Using Message Mining to Get Your Customers To Buy
The power of message mining to help you craft sales copy that makes users love your product and pay for it
One thing that fascinates me these days is how easily SaaS companies fall into the trap of building a product without speaking to their customers at all or not nearly enough. If you’re building a product for a particular segment, you MUST spend more time understanding their desired outcomes and pain points and how your solution solves them.
This week on CXL, I spent some time understanding the process of shaping product messaging that drives people to buy. Having a great product is important, users understanding what your product does for them is even more important because they are the ones who are going to drop the cash at the end of the day. When thinking about how you communicate your offering, there is a process to it to make sure that you create sales copy that drives results.
So, what goes into driving conversion?
Based on persuasion principles, MECLab’s conversion heuristic formula breaks down the probability of conversion as a combination of (in order of importance):
- Motivation: the why and the when someone hits your page coming with a reason and an expectation that needs to be aligned to this motivation. You also have no control over the level of their motivation.
- Value Proposition: it’s the pay off of what you are giving them and letting them know why they should choose you over others.
- Incentive: what you give the user in the moment of acting to do the task needed.
- Friction: is how hard it is for the user and it lowers your probability of conversion
- Anxiety: objections and perceived risk
Because you have little control over a user’s motivation, how do you go about crafting a value proposition that fuels desire so your product piques their interest enough to make them buy? You speak to them.
Who better to clearly describe your product and the solution it solves than the people who use this product. So what process can be used to do this? Message mining. It is the process of scouring the internet or other sources for instances of your target customer voicing what they care about most when it comes to your product or solution. For new businesses, it’s a way to listen to “target” customers when you don’t have customers yet. Message mining is all about knowing what your customers are saying regarding your product or the solution you offer and most importantly how they are saying it.
The reason why this is so key and makes a lot of difference because based on the reoccurring theme in the responses given, you can literally take parts of it and use it to craft memorable copy and also shape your value proposition. The process lets you uncover ways that maybe you had never even thought of your product, or use cases that you can explore to help drive growth. You will be able to identify key messages that address motivation, the value of your product, and anxiety so you can make sure that you’re addressing these in your copy.
Swiping memorable copy is all about looking at those reviews online and reading what customers have to say and then identifying those little turns of phrase
What to look out for when message mining:
- points of value they mention
- specific things about your competitor they don’t like
- suspicions they may have
- interesting analogies or similes they use when talking about your product
What do you then do with this discovery? You can create:
- relevant, value-focused headlines on your sales page
- authentic lead paragraphs and hooks
- emotionally engaging purchase prompts
- laser-accurate objections
Message Mining When You Don’t Have Customers
You’d want to be a bit more organized in the way you go about this so you’re not just searching haphazardly for memorable copy.
No customer? No problem. You can still carry out this research which can eventually give you a unique advantage over competitors.
- Make a list of keywords about your brand, type of product you offer and competitive products
- Google reviews of these keywords and begin noting down reviews that stand out to you
- Check popular reviews sites and see what people are saying about your product or competitor
- Begin putting together specific messages and verbatim copy swipes into a spreadsheet
- Categorize them based on motivation, value, or anxiety and rank them qualitatively.
Message Mining When You Have Customers
When deciding to message mine your existing customers or site visitors, you can do this through surveys/polls, phone interviews, and remote user testing. I will focus only on surveys/polls today. When deciding to use surveys, you need to ask strategic questions that draw out relevant insights for you to craft a compelling sales narrative. For surveys to be effective, you need to gauge the level of product awareness the user has because this determines the kinds of questions you will ask them. Your site visitors will give you a good idea of the before picture of what drove them to seek out a solution and eventually to your site. While your customers give you an idea of the after experience: the unique benefits of your product, aha moments, and desired outcomes. All this means is that these 2 segments are differentiated based on their product awareness level (level of understanding) and as such, require surveys that offer a different set of QUESTIONS, a different INVITATION, and TARGETING.
Crafting Surveys for Site Visitors
Questions: extract key messages
Some examples:
- Which of these best describe you? (use this to gauge awareness level)
- What do you currently use to solve x problem (to know what your product is being compared to)
- Is there anything you want to change about how you complete task x (helps you figure out their pain point)
- What matters most to you when choosing a solution category x or y (helps identify comparison shoppers and know what they are looking for)
- Is there anything holding you back from trying your product right now (helps you learn about their objections)
Invitation: you need one that is designed to get people to pay attention
An invitation is how you lure the visitor to take the survey. Because they are visiting your site, you don’t have their email so you’d want to use a pop-up poll on your site and you should let them know why you are asking for their opinion. Try to be as specific as possible to the segment of visitors you want to survey
Targeting: engage a specific audience at the right time
They will be targeted on your site but avoid triggering the poll immediately they land on your page to avoid pissing them off.
Crafting Surveys for Customers
Questions
Some examples:
- When did you realize you needed a product like (what you offer), what was going on that made you search (trigger scenario that started them off)
- What is one problem/benefit (break up the question) would you say the product eliminates (to get both the negative story and positive outcome)
- Why did you choose our product over other solutions (tells you your competitive edge)
- What 3 adjectives would you use to describe our product
Invitation:
The survey will be sent out via email and the subject line should be as generic as possible. In the body of the email, let them know why you are asking for their opinion explaining how this is for their benefit
Targeting:
Target paying customers because they are the ones who have experienced your product.
When sending out surveys or crafting your messaging, you want to avoid letting users know that it is a “survey” as it tends to turn them off. You can substitute in a word like “opinion”. When you’ve received enough responses to the questions, collate them into a spreadsheet, categorize them based on themes, and based on which part of the conversion formula it addresses.
Actionable steps post-survey
- The level of your product awareness determines how much copy you will have on your sales page to address their motivations, your value, and their anxieties.
- You can determine what your best unique value proposition based on the responses.
- Mine your responses on the sheet for top messages on motivation, value, and anxiety and use that to craft your message hierarchy keeping in mind the product awareness level.
- The typical flow looks like
UVP (above the fold) -> align the motivation with your customers’ pain points/desired outcomes -> reduce anxiety -> make the offer
