Marylou:     Okay everyone, today we have a very special guest on the show. Jennifer, you go by Jen or Jennifer?Jennifer:      Jen. Marylou:     Jen Havice is the author of the brand new book that is coming out or is out already I think, right? Jennifer:      You know what, it’s going to be coming out middle of next month. Marylou:     So March 2016. If you’re listening to this podcast later in the season, it’s out. Jennifer:      Yes. Marylou:     Go get it. The book is called Finding the Right Message: How to Turn Voice of Customer Research into Irresistible Website Copy. I met Jen through a mastermind group where I went to specifically to learn how to write better emails. In our world, we’re really focused on trying to get the conversation started either via email or voicemails or even scripts that we actually use when we’re having conversations with people we don’t know at the top of the pipeline. When I heard about what Jen was doing with her research and her book, I thought she would be a perfect guest on the show today because it’s all about the voice of the customer. As you know for us, we’re trying to figure out how to start conversation. In order to do that, we have to say something that’s relevant to our audience, that resonates with them, that they’re shaking their head on the other side of the phone and saying, “Wow, this person really understands me.” I’d like Jen to talk about what was the reason for her writing this book in the first place and then take us through the steps so that we understand what we need to do as business developers in order to be able to create messaging whether it’s our website, whether it’s a blog post, whether it’s an email, whether it’s conversation, but that we create the right type of conversation at the right time with the right prospect. So Jenn, tell us about the book. Jennifer:      Great, I had decided to put this together because I just continually get questions from people asking to all wonderful to have all these ideas on how to write better copy but how do I figure out what I actually need to write and like you said how to start those conversations with people and get them nodding their head so that they’re agreeing with pretty much everything you’re saying. What you really need to do is it does all go back to the research and asking questions, interviewing your customers and your prospects, doing things like sending surveys by email and on your website doing things like pop up surveys, just one question exit intense surveys, things like that. Beyond that, just doing some good old fashioned sleuthing online, looking at some competitor research, what your competitors are doing, seeing what their customers and prospects are saying and talking about when it comes to them. Places like review sites, Yelp, Amazon, all those types of things. Just being able to get a clearer picture of what your target audience is saying, thinking about what’s keeping them up at night, what they’re most interested and care about so that you can start to pull some of those ideas and those messages from them and start to use it to put your copy together. Marylou:     One of the things that immediately comes to mind is we have a tendency in sales to hit the ground running. We get a list or we have some accounts that are in our database that may have had some communication at some point in life. We pull them together, we do a little bit of research inside of the CRM, the actual customer relationship management system, and we look to see what kind of conversations they had. Sometimes there may be that they were interested in a certain product. We immediately start dialing the phone and contacting people and just talking about product. With your research, we’re not really looking for product information, are we? Jennifer:      No. That’s one of the things that so many businesses trip upon. Sort of thinking, “I need to start talking about what I’m doing. What our accomplishments are, what the new product is, all these new features, the bells and whistles, things like that.” When in reality, what you need to be addressing is how your product or your solution is going to be fixing that core problem for your prospect or your customers. Really understanding what those triggers are and the things that are motivating those people to actually come to you is one of the most critical parts of the whole process because if your solution, your product doesn’t solve a problem, then it’s useless. Obviously if you’re in business and you’re doing well, it definitely is solving a problem. But immediately when you’re starting to talk to someone or you’re addressing them on your site and your emails, you need to make it clear to that person or those people that you really understand their core pain, why they’re coming to you and also how you can fix it for them. Marylou:     Right. I can share an immediate example of that with the audience and that I received a call from one of my clients the other day asking me, “Marylou, did you tell this company to write to me about our content problem?” And I said, “No, why do you say that?” He said, “Because the line part of the email addressed what we were just talking about in our prior meeting about how we didn’t have control of our content, that we didn’t have content mapped, we didn’t have enough assets to be able to share our communications with our potential audience.” Because it resonated so much with him, he thought I had referred this vendor to him. Jennifer:      Wow. Marylou:     That’s an example of a vendor who didn’t come right in with the product but he came in with the pain. Jennifer:      Exactly. Marylou:     That’s what your book is going to teach us how to do. Is how to collect that data and where to look for that data no matter for a B to B company or B to C company, large, small, it doesn’t matter. We all have to go through this process. Is that correct? Jennifer:      Definitely. A lot of the examples I used in the book are centered around smaller businesses. Part of my aim in doing that, thinking back over it is to really make it tangible