Identify audience needs

Understanding your target audience will allow you to resonate with them and understand their needs. First, you need to know who buys the product that you are selling. Most marketing teams will have a (number of) buyer persona(s) that can help you with this. If not, reviews or data on past sales can be useful, as well as statistics/data found online.

You need to know what the target audience is looking for when buying your product or a similar one. What problem does it really solve?

This step will help you develop authenticity and target the right audience with a solution to their problem.

Also, try to understand in what context the copy will be seen. Is it a copy for social media? A blog post? A poster?

Some questions you may ask yourself:

• Who is your target audience? Get some data on who really purchases from your brand and who buys from the competitors. Are there any patterns in age, sex, location, income-level, interests etc.?
• What is the target audience’s “hidden” desire? What problem does your product solve for them? This can often be found by digging deep into product/industry-specific forums and reviews. This takes some experience, as people often won’t say exactly what they want but “hint” at it. 
• What is currently trending in the industry you are writing for? Google trends is a great tool to gauge what topics are trending and which ones are losing traction.
• Where is your target audience? Keyword research is one of the best ways to find out where your target audience is. Just using google keyword planner is fine, although a more detailed tool like UberSuggest provides you with more information.

Research techniques to understand your audience needs

1. Customer interviews

No one knows what they want better than your customers. But sometimes you need to work hard on getting it out of their heads, and into the world.

Through in-depth customer interviews— by asking the right open-ended questions and really listening– we can dig deep and uncover what your customers really want.

2. Customer surveys

Surveys can be incredibly useful for gathering a lot of information quickly– if you do them right.

While not as in-depth as interviews, a focused survey combines short multiple choice questions and longer open-ended questions.

3. Customer polls

Polls are usually made up of a single question. They can be multiple choice or open ended– exit polls or thank you page polls are good examples.

You may ask to run a specific poll to gather information or suggest some polls you can use on a regular basis to keep up with customer research to help get better results.

4. Support and customer service emails (and calls)

Your support calls and emails are priceless.

The calls contain key problems, stories, and solutions– you can use them to understand exactly what your customers go through.

5. Sales calls transcripts

Like customer service calls, sales calls transcripts are invaluable– especially those of your best sales team members. Going through the most successful sales calls can help us narrow down on:

• The messages that resonate with customers
• The words, concepts, and emotions that sell
• The version of themselves the customer wants to become

We can use all these things to narrow down the copy’s message and uncover some raw, powerful language to use in the copy.

6. Amazon review mining

Amazon review mining can be incredibly valuable– especially if you sell products through Amazon. Reviews can really help you understand how customers interact with your product.

7. Social media listening

Whether they’re on Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, or Medium, heading over to where your ideal customers are and reading through what they have to say about:

• Problems they’ve got that your product help solves
• The person they want to be (especially if your product can help them get there)
• Issues close to their heart– especially emotional topics

Listening will help you understand them– and get some swipe-worthy copy.