One of my favourite podcasts is Kevin Roger’s The Truth about Marketing, and this has to be my favourite episode of all.
In it, Mark Ford, founder of Agora Publishing drops an absolute gold-crusted pearl of wisdom about the knowledge you should have about your market before staring on even creating a product, let alone your marketing.
Lots of people have written about “empathy maps” for creating user personae, but Mark boils it down into just 4 questions about your market.
What does your prospect know about [your solution]?
What does your prospect believe about [your solution]?
What does your prospect feel about [your solution]?
What does your prospect want from [your solution]?
Let’s take a look at this with an example – someone who wants to learn copywriting.
These are taken from real comments I’ve seen amongst wannabe copywriters in Facebook groups & forums recently
1) What does your prospect know about copywriting courses?
That there are a lot of them.
That there are a lot of copywriters who haven’t written anything except sales letters for their own copywriting course.
That they vary enormously in price.
2) What does your prospect believe about copywriting courses?
That the right one will help them write better copy and even help secure paid copywriting work.
3) What does your prospect feel about copywriting courses?
Untrusting. Not sure whose is the right one to follow, or what amount of work is really needed for success.
4) What does your prospect want from a copywriting course?
Some evidence that the course creator has had success with their methods.
Some step by step formulae to copy.
Some examples based on the formulae, broken down.
Contact with the course creator to get feedback on their own work.
So, you can start to see not only what needs to be in the course, but what needs to be in a sale letter to promote the course as well.
In reality, this would be a lot longer, at least a dozen or more REAL points in each section from actual people we’ve seen discussing the problem.
Simple, but incredibly powerful in hitting the right market, and also in guiding interviews with prospects in your research.