for people. Thinking about what are those core types of pains that all of us have around just basic products and services. It gets more difficult from times to think about how you’re going to talk about big enterprise solutions. You go about it the same way. I find sometimes when I’m talking about this with people that to make some of the examples or illustrations really more personal. It really hits home for people and they understand so that then when you do give them an example of a test done like a split test or an AB test done for a big enterprise solution on a site. You’re like, “I see.” It still is tapping into that pain point and how the solution is going to ultimately help solve it. Marylou:     The other thing too that this does is that it gives us, empowers us that we can do this on our own. If you’re working for a larger company right now and you’re listening to this call, you have the ability to do the research as Jen describes in her book. You don’t have to go to your manager or the director of marketing or whatever it is. You are empowered to do this because ultimately you’re responsible for generating opportunities. The more you know about the person on the other end of that phone or the person on the other end of that email, the better you’re going at making your numbers consistently and repeatedly. This information, while it may seem that it’s pen and paper-ish instead of tool based, you still have to get to the core of how to do this type of research and how to do it to improve your business. Jennifer:      Exactly. What I really try to do in the book was to make it super practical, to really help people by walking them step by step through the process of doing interviews and surveys and the survey questions. Then, actually mining all that information and pulling out what is relevant so that you actually have some actionable data to work with. And then once you have it, what do you do with it? And then giving some examples of how you can take what you’ve pulled out and actually apply it to your copy. Marylou:     So your book is three parts. I think I heard you said so. The first is collecting the data. The second part is actually analyzing it and the third part is applying it. Can you give us an overview of how to collect, where to collect some ideas or is there a difference between business to business versus business to consumer for example in your data collection process. Jennifer:      I would say the process is more or less the same and I actually have a couple of examples in there where—this is more on the mining front of that in going online and looking for messages online where I do talk about a B to B business that I was helping and I was sort of struggling with. Where am I going to look for some great information online where actual customers are talking about, it was very digital marketing agency? The process is the same, you just have to think about it a little bit differently and think about first where those people are going to be looking for the same types of information as you are. When you’re going online and you’re looking for where these customers or prospects are actually talking about solutions that are maybe comparable to your own if you’re not finding your own business out there being talked about, you just want to think about what are they are going to put into Google to go look, to find out more information. It may be articles online, looking at comments, what people are saying about a particular solution. When it comes to B to C and you’re talking about products, things that commerce wise are really easy to find online. Going to Amazon, looking at reviews of comparable products, seeing what people are actually saying about what they love, what they hate, why it’s working, why it’s not working, that sort of thing. That’s a great way to supplement your own surveys and interviews and things like that. Particularly if you actually have a small business or start up and you don’t have a sea of customers on an email list that you can survey, that a great way to get some of that voice of customer data. I would say one of the absolute best ways to get the kind of information that you want is just by talking to people, asking them questions, digging down to find out what their deeper why is, meaning why are they really coming to seek you out and use your solution or your product, whether that’s they want to feel more confident, they’re wanting to feel like more of a pro in whatever sort of business that they’re involved with. Whatever that sort of deeper why is, that’s what you really want to connect with. Marylou:     To give you an example in my world is I get people coming to me saying they want better leads. Jennifer:      Yup. Marylou:     When I ask them why they want better leads, they say because they’re not able to convert the leads that they get or they say they don’t have as many leads so I asked them why don’t they have as many leads and they say because marketing is not passing over enough leads for us to work, well why is that? I just keep asking what we call the five whys. Jennifer:      Exactly. Marylou:     Eventually, you drill down to that what we call root cause and in this particular case it was that the person who wanted more leads was also kind of looking towards a promotion and the promotion would have been a slam dunk if he was able to consistently meet his numbers. Even though he started off with, “I need more leads,” it really was about, “I want to improve my position within the company.” Jennifer:      Exactly. Marylou:     Those are two very different things that you’re dealing with. Jennifer:      Exactly and so that’s a phenomenal example. That really hits home about digging, digging deep until you can get to that deeper why. That’s the kind of message that’s really going to resonate with people. Like you were saying, thinking about how do I start that conversation? Just your regular communication versus website copy or emails. If you can get to the heart of what makes your ideal customers tick and what keeps them up at night, that’s really