Hey, hey, welcome to the Summit Host Hangout Podcast where you'll learn how to host a high converting virtual summit that leads to your biggest signature offer launch yet. I'm your host, Krista from Summit in a Box. And we're in a mini series related to positioning for your virtual summit for high conversion rates and for profit. So in the last episode, Ellie and I talked about how to position your Summit. And today in Episode 234, I have brought in a special guest to help those of you who don't know your audience well enough to go through the exercises that Ellie and I shared, or you want to get to know them on a deeper level, whether that's for your Summit your other offers, or just your business messaging as a whole. So as you might have seen in the episode title, the solution we're going to share with you is audience research and how you can automate it. So it doesn't turn into just one more big project that you don't actually want to tackle on your to do list. So we're going to cover things like why this is so important for summits, and really any offer, how it's going to help you increase sales and how to make it a regular part of your process. So you don't have to do it manually. To give you some background information on our guests, she is an audience driven copywriter and brand messaging strategist with a target audience research, copywriting and messaging that turns every brand touchpoint into genuine connections that drive sales and create brand advocates. Over the past seven years, she has given global e commerce brands, startups and service providers, the words to shine and the strategies to build a sustainable business long term. So without further ado, let's dive in and talk with Nadine Nethery from Can Do Content. Welcome, Nadine.
Hey, Krista. Thanks so much for having me.
I'm so excited for this topic. This is like so unique and so needed because like, in our Accelerator program, the positioning part is the core thing we dive into with people. And there are some people we're asking a question about their audience, and they just don't know, they can guess but they don't know. And I'm so excited to have a strategy to be able to point them to like, here's how you can know that the answer you're giving is correct. So before we dive into all of that, tell us a little bit about you and your business.
Yeah, absolutely. So I am Nadine. I am based in Sydney, Australia, mum of three, who I usually chase around when I'm not in my coffee cave, working with my clients. And I come from a marketing and corporate comms background, you know, climbed the corporate ladder for years, then was made redundant, like so many women experience in their career and started reassessing what I wanted to do with my life, how I wanted to impact the world. And yeah, how I could find more balance and freedom working. You're not doing what I love and also being with my kids. So somehow, I landed on copywriting as part of a content marketing course. And yeah, quickly fell in love with it. And writing had been something that I'd been doing. As part of my career anyways, like corporate comms. I've also worked in after sales and sales along the way. And you know, pitching and finding your messaging really is part of everything you do in business. So finding that unique message and really tailoring it in a way that speaks to your ideal customer is so important. And yeah, I've been in business now a little over seven years took the plunge to go full time, at the height of COVID, as you do, and I've never looked back and now support female founders on their journey to better coffee getting to know their audience and really coming up with messaging that connects on a deeper level.
Quite the journey.
Yeah.
Yeah, taking the dive during covid.
Yeah. You know, in a way is terrible as it was, it's opened, I think so many windows for so many online business owners.
Yeah, that's when we took off too. So I'm with you on that. Today, we're going to talk about how to truly get to know your audience to make marketing virtual summit just a whole lot easier and more effective. And of course, I'm sure that's going to translate to any area of a business. Before we dive into the strategy in case there someone who's just not familiar with it, or might have a different definition. Can you give us an overview of how you explain audience research?
Yes. So as a copywriter, you can imagine I talk to a lot of business owners on Discovery calls and one of the first questions I ask them is, "Do you actually know your customer? Who is your customer? Tell me about them." And usually, the answer looks a little like this, "They are 30 to 50 year old mums living in inner city, Sydney." And that is a great start, but it is not your audience. Everyone and half the population is not your audience, you need to go beyond the demographics and look at the conversation that is already happening in their minds like that, what their life looks like what keeps them up at night. And so usually we go back to square one and we take that step back and actually get to know them by digging deep. So looking at pain points, objections also when it comes to your service, your offer the solution, the transformation. So the ultimate desire, they're looking for a better future and also false beliefs. So things that their friends, their family society might be telling them about, you know, their situation and the solution as well. And that gives you an absolutely unique angle, when it comes to the people that you're talking to. It helps you incorporate it in your messaging, it helps you educate products in your business solutions, the way you deliver services, you know, the type of Summit you're gonna run, all the things that are so important to connect and get them that step closer to buying from you.
