we could do is put a recruitment company in the middle of all this and say well this isn’t a problem is what we want to fix. There are a specialist in tech businesses.

They found the person. Yes we paid a lot more. A few thousand pound more for that to happen but we ended it with a person who was all he was an all round person who actually and most importantly fits all values and actually can put up with the fact that we go well yeah yeah.

No that’s really get an actually again this is something that I’ve been looking at and talking about building those people around you and I have exactly the same strategy. If I’m bringing in someone to do Facebook ads although I can do Facebook ads, I want some better than me you know if I’m being a copywriter I can muddle my way to a better copy. I’m not a copywriter. I want some better than me. So to bring these people in and especially if you have the background but also for you guys, you could have had the world pulled over your eyes so easily. So bringing in lots people don’t want these recruitment agencies because they are expensive but I think in your in your case it was a really smart move to do that.

Isn’t it more expensive to make the mistake and hire the person pay them you know whatever and then you realize they’re actually trying to carve a software but a software out of a moldy piece of fish. I mean you wouldn’t know the difference between that and an actual business offer that’s going to stand up and do it.

I just think it was one of the many reasons why we didn’t want to sort of outsource the software overseas because whilst lots of people do that and it worked out and we know what was going on we wouldn’t know whether could have been nicked from somewhere else because we’ve got no eyes on anything you know.

Yeah just gives us a lot of control over it here and just creates... Because we’re dealing with data in these really secure. So we actually take it really seriously. So we want to make sure that it’s all hosted in a really secure way which is why we use things like Amazon and make really big trusted not in the cheap versions of stuff. We don’t just like banner on a reseller server we’ve sort of got from some place/ where we’re using the big boys to do all of that and that’s all really important for us and...