valuable information that you can use to start off a conversation, lead into a story like you just did and give people context around what you’re trying to sell. Marylou:     Right, and that there are others like you who have similar problems so there’s a consensus that you’re not suffering alone. There are a lot of people who are experiencing the same problems that you have. As you start getting them kind of leaning into your conversation, then you can start showing them others who have come before them via testimonials and endorsements. All of this under Jen’s guidance with research, you should be able to put together a compelling story to get someone who is very cold and not knowing who you are to the point where you can turn them into a sales qualified lead. Jennifer:      Right. Exactly, that’s a really different sort of take on the book and how you can use it. I definitely think that so much of this applies and it’s really just about process and it’s something that anyone can do. You just need to take the time to do it. Marylou:     Let’s get to the website side. I had this research that I’ve done and I want to be able to attract people as opposed to reaching out to people. What does this mean for my website? Once I’m armed with this information, what is the next logical place that I’m going to invest my time, effort, energy, writing skills, what have you, in implementing in activating this type of research? Jennifer:      What I normally do when I’m looking at an existing website is pull all of that great information together and I talk about this in the book. How to go through it and analyze it and figure out a messaging type hierarchy, what are the most important messages and what are the key items, things that are continually popping out. Once you’ve done that, the best thing to do is to actually get on your site and run through your home page or all of the pages on your site and look through and see where based on the information that you’ve pulled together, where do you think your customers or prospects who would be coming to it would be running into problems? You’re armed with this great information that’s telling you these people want this and they want that. There are certain things that are going to be major elements of friction for them and going through the page you can get a sense of, “Wow, we’re not addressing that big friction point here based on the research that we’ve just done. It’s become really apparent that people coming the site are going to need to know x, y and z and that’s nowhere to be found.” Marylou:     Almost sounds like a pre flight checklist where you actually have a list now because it sounds like what you give us is the ability to put all of these into a sheet of some sort. Jennifer:      Right. There are actual sheets on there, almost sort of like templates, that you can use as a starting point for yourselves. Actually taking that and then going through your site and applying it. Marylou:     That’s awesome. I could totally visualize that I have my checklist, my sheet, I’m looking at the page and I’m just reading the text and when I’m finished I’m going to go back to my sheet and say, “Okay, did we cover this, this, this, this and this? Why not this?” You have a process where you could make sure that if you know that person is going to land on that page or you have a good sense that they are, you had better cover the points that you found in their language, mind you, because you put that in their phrasing. Correct? Jennifer:      Right and that ends up being the most powerful and compelling messages when you can actually lift people on words and use it. Marylou:     Yeah. That’s awesome, great. After we’ve analyzed and created our sheets and now we’re ready to actually apply it. Is there a process for that that you suggest in the book as well? Jennifer:      Yeah. In the application section, I talk mostly about applying it to your value proposition. Things like features and benefits, I just pulled out a couple of core things that are critical on every website. There is definitely more things obviously that you can apply it to but kind of walking you through how you take the research that you’ve done to put it together and create a much more compelling, hopefully, value proposition. Your headline, your sub headline, how that relates to the bottom copy, and even just going through a definition, what a value proposition is and what it’s not and how all the elements work together. Marylou:     Definitely our listeners know the value of a unique selling proposition and how so many of us if I were to shake you at 3:00 in the morning and ask you what your USP was, I bet more than half of you would have trouble with that. Having that knowledge in that third part in giving and understanding of what Jen means by that can only help you as you think about how you’re going to start conversations with people. Whether they’re people you don’t know, they’re aware maybe, they might be aware of a problem but certainly not a product awareness and may not even have solution awareness. But if you’re lucky, they’ll be interested in evaluating. Most of our stuff is going to be in that unaware or problem aware stage and that’s about it. Understanding and being able to articulate your USP in their language, the way they phrase it, is going to get you a lot more appointments, demos, whatever it is that your next sales step is in order to get this folks towards a sales qualified lead. Jennifer:      Right. Beyond the phone conversations, applying it to your emails on thinking through what do these people need to hear in my email so that it’s going to hopefully compel them to respond back. Like you said in that one example where the person just said, “You’re talking exactly about my problem. This is exactly what I needed to know about.” And getting people to really nod along like, “How did you know what I was thinking?” Not to sound creepy but that’s sort of where you want to go with it, just really understanding what your customers are thinking about and pondering and worrying about so