So audience research sounds terribly boring. But it is so critical to any business at any stage. Really, it's it's not a tick in the box, it's not a do once and forget is so important to do on a regular basis. And anytime, really, you're planning a summit, you're trying to shift your business you're trying to launch an offer. So yeah, I'm on a mission to educate people and get them on board to make it a part of their business processes on a regular basis. Because it doesn't have to be hard. Yes, yes, I know, I've seen such incredible benefits, the times I've done it. But I also know I could do do it a lot more often and be a lot better at it. So I think when I think of audience research, my brain goes to a survey. And I'm sure we have lots of listeners who have like thrown together a quick survey without a whole lot of thought sends it to their email list. And that's like really all they ever did with it. I'm like I've sent surveys and never even look at them to be quite honest. But what are the tangible outcomes someone can expect when they go about audience research the right way? Yeah, so if you do it properly, because there are surveys, and then there are strategic surveys, as you said, you are getting deep into the thought processes, and the benefit of that as well as pick up the actual language and terminology your audience is using to describe their situation. And that comes in so handy for copywriting in particular, because your messaging doesn't fall flat, you can actually use those tangible expressions, tangible outcomes, and relatable situations in your copy.
As an example, we all know, coaching lingo, where you're up leveling, and you're empowering, every second sales page reads like that. Whereas if you're actually tapping into language, let's go into you know, mom life, mom, life doesn't feel like an uphill battle. So it's actually picking up those those actual sayings. And I like to call them sticky terms that your audience uses. And that gets your audience to nod along when they're reading rather than going, Oh, God, here's another coaching, you know, sales page and other program. It's just like the other ones, it connects. And it really speaks to them get so much deeper. And there's a real art form to surveys, particularly that gets you that data. It's staying clear of dropdowns and tick boxes, and yes or no questions, what do you want to do is give your audience a genuine opportunity to open up and share what's happening in their life without you trying to steer them into a certain direction. Because let's face it, as business owners, we all we've all kind of got preconceived ideas when it comes to the problems our audience have and how we're helping them. But yet, the magic really lies in just giving them a space to open up in a platform to give us actual feedback that is useful, and can help us even shift our business into slightly different directions in the tweet the messaging so it, it speaks better to the audience.
Yeah, I've already learned a ton because I think all of my surveys are like, a whole bunch of multiple selects and checkboxes, and then like a couple optional freeform questions at the end. So I'm already like, Ooh.
Yeah. And sometimes as well, clients come to me or potential clients, they go off, I've just surveyed them, we don't have to deal with it. And I get their data. And same thing, it's, you know, pick ABC or D. That's great. But still, we don't, some maybe next time, let's reset,and restructure. So as I said, there's Yeah, very important open ended questions. And yeah, not steering them in certain certain direction.
Yeah, and I can already just picture like, with the coaching, we're doing, like when we're working with a client on the tagline, a lot of times we get a tagline with a lot of the terms that you talked about, like empower and uplevel, and things like that. I'm like, No, that's not what we're looking for here. And then your second example, like, whatever it was about the uphill battle, like so much more visual like that. That's just so much stronger. So can you just talk about why audience research and being able to make these differences is so important, maybe at the start of a summit journey, but also, like outside of a summit in you know, all in all things?
