Social Media = A Market Researcher’s Wet Dream

So you think your product/service can dance?! No, but seriously, you probably do think that your product or service adds value to your customers. While there’s a good chance that it does (because you’re a rockstar millionaire in the making!), to uninformed, potential customers, there’s also a chance that you’re full of shit. Potential customers are trained to smell out good deals and bad ones so if you’re not speaking their language when you communicate through marketing or when trying to close a sale, you’re likely going to miss out on revenue dollars.Luckily, there’s a pretty solid way for you to research what customers care about, before you end up printing 5,000 copies of your sales letter or pay $5,000 to put your face on a billboard somewhere on a major highway. I’m going to reveal a very simple, yet proven way to uncover the most valuable benefits that your product and services provide to customers ready to buy.

This is done through good ol’ fashion market research. The days of old, expensive market research techniques are dwindling away and there’s now a great equalizer that allows you to conduct research quickly, cheaply, and effectively, using the ever growing and ever powerful social media sphere.

In the past, you’d have to pay another company to dig up research about consumer buying habits and preferences only to hope that the data supplied is accurate and up-to-date. Now, you can quickly and easily go into social networks such as Facebook,  Twitter, and LinkedIn to get real-time, real honest feedback from potential customers. Here’s how to do it in LinkedIn.

In LinkedIn, as well as in Facebook, people congregate and share information in affinity groups. I talk about this in my LinkedIn article about using groups to find business leads. Assuming that you know your customers well, you can search and find groups within these 2 networks that are chock full of your potential customers. When it comes to efficient, quantifiable market research though, LinkedIn outshines Facebook handily. To conduct the research, do the following:

1. Log into LinkedIn and join groups that likely have a significant number of your target customers. If you’re unsure of how to go through this step, see my article about finding new clients in 20 seconds on LinkedIn.

2. Choosing one group at a time, go to the group’s dashboard and look for an icon called “Poll”. See the image below as a point of reference.

3. When you click on the Poll link, you’ll notice that you are allowed to ask a question to the members of that group, using a poll format. In other words, by creating a poll, members of the group will likely see your poll question and have the ability to select one of the 5 options as their answer.

At this juncture, let’s focus on a poll question that is going to give you the most insight into the minds of potential customers. I personally feel that LinkedIn Group Polls are best used to perfect your business’ marketing messaging. Your market messaging is the Selling Points, advantages, and benefits that you claim that your product or service offers. When writing these Selling Points, make sure that you focus on what’s most important to the customer. If you haven’t already written your selling points down, I encourage you to read my post about how to write powerful, customer focused selling points.

Once you’ve gotten your 5 main Selling Points, post them into the Poll and ask the group which selling point is most likely to encourage them to buy! I’m sure they will all sound good, but there are specific triggers that encourage people to buy and you want to know unequivocally what those triggers are for your business. Here’s a poll question that I used:

If you were a customer getting your first logo designed from Company X, which of their selling points would be most appealing to you?

1. Home to the world’s #1 design experts
2. Choose from 20-100+ custom designs
3. 100% Money Back Guarantee on all designs
4. Featured in Your City’s Biz Journal
5. Receive Your 1st Design Within Minutes

4) Post the poll question and be sure to check the box that says “Notify me when a new comment is posted.” That way, you can get an email everytime someone responds and you don’t have to worry about searching through your groups to find your previous polls.

Once posted, you’ll start to get people who vote on your poll by selecting the choice they prefer and you’ll also get people that take the time to write a comprehensive response to your question. The responses are very valuable, because they give you an even deeper insight into the way people formulate opinions and make decisions.

5) Apply this LinkedIn Poll Strategy across as many groups as you can so that you can get a larger pool of data to analyze.  The Polls are typically good for about 3 – 7 days, after which they begin to get buried by newer discussions from other members. Once you have a sufficient pool of data, quantify it, then alter your Selling Points and messaging accordingly! Voila, you’re done!

One thing to keep in mind is that this strategy can be used for more than just perfecting your Selling Points. It can also be used for any business decision, whether that’s some other form of market messaging or even deciding on a new company design.

In fact, using this LinkedIn Poll Strategy helped me choose the 4-step explanation message that you see on my website homepage, GraphicDesignWars.com. I was able to find out what makes the most sense to customers in terms of explaining my product for the first time to web visitors. There are a myriad of ways that this Market Research Strategy can be incorporated if you get creative. Try it out and you’ll be surprised how friendly your market is!

You may also be interested in my post: Conducting Market Research using Twitter.