that you can address not only their pain but also all of those hesitations and concerns and anxieties that they might have around purchasing from you or signing up or do whatever it is you’re hoping to help them to. Marylou:     Right, skepticism, it runs the gamut so you have to preempt and pre-strike. Jennifer:      Right, right, and also know when to offer up that information. Marylou:     Exactly. Jennifer:      That’s another really important thing. You don’t want to do it too soon and you want to have it where it needs to be depending on like you said how aware they are of the problems and solutions and also your brand. Marylou:     The thing is that when you understand how they phrase things and you do your research, you would be able to map out where that behavior, where their thoughts are. If you’re preparing a landing page for example that you want to focus on those folks who are aware of a problem but not necessarily aware of the solution, that language that they’re going to use is very different. If you have someone on a landing page where they’re aware of the product, by all means you’re going to mention your product name because they know about it. Jennifer:      Right. Marylou:     By understanding which phrases that they use that these certain steps or thought process stages, you’re just going to have much more compelling copy whether it’s on a website, whether it’s a landing page, whether it’s a button as you said, or in your emails, voicemails, scripts, everything else. Jennifer:      Right. Exactly, and hopefully you can use that to weave a good tale and add some of the storytelling that draws people in and makes you seem relatable and somebody that they actually want to talk to. Marylou:     Talk to and you’re credible and you’ve started to build trusting rapport which is what we all want to do. Jennifer:      Exactly. Marylou:     This is really a great little slipper of all that you do. What got you so interested in this particular—I don’t know what to call it. Jennifer:      It’s interesting. I am going to be doing a short talk at a Conversion Exo Conference next month which is only a 15 minute talk so trying to get everything— Marylou:     Kind of crammed in. Jennifer:      Yes. I was thinking of the word. It’s really centered around— Marylou:     Speed dating? Jennifer:      Yes. It’s really centered around value and how do you convey value in your copy. It all ties back to this bigger message which is we’re not listening to our customers and we need to be listening to our customers. The only way that we’re going to be able to adequately convey the value of our authors or product solutions, whatever, is by understanding what they need to hear and putting that together with compelling copy. It’s been something that’s spinning around in my head for the last year or two. It’s just continuing to jump out at me and you know when you keep finding connections everywhere. The customer research piece has just become a lot more important to me. I just think it’s fundamental in terms of the copywriting and really anything, trying to optimize your websites, your emails as you know. All of the different processes that go into marketing to people, it’s just absolutely critical that you understand them. Marylou:     It’s funny when for a very long time voice of customer, VOC initiatives were mostly customer service related. It’s so nice to see it come over to business development, to sales, because effort is a big thing. If you go to a website, it takes so much effort to figure out what you need to do next or if your wording is such that you’re trying to basically make the customer figure it out versus you telling them and not so that they logically and comfortably know where to go next. That’s the difference that Jen is offering up here by having you really think through not only what to say to the customer but what the experience they’re going to have when they hit your landing page or hit your website or read your email. This is all about the effort, the experience that clients will have once they read your content wherever it’s placed. Jennifer:      Right. Letting them know that like you said, you’ve taken the time to understand them. The type of messaging that you’re putting forth is something that they care about which really it needs to be centered around them, not you. It’s about kind of a mindset shift to a certain extent. I think a lot of us marketers pay web service to the fact that it needs to be about the customer but then when it comes time to actually put the materials together, the campaigns together, it just shifts back to making it about ourselves because it’s easier to just talk about ourselves. We’re all human and for as much as we don’t like to admit it, we’re selfish creatures and we like to think about what we need and what’s most important to us. It’s really about hitting home to people that you need to be thinking outside of yourself and your business and what the goals are of your customer. They need to be in alignment with your own, otherwise your business isn’t going to survive but you need to be constantly thinking about what goals your customers have and how are you going to achieve them because if they can achieve their goals, you’re going to achieve yours. Marylou:     Exactly. Well, Jen thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it. I’m sure the audience is going to want to know how to get hold of you so could you give us a couple of ways to reach you. Jennifer:      Yeah. Definitely. You can find me on my site which is makementionmedia.com or on Twitter which is @jenhavice and then I will also give you a link where people can go if they’re coming to your site with the podcast and they can get more information and read some other things that I’ve written. Marylou:     Great. The book again is Finding the Right Message: How to Turn Voice of Customer Research into Irresistible Website Copy. I’ll add email and other types of copy from Jen Havice. Thank you again so much. We loved having you on the show. Jennifer:      Thank you so much. I appreciate it.