Yeah, absolutely. For summits particularly, to begin with really knowing your audience on a deeper level helps you pick a summit topic overall, that really connects with not only your offer, but also the current state of mind that your audience is in because let's face it, there's no point in hosting a summit that attracts the completely wrong audience. That isn't actually in a position to buy your offer and buy into what you have to offer for them, it helps you even pick guests that are aligned with your audience and that deliver outcomes and aha moments for those problems that you've picked up in your research. It also helps you with points of difference. For example, if you survey your audience when it comes to past surveys, or summits they've attended, you know, the things they love the things they would have liked to see. So it gives gives you so much power to your to really come up with a summit that connects with your audience really is giving them aha moments and makes them prepared and ready to buy what you are going to sell them after the summit. And yeah, it's it's just so powerful beyond that, even because it helps you write the copy for your emails, your sales page, it makes everything fall into place. Because you've got that clarity of the outcome, you're delivering the problems that you're solving, in how the guests are going to get them there. And it helps you plant that seed, because let's face it, someone's need to be aligned to your offer. And really position your product as a perfect solution. So it helps you come up with the perfect blend the perfect Summit, and how it can nurture and prime your audience to be ready to buy from you. I think that's super powerful. And then beyond that, as I touched on before, it helps you even identify potential courses, programs, services down the track that you might not have even considered, it helps you come up with content for social media to prime them for the pre launch.
Where do I start? It's like, it is so powerful on so many levels, because it just means you're never really marketing blindly. Again, because you know them inside out, you know how you need to speak to them to, to nurture them and really feel like a genuine partner, rather than pushing up sleazy sale all the time.
Yeah. Oh my gosh, okay. So I'm sure like at this point, there are a lot of people when I Okay, I know I need to do this. Where do I start? And I know you have a freebie that gives some survey question ideas. Do you want to talk about that real quick?
Yeah, absolutely. So I have a freebie of 10 survey questions, those strategic questions that I talked about earlier, the open ended ones, so proven questions that I use in my customer surveys that I put together for my one on one clients. And I've also thrown in nine social media prompts as well for strategic questions. Because for those of you who might be at the beginning of your journey, and don't have actual clients to tap into, or if you're considering shifting niche as well. So it's great to survey your social media following. And yeah, I'll share the link with Krista for you to get your hands on it down the track. So that's a great start if you just want to, you know, get started, get those first insights and have a look at the magic that is on the other side of that survey.
Yeah, that is perfect. Okay, we will link to that in the show notes. Thank you. And one other question before we get into automation is I'm curious since like, okay, we're recording this in May 2023. Ai, chat GPT, that is the hot topic right now, everyone is all over that. How do you feel about the importance of this audience research with the growing popularity of tools like that?
As a copywriter, you can imagine as he said, hot topic, we're all of it, feel a bit threatened. So I've been experienced, experimenting with it, in a reading up on it, because it impacts the online business world drastically. And it's really opening up a lot of opportunities to speed things up. But how I see it is really freeing up a lot of time for extra content creation in your business to speed up those tedious task. What is important, I actually asked Chat GPT the other day, you know, what are your limitations and Chat GPT came back with a long list of things and one of them is it doesn't have empathy, and emotions and that is where audience research really comes in. So you can you know, prompt it as much as you want, it still comes down to human connection. And that human angle and empathy and that can only come from really knowing your audience and then taking the language at the insights and sticky terms that your audience has given you. And tweaking you know chat GPT out comes with that that language or then if you flip it, you know prompting it with the insights that you have and incorporating that into a copy gives you. So yeah, it is a tool to support us to make things easier but it still comes down to us as business owners as copywriters to make sure it connects on a deeper level and also is different to all the generic things our chat GBT spits out for everyone. So this is your opportunity to make it truly unique to your brand and bring it back to your audience which is so important for selling and standing out.
I've been experimenting with it with coming up with a new like course name and tagline and it comes up with a lot of ideas when I'm like I see these names everywhere. This tagline has no personality to it, it's not it's not me, it's not what my people would say. And like I can see right now, like, where the audience research and knowing your people and knowing how they say things just elevates it so much. It makes it feel like I'm gonna say like less cold. I just feel like everything I'm getting from Chat GPT so far is just like kind of cold and detached. And like that makes sense. It doesn't know your people, like like you do and like you can so...
