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How Do You Find Out What Your Customers Really Buy? · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Kendrick Corman.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a coach, consultant, or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Kendra Corman, and I am really excited today to be joined by Gillian and Jordan.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we're going to be talking about how to find out what your customers are buying, and then more importantly, and probably most importantly, how to use that to improve your marketing.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, really excited that you guys are here today.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for joining me.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so why don't you guys tell me a little bit about yourselves?
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: We can start with you, Jordan, and then move over to Jillian.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having us.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So we are twin sisters.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone's watching the video version of this, we do look alike.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we are the founders of Lovely Loops, which is an online calligraphy business.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we teach calligraphy online and we've been doing this since 2017.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And just kind of like the short, quick version of the story is we took a calligraphy class when we were kids.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: We were about 10 years old and always loved creative art and things like that.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then as adults, when we were getting close to our own weddings, when we um each got engaged, we wanted to do calligraphy for our weddings.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So we got got back into it, eventually turned it into um teaching local workshops, and then went online with our courses, and we've been doing it ever since.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: That is so much fun.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Jillian.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Our story is very intertwined.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but these days we have an online membership, and that's where we spend the most of our time with uh teaching calligraphy.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we have uh an amazing community of people in our membership that are learning and practicing calligraphy.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where we spend our days now.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: That is such an interesting business, right?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think everybody, uh I don't know, I guess it may be just me.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I know a lot of people that love calligraphy, love to use it, right?
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's um there's a woman here who actually, I think she has like a whole business where she does the calligraphy for people.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so she'll do those place cards and the outsides of the envelopes for the weddings and things like that.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember I got to see her workshop um one day, and it was just so neat to see the the artistry of it all.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very cool that you're making that just attainable by people, right?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think some of that art has been lost over time, and it's just amazing that you guys do that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: We want to talk about how to figure out what your customers are buying because that feeds into all of your marketing.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, Gillian, what is your perspective on how did how does someone go about finding out what their customers are buying?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is a journey that we've been on over the past, I would say, year of really focusing on this question of what are people actually buying versus what you're trying to sell them on or what you think they're buying.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess a quick story.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we always used to think like, okay, people want to learn calligraphy, they want to learn how to write beautifully.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna sell them an online course and we're gonna tell them how many worksheets they're gonna get and how many hours of video lessons and how they're gonna master it and become an amazing calligrapher based on our incredible expertise.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's kind of how, like in the beginning, we sort of positioned our offers.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, what we started to notice was that people, they're not really, most people for us aren't really trying to master calligraphy and they don't really care that much about like how many worksheets they're gonna get.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's more about how does calligraphy fit into their lives?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to make cards, to gift to their friends, things like that.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so our messaging and our offers have shifted away from us being the expert and teaching them and more to how calligraphy fits into their life as a creative hobby.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the way that we've figured this out and the way that the listeners can kind of think about this is we love doing surveys and getting feedback from our customers and really listening to what they're saying rather than like usually or oftentimes we have an idea and then we do a survey and then we look for evidence in the survey results that like supports what idea we want to do.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but what we've been trying to do is actually read what people are saying, and then we also do Zoom calls and listen to what people are saying and take action on that.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan, do you want to jump in with like the Zoom calls that we have done?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we so this um another big part of this is that we have a big community and one of our main offers is a community membership called Calligraphy Together.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we have about 500 members right now, and people are posting their work and sharing with each other, and then we also do Zoom calls.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so on these Zoom calls, we really get to know our members and um and treat them as our community members.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so we ask them questions about how does calligraphy fit into your life, or how has it changed your life, or how has the role of calligraphy changed over different phases of your life?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just so amazing to hear people's answers and um to just really like I think it also made us realize how big of an impact it has had on people's lives, where people like you mentioned, some people turn it into a business, but most people just end up doing it as a calm, relaxing hobby um throughout different stages of their life, whether they're dealing with grief or burnout or like a life transition.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of retired women and now they're trying to find something to kind of a productive way to fill their time.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we just get all this because we have spent so much time listening to our our members and hearing what they have to say.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: When you guys were listening, like what was the cue that got you to change from I want to learn calligraphy to calligraphy in my life?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it wasn't really just like one moment.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just we start starting to notice a pattern of uh a couple different things.