How to Have a Cash Conversation that Explodes the Power of Your Marketing

By Guest Blogger Dr. Jeanne Hurlbert

If you’re a serious marketer, or getting your marketing degree, you’re not looking for magic bullets; you know the REAL secret to success lies in mastering the basics and doing them well.  But, as I’ve worked with marketers—from starving startups to giants like The Tony Robbins Companies and even $100-million corporate clients–I’ve also found out that there’s one BIG basic that even the “big dogs” aren’t leveraging effectively in their marketing:  surveys.  

Why does that matter?  Because

• you’re leaving money on the table,
• you’re making your job much more difficult than it needs to be, and
• you’re risking your business. 

Before your hype meter goes off, take a look at this quote from the Harvard Business School:  “Done right, surveys can reduce new product risk; generate insights about employees, customers, and markets; and align communications programs with target constituencies.  But done poorly, they can derail your organization.” 

And yes, I can back it up with proof.   

But I prefer to just show YOU how to make money with surveys. 

So I want to tell you a simple story of how surveys can help you create products, solve problems, and make money.   Although the character is fictional, everything I’m describing reflects REAL strategies and REAL results that my customers and clients have gotten with surveys.  In fact, the REAL results are much more dramatic than the ones I’m illustrating here.  

What Can Surveys Really DO for Your Marketing? 

Let’s suppose a fledgling marketer came to me, asking how surveys could help her create an online business.  She has no list; she has never, EVER created a product; and she is basically clueless about how to make money online.   

And let’s start with a big constraint:  Whatever we do for has to start with a survey. 

Well, Connie Clueless needs something to sell, so we’ll start out by using surveys to create a product.   And although she doesn’t have a clue about online marketing, it turns out she knows a LOT about training dogs:  She rehabbed an aggressive rescue Spaniel.   So we’ll focus on that niche. 

First, we’ll use the simplest form of survey there is, with a lead page.  We put up a page that asks people what their #1 question is about training dogs or their #1 training problem.  Connie wrote up a little report about her experience rehabbing Chapman the Spaniel, with 10 tips on how to use “positive training” to cure aggression.  She offers that report in exchange for the question, name, and email of folks who come to the page.

Using Twitter and Facebook to drive traffic to the page, Connie gets more than 100 responses and can already see 5 different areas she might focus on in her dog training product.  She has awesome ideas for a product and she’s added 100 people to her list, at virtually no cost. 

But Connie read an article by MySurveyExpert that told her she doesn’t KNOW her market yet, because her responses come from a small group of people that might not represent her market accurately.  She doesn’t want to waste time and money creating a product that will flop, so she decides to take her impressions of what the market wants and do a survey to find out if they really want the product she has in mind. 

So Connie draws up a little product creation survey—it only takes her a couple of hours, using a template.  Although her list is small, she finds a partner in the dog training niche who’s not a direct competitor; they agree to do a joint survey of both their lists and share the data.  They offer another special report, plus a chance to win a free consult, to everyone who completes the survey.  

The results show Connie that her market wants to know about 4 of the 5 key areas she identified.  She also finds out that they’d rather have a video course than an ebook.  She even knows what they’ll pay for the product!  

So Connie uses this road map to build her new video course on curing aggression in dogs, then puts up a blog to promote the product.  To attract traffic and jump-stat the conversation, she uses blog polls.  People love the blog polls and with the results, she is even able to build buzz in social media.  As the traffic grows, so does her list. 

Now Connie wants to find partners to promote her product.  So she uses a special survey called “JV Juice.”  She invites people to apply to promote HER product to THEIR lists.  She gets over 50 people to apply to JV with her!   She knows who to pick, because the survey identified everyone’s niche, the size of the list, how often they did webinars, and how well those webinars converted.  Because Connie could pick the clear winners from the survey information, she didn’t waste time with “dead” lists.  She takes in over $4,655 from three webinars and increases dramatically the size of her list.   She’s also going to promote products for her 3 new JV partners, which will bring in more revenue. 

Now that Connie’s starting to get the hang of this, she’s not really “Clueless” any more.  She decides to put a unique kind of survey, a quiz, on her blog.  She uses social media to drive traffic to it—this time, adding video marketing and a niche social media site to the mix.  Because the survey quiz gives site visitors free content AND a custom recommendation for her products and services, it works like gangbusters, increasing her conversions by 64%. 

Connie’s on a roll. She GETS IT about surveys now.  So she starts giving everyone who buys her product a satisfaction survey, once again offering a free special report as an incentive.  By this point, her customers have learned that Connie’s surveys are good and she always rewards them, so they’re happy to take her survey.  