And it all sounds the same, as he said, and you know, you can use Chat GPT as a starting point, again, like I use it sometimes because I have blank page syndrome. So to just speed up that that process when it comes to taglines. And I hear that makes sense. But I still call back to that audience research and you know, my client insights to then bring it in line with the brand voice and and yeah, that connection piece that is so important.
So I feel like that's a very reasonable answer. I feel like as a copywriter, you could be like, Let's burn it down. But like, I feel like you have a very reasonable view of it, I appreciate you.
And it's gonna happen. So it's just a matter of embracing it and knowing how to use it in your business without losing that human connection in that human point of difference along the way.
Yeah. Okay, awesome. So let's get to the how around automating. And I know you have some like clever ways to make audience research a regular part of like your summit process, probably overall business process, and automate it. And I've been pumped to hear about this ever since we booked this interview. So let's dive in.
Yeah, as business owners, you know, we've got a long list of things on our plate. So to be fair, I wouldn't do my own audience research if I didn't have it automated on the back end. So big fan of automations and making your life easy. So let's start with automating the process for your business insights. Because that comes before some it's usually what I always suggest to my clients. Once we've done that one off survey and how I implemented in my own business is onboarding, off boarding, and along the way as the super important touch points. So as part of my automated onboarding survey, as soon as someone signs up to work with me, I incorporate a number of very strategic questions into that onboarding survey. So they can't actually, you know, submit their pre work without answering those questions as well. And they tap into that mindset, that fresh mindset, they've just booked me as a copywriter is tapping into the problems that they were facing the transformation that they're hoping for, from working with me, and you know, what would make our collaboration a win for them. And that helps me as well, you know, since check down the track check in again, to see whether we actually delivered on that. And it gives me the fresh mindset of someone who just has that, you know, shimmer of hope. They've just they're super excited to work with me. And it is fresh in front of mind rather than asking at the end, which I so often see.
The next point that I do check in is as I deliver the copy, so again, excitement, they've just had their website, copy their welcome sequence copy delivered. And I want those fresh aha moments as well. So how does it feel to know that your copy is sorted, you're about to implement it on your website, it can open ended questions and they are part of that survey, they have to submit that after end I do check in with them three months down the tracks, that's all automated by my Dubsado obviously, there are other systems you can use. But here's a three months after working together because usually that's how long it takes for the copy to be live on the website for them to get a sense of how it's working with their audience how it's impacted their leads or their sales. And that's where I tried to tap into tangible outcomes. So trying to get numbers you know, increase in sales, increase in conversions, all those things. And once I have those three very specific surveys that not only gives me front of mind insights at each stage of the buyer journey, it also helps me piece together some very strategic testimonials that I can then use on my website because it helps the audience to relive that journey. So you know that the pain points before working with me then the transformation and what our collaboration looked like and then at the end, you know the big outcome and those are the testimonials that are going to get people to get excited about working with me because we've all read those testimonials. Nadine is great to work with. She was really lovely. That is great, but it doesn't help anyone whereas if someone reads a testimonial that goes you know, I felt really terrible about my copy really embarrassed to send people to my website. Then I worked with Nadine you know she was super efficient and she was like a pop along the way she delivered it all you know, it was better than I could ever hope for and since working with Nadine and since launching my website, you know my customers are pretty much told by the time I jump on a phone call with them. These are the sorts of testimonials that are going to get your customers to love working with you before they've even talked to you. That is automating the process when it comes to your business insights.
When it comes to summits, I would totally start with a one off survey, if you if you haven't ordered and surveyed your audience previously, where you find out again, what problems are keeping them up at night, what they loved about previous surveys, summits that they attended, you know, what winds they got from those? What made them different? What made them stand out, that helps you come up with that summit concept. When it comes to during the summit? I would have a one question survey even after you know, they've signed up to the summit to get that fresh insight. Why did they sign up? What did they hope for? What are they trying to achieve by attending the summit, which, again, helps you align those expectations with the actual outcomes after and post-summit, you can absolutely survey them, again, doesn't have to be long, it can all be automated. Ideally, I would link some sort of incentive to it because we're all time poor, the summit's finished, people have forgotten they've moved on. So you know, give away a gift card to their favorite online store, their favorite charity, something like that. And that can help you then tweak your next summit and improve on that experience for the next summit and potentially come up with a new angle, as well. And as you see, none of that is manual. None of that is very labour extensive. It it just means you are gathering insights as you go, and then implement it in your business as you go along.