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, like one, we used to have so many different offers, like you can learn flourishing with us, you can learn iPad calligraphy, you can learn like this specific kind of calligraphy.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and lots of different offers.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And most people or we kept hearing from people, like they would email us, they would say, Well, which program should I do?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of started to see how we were overcomplicating things based on all the different techniques that we wanted to teach.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that was like one cue was hearing people say, like, I want to buy something, I just don't know where to start, or like tell me where to start, which is why we eventually consolidated everything into our one membership called Calligraphy Together.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then, um, so that was one cue.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then Jordan, go ahead.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think, well, I think another part of it is that we have we spent like years and years, like six or seven or eight years building up our courses and our educational materials.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we kind of have it all available for people to learn calligraphy.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: So then we kind of started to see like how else can we help people like with things like habit building or um mindset or like improving confidence, things that are not just like how to write the letter A, things beyond the technique.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, like I said, in our community, we get a lot of feedback and we just observe what people are saying and how people are talking about it.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and people are not talking about how, like, oh, I mastered how to write this letter.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're talking about how it they gave a card to a family member or they taught a local workshop at their church or they shared it with someone.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we just um yeah, like I guess it was kind of a thing that we started realizing over time of just like what people were talking about in our community.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's fantastic.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think one of the big things I'm hearing is you have to listen to people.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: You have to hear them talk, right?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's one of the most important things that that um I want everybody to take away, right?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I talk I say this all the time, all the time.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: I just recorded another episode earlier today because I do batch record these.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the gentleman's biggest lesson learned was you need to make sure you know your audience.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that is so important, which makes this just the perfect flow from that.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Jordan, all right.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you you listened to people, something clicked.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Cause I think that that's easier said than done, right?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: As you're listening to people, right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: That takes time to really understand.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I should apply that.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: How do you go about from having that insight to actually using it to improve your marketing or emails?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good question.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the first thing that we started with was more about the actual offer and the product and like the member experience.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And even if the same kind of content was included, just the way that we were talking about it started to become a little bit different of how we were telling our members to engage.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it used to be very like take this course and then take this course and do it in order and do these assignments.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's become more of like um, we do things live together.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And like it doesn't matter if you work through every single course, as long as you're just picking up your pen for five minutes today and like enjoying the process of it, and we have more opportunities to do things that are a little bit lower pressure, like just try writing this word today.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it started from the inside of like, we still have we still have all the content available for everyone in our courses, but it's just like what we are directing them to focus on.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, um, and we're still kind of in this process.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is like you said, it takes a long time, especially after you've been doing something a certain way for a long time.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest change that we made was renaming our offer, our community.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It had been called Lovely University, and now it's called Calligraphy Together.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so, even just changing the name and with that name change, we also had like a whole um like it took a few months where we were talking to our members, telling them, like, we're changing this because our vision is also kind of changing a little bit, where we we would love to expose the idea of doing calligraphy to more people just because we've seen how it has helped change our students' lives.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so to do that, we're we're thinking, okay, if we want to impact more people, the other route we could have gone down was like, okay, we have these students, we could help this smaller group of students become like true masters at this art, which we personally have have in our journeys shifted away from like, I'm gonna master this to I'm going to teach other people how to do it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to help more people.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that, we have also changed our messaging around like helping people not feel intimidated and um encouraging people to try it and starting with like more of a low pressure entry point rather than telling people like you are going to become the world's best calligrapher.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which is really important in our marketing and our emails because now instead of using words like you're gonna learn this and then we're going to critique your work so that you can improve.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now the marketing language is way less about perfection and more about enjoying the hobby, especially these days when technology and AI and everything, like people really are craving having a hobby that's real, that's analog hobbies is coming back.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, um, so just like the words that we use and sort of the stories that we paint when we're talking in our emails is more focused on on this new vision.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I well, and I love the vision and I love how it was built, right?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: From listening to your customers.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, and your students, I mean, there's no better solution, I don't, I think, for for anything.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's amazing.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I again, I like how you changed your perspective and you looped them in early and said, hey, things are gonna be changing and here's what and here's why.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and the stories, right, that that you're sharing now are different from what you were, right?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, I'm very big into progress, not perfection.