5 customer listening hacks that will help you create better content
If you don't listen to customers your content won't resonate. These 5 tips will get you into the conversation.
In 2011, Netflix nearly went bust. Don’t panic, it didn’t actually happen! But when the now multi-million dollar streaming service decided to divide its streaming and DVD sections (increasing prices by around 40%), users were not happy. 800,000 subscribers abandoned the service and Netflix suddenly made it onto the list of America’s most hated companies.
What went wrong? As the New York Times pointed out, Netflix made a classic error. They didn’t listen to customers.
In fact, Netflix Co-founder and Chairman Reed Hastings admitted to the paper he “was not sure whether the plan to split the company had been presented to customer focus groups before it was made public.” Nor did he remember what those focus groups had said about the idea. Good one, Reed.
Customer listening is essential, and not just for big fish like Netflix. It’s essential for content marketers too. The only way to create relevant digital content is to know your customer – their worries and challenges, what turns them on, what is meaningful to their community. Without a direct line to users, content creators flounder in their own marketing jargon.
Problem is, listening to customers is hard to do. Why?
- Many small companies don’t have the money for focus groups or independently commissioned market research
- Market/user research is often put on the backburner until things are “less busy”. I.e. never.
- Sometimes, someone in your organisation actually has spoken to users but hasn’t shared the information with you. It’s your responsibility to get hold of that info, but what if you don’t even know it exists?
- If you’re not high up in the office foodchain your boss could fail to see the benefit of insignificant you talking to users.
All these factors can and do hamper marketers' customer listening abilities. If you’re a content marketer who can’t talk to real customers, for whatever reason, here’s my first bit of advice – don’t worry, you are not alone.
There are plenty of content marketers out there in a similar position. That’s why I’m sharing some of the workarounds I’ve come up with to really listen to users without actually talking with them one-on-one.
Workarounds for customer listening
Review mine your way to better landing pages
Honestly, there is nowhere you will find more raw customer commentary than in reviews. Not all the reviews for your product or service will be easy reading, but they contain invaluable information for content marketers. This information can be systematically collected, organised and used to create many types of content.
Step 1: Identify the best places to find reviews for your product or service. Some examples might be Amazon, TripAdvisor, Yelp and similar. This post from HubSpot collects together the best places for customer reviews.
Step 2: I used to go through these review sites manually copy-pasting reviews out. Do not waste your life doing that. Instead, download a free web app called ParseHub and automate the review collection process. ParseHub allows you to scrape information from websites and download it in an Excel.
Step 3: Scrape reviews for your own brand. Then, scrape reviews for your competitors. You've now got two excels full of customers' opinions.
Step 4: Organise these reviews into categories in your excels. I organise the comments in two columns - Problem and Solution. You'll see why in a moment.
Once I've done that I add two more empty columns - Claim and Category. It ends up sort of like the screenshot below
This is what the categories mean:
- Problem comment: the problem or challenge the person was facing when they decided they needed a product or service like yours
- Solution comment: what solved the problem for them (usually a feature of your or your competitors' product)
- Claim: a web copy claim that captures the spirit of this review. Don't get all clever here - change the customers' words as little as possible.
- Category: you'll find your reviews naturally fall into types. By tracking the types you'll have a better idea of what value propositions might work for you.
My favourite thing is to use this information to build landing pages that really speak to users. Go back to the Problem and Solution columns. They contain all the information you need to start writing landing pages based on PAS or AIDA (not sure about copywriting formulas? Joanna Wiebe over at Copyhackers has you covered).
The closer you stick to the actual words in the review the more real and resonant your landing page copy will sound. And the better it will convert.
