Over Rip Media’s decade-plus of sales experience and crafting sales strategies, there’s one element that always stands out as the single most impactful technique you can use to drive conversions—listening!
There’s a common misconception that the loudest salesperson often makes the most sales. Instead, the quiet salesperson, the one who uses listening in sales to directly address their client’s complaints is often the highest performing rep on the floor.
This concept applies to every type of marketing you can think of, video included and the message is clear, listen to what your audience wants! The better you’re able to listen to your customers; the more effective your ads will be.
This phenomenon is so prevalent that I took time out of my time on David Meltzer’s Office Hours podcast to talk about it. If you want some excellent commentary, exciting interviews, and market insights, you should absolutely check that out. You can also check out David Meltzer’s other work here if you’re interested in hearing more of his insights.
Digging In: How Do You Listen to Your Audience?
Before you can start listening to what your audience wants, you need to find where they hang out and who they are. So, before you cement any strategies for sales, define your audience.
You can define your target audience by thinking through the following criteria.
Out of your current customer base, what is the…
Average customer age
Typical gender
Typical location
Average level of education
Average socioeconomic status
If you don’t currently have any customers, make an educated guess and then do more market testing with different ads and sales strategy variants to narrow your target audience down further.
Once you have a reliable target audience, it’s time to start listening closer!
Create a Buyer Persona and Start Asking Questions
You probably can’t be on the street 24/7 talking to people in your target demographic, especially with everyone working from home now, so your next best option is to create a buyer’s persona for your market. Make this persona as detailed as possible to glimpse angles and thoughts you wouldn’t have imagined before conducting the research.
Use Alexa’s great customer persona examples to write profiles that inform your sales techniques and convert.
Next, ask yourself a couple of questions. What problems does your company solve? What currently converts? Who is your competition? Finally, what do customers gain by working with you?
If you have time, you should also send out quizzes and other direct-to-customer information-gathering surveys.
All of these questions and steps will narrow down what your message needs to be, what messages are already being told, and how your message needs to be presented.
Finally, Consider Your Customer’s Journey
One thing that a ton of businesses get wrong is their relationship with their customers.
Your company is not the hero of your customer’s story; your customer is.
Instead, be your customer’s utility belt. Be something that they can whip out in their time of greatest need, ready to solve each of their problems.
So, your marketing needs to be ready to listen and respond during each part of your customer’s journey. That means that your ads need to answer their initial questions, your FAQs and testimonials need to answer their more in-depth inquiries and so-on.
Paying attention to your customer’s journey is an essential act of listening that you can perform during their conversion process.
For more information, I detail this process in depth in my video marketing sales techniques training and with slightly less detail in this blog post.
We wrote and filmed both of these resources specifically because we know people want to learn how to sell well, and we’re confident that we can help.
Are You Ready for Better Sales Strategies and More Sales?
You’ve just learned one of the most important lessons you’ll ever learn during your sales career. The better you can listen to your customers, the better off you’ll be.
Are you still curious about how a video looks when you listen to your customers? Feel free to check out our explainer video portfolio at your leisure. Also, please feel free to reach out to us to talk about marketing to your target audience!
We’ll be happy to help you with your sales strategies.