In this survey, Connie includes a “testimonial generator” that gathers more than 300 testimonials she can put right on her website.  And based on that survey, she finds 10 people with whom she can build case studies.  She also gets statistical data showing that 94% of the people who bought her product were able to teach their dogs basic commands.  

So now Connie has 3 forms of proof that her products have helped their owners and saved the lives of countless dogs.  Once she begins using that proof on her website and in her video marketing, her sales skyrocket.  And if the FTC comes knocking, she’s pretty sure she has the statistical data she needs to back up the testimonials—all from a simple survey. 

Connie is SO proud.   When she thinks about all the dogs she’s saved and the people she’s helped—not to mention her growing bank balance–she gets a warm feeling.  

By now, Connie’s customers are clamoring for a coaching program.  As she puts it into place, she starts doing “before and after” surveys to show her exactly how much people know about dog training when they start (which makes it much easier for her to coach them) and to measure their progress, at the end.  Those surveys let Connie show her customers how far they’ve come and they also build the 3 forms of proof that the coaching program works.

Connie uses some cool survey techniques to generate referrals, to reach deep into her target market—because after all, the people her customers know are almost always similar to the people who are already BUYING and that makes for a GREAT prospect. 

Things are going great.  But suddenly, Connie realizes she missed one big thing along the way:  She still doesn’t know a lot about who her customers are, other than the ones she’s coached directly.  She finds out that she really SHOULD have found out who her customers and prospects were early in the “funnel.”  But not to worry, it’s never too late to add surveys to your business!  So Connie does a Customer Profile Survey.  Connie blasts the survey to her list, which now numbers over 5,000.  This time, she offers a special report and a chance to win an iPad.  People REALLY want to win the iPad, so they respond in droves.  And she starts doing short profile surveys of everyone who joins her community. 

Well, that’s really cool—now Connie can segment her list so she can target her messages and offers to men vs. women, to frequent buyers vs. those who don’t buy as often, to folks with truly aggressive dogs or dogs who are really shy.  As she begins doing this, her customers feel that she really KNOWS them, that she knows the frustration and pain of dealing with an aggressive dog.  So her conversion rates go up even farther.  

Connie included some product creation questions in this new survey. She uses the information from those questions to create 2 new products on dog training.  And with those new products, she begins the process all over again—blog polls, a “JV Juice” survey to get more partners, a new quiz, surveys to gather testimonials and other proof that these new products work, satisfaction surveys, and customer profile surveys of all her new customers.  Oh, and she begins selling some additional products as an affiliate.  Because she knows SO much more about the market than her competitors do, she’s crushing it in the affiliate stats. 

All Connie has to do now is keep doing what she’s doing and watch her business grow.  She’s put a survey system to work in all the key profit points in her business.  She’s creating products to order, generating proof her products work and her services change lives (of humans AND dogs), and she’s able to find the ticking time bombs in her business BEFORE they explode. 

What This Means For You 

Although Connie isn’t real, these survey techniques are—they’re tried and true.  You now have in your hands at least 7 different examples of techniques that make money with surveys.  And as you can see from this story, surveys work best when these techniques become one of the basic systems and processes of your business.  Because frankly, surveys can, and should, make every aspect of your business more efficient and profitable. 

And remember, the moral of this story, and the secret to making money with surveys, is simple:  Connect, create, convert, and CASH IN.^© 

Jeanne Hurlbert

Dr. Jeanne Hurlbert is a sociologist and a foremost expert on social networks, social media, and survey who lives in Baton Rouge, LA with her husband and 9-year-old daughter.  She’s done surveys for such government agencies as the US Army Corps of Engineers and for such companies as The Tony Robbins Companies, Tatum, Robin Robins’ Technology Marketing Toolkit, Stompernet, Don Crowther, and Joe Polish’s Piranha Marketing.  Jeanne has been featured or quoted in such media as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Oprah and Friends, smSmallBiz.com, Forbes.com, Monster.com, Juneau.com, US News and World Report, Radio-TV Interview Report, Health, Smart Money, The Christian Science Monitor, CNN, National Public Radio, The History Channel, ABC News Now, and Business Talk This Morning.  She’s co-founder, with Mike Koenigs, of MySurveyExpert and you can visit them at www.MySurveyExpert.com.

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DATE: Tuesday June 21, 2011
TIME: 11:00am PT / 2pm ET
LENGTH: 90 Minutes