Yeah, I love that I especially love your process for that automated, like client and customer feedback, because those are the people who their problem was strong enough that they were willing to put money behind it, like those are the people I want to hear from, and they get the transformation from you. So it's not you trying to like make up what someone might experience as they go through your program. And after like, they literally are telling you exactly what the experience look like from their perspective and their results. And that is so much more powerful than anything we can make up on our own. So, and it's so easy. Like, it's not that hard to set up a couple forms, you need the right questions, but it's easy.
And you know, that gives you testimonials on tap that he can roll out on your social ads on your website in your emails. As he said, it's so much proof that you actually deliver on your promise and better than any, any sales pitch you can ever get out there.
Alright, so where should someone go from there then? once they have that information, whether it's from their clients from potential summit attendees like network?
Yeah, so I organized all that Intel into buckets, I like to call them. So it's nothing fancy. It's a Google sheet that I keep adding on. And it helps me with my content creation with my messaging. So I look at themes that pop up. So if the same sort of answers pop up again, and again, you know that in case of a summit, you know, I'm sure there's lots of moving parts, you know how to connect it all that might be something to speak to the objections as well. So whether it's around, you know, I just don't have time to organize a summit, I'm not tech savvy enough, all those things, you can then incorporate into your FAQs. For example, on the sales page, you know that it actually is just about knowing the right, the right approach, and that can speed things up that database, and that bucket list really is going to be your go to for any of your marketing any of your content creation, your social media posts, it just means that you never start from scratch again. And a lot of the time when I work with clients who thought they knew their customer and their audience inside out that bucket list and those insights and the results from the survey are literally game changing for their business because it shifts the way they market even their point of difference at times looks completely different after they hear from their customers, why they come to them. So it helps them tweak the messaging on the sales page, optimize their point of difference and really tap into their zone of genius. And it is just giving everyone so much clarity and confidence in how they show up online beyond the summit or the copy. It just yeah, a huge confidence boost and was for your marketing efforts as well.
Yeah, it's I don't know, there's just something about, like, like you said, you mentioned blank page syndrome earlier. And like when it comes to creating content, and specifically coming up with content ideas, I feel like having these buckets kind of eliminates that as far as the ideas go, like and like for this podcast even there have been times where I'm like, Man, I do not know what our next batch of episodes is going to be about. But if I pull up like q&a Call submissions for our program or go into our Facebook group and see what people are asking like, that gives me a starting point. And I can see how these these survey questions would just be even more handy. Just a document you open up and so.
and you know what you put out there is going to be relevant because your audience has done the heavy lifting for you. They're basically telling you how they want to be marketed to and how you can serve Hold them that you know it each step of the way and moving them that step closer to working with you.
Yeah, man, I love this. This is so helpful. Thank you so much for sharing all of this like and sharing on so many levels. So can you just share where people can go to learn more about you and what you offer and any other resources you want to share?
Yeah, absolutely. So you can check out my website candocontent.com That's where you can also grab the freebie. I've got a whole bunch of resources as well got a DIY toolkit if you wanted to speed up the process around audience research and just grabbing my swipe files and my approach to implement it in your business today. And you can totally follow me on Instagram. That's where I usually am most active at can do content. And yeah, I'd love to hear from you with your big aha moment. dm me, I"m always open for feedback.
Yes, we will link to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here. Nadine. This was great. And thank you so much, everybody for tuning in for shownotes and resources mentioned head to summit host hangout.com/two Three four. Now. Go ahead and take action to plan, strategize and launch your high converting virtual Summit.