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, again, as long as they're making progress, they're moving things forward, which again, I think is just super cool.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, Jillian, um, if somebody wanted to start moving this forward, what's one simple change that they could do today to help improve their messaging?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: A really great tool, if you have it, is to use customer testimonials because then you can use the words of someone who has been through, whether it's a product or a service or whatever, whatever you have, a testimonial that shares their story, because the person looking at this will then be able to see themselves in this person's story.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, like we personally, we know how great our programs are, but sometimes it's like you don't want to talk about how great you are.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: But if you have someone else sharing that, like, wow, these this calligraphy program is amazing, something I would never say.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: But if someone else is saying it, then it's great to use in your marketing.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's like a really simple thing.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: If you have testimonials to actually use them in your marketing, um, because it's this the story of the person that they can see themselves in their shoes, I think is really helpful.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think that in reading what people are saying, you can also get a sense for what people value.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times, like we said before, it used to be like you get this many worksheets and this many videos.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: But if you can make it more on the outcome and not like the result of like you can create the specific thing, but also like about how they're feeling about it and the emotions and and the stories and um more than just like here is what you get, but here is who you will become.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let me ask a follow-up question to the testimonials, right?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: I know you guys said that you survey your customers a lot.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is that where you started to get your testimonials from?
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or I know a lot of people that struggle with asking for testimonials, and then people are like, sure, just draft something up for me, right?
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Or well, what do you want me to say?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to get that focused in because you don't want them to say, hey, Kendra's awesome, right?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Gillian and Jordan have a great class.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, everybody says that, right?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you work with people to get them to really differentiate on those testimonials?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we so we actually recently started using Senja, which is a software to collect testimonials, which makes it easy for us to organize them and then be able to share them.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we something we've been doing that has been working well is we've been doing a lot more live learning.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like in January, the community focused on one letter a day for the whole month.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so then it's very natural at the end of the month for us to ask them for their feedback, like whether or not they enjoyed it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: So if they enjoyed it, they could leave a testimonial, or if they had critical feedback, they could also share that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: But having it in like a time bound rather than like just randomly emailing someone and asking them for a testimonial, we've been trying to tie it to like a start and end of something that's happening within the community.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Jordan, what did you want to add?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think the type of question that you ask can also, instead of just saying, like, leave us a review, you could ask like a few questions.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: We used to have this also used to be something we always integrated into our courses.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like the final lesson of the course was always a Google form that said like one last step to complete the course, and it would have something.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then it would also have the embedded form.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So making it frictionless, but then asking questions like, what would you tell a student that is thinking about signing up for this course?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Or like, um, if you were on the fence, what made you decide to join?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or something that gives them a couple things to think about instead of just like, here's a blank page, write a testimonial.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: I like the focus, right?
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: The it really helps people because they don't know what you want, right?
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And otherwise you're just gonna get a bunch of your awesome and amazing, right?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, even in the age of AI, like it might come up with a um a synonym, but that's about it.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: So um, so that's fantastic.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So these are great insights.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you both so very much for sharing that with us.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I love how you listened to people involved that into your business and your marketing and have grown that from there.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I appreciate you so much sharing all of that with us.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, before I let you go, I have to ask you the question that I ask all of my guests.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that is that this show is called Imperfect Marketing, because marketing is anything but a perfect science.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: What's been your biggest marketing lesson learned?
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And Jordan, if you want to go first.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd love to answer this.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think having the right energy behind when you are promoting a specific offer is really important.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And being confident in your offer and excited about it, because um, over the years we've launched different courses and memberships, and we always get the best turnout in terms of sales, but also in terms of excitement from our members when we are excited about it.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: When we've tried in the past just doing something like, oh, logically this will make sense because like the value is worth it for someone, like based on the dollar amount, then it never performs as well as when we are personally excited about it, which is why um I think our community is such an important part of our business because we are genuinely excited about our community.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the energy and the excitement and the confidence behind your offer is just as important as what the offer actually is.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think kind of going off of that, my my tip is don't overcomplicate it because we over the years have definitely gone through periods where we've just overcomplicated things so much that it's confusing for the customers, it's confusing for us what we're even doing.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: So simplifying and consolidating has been something that we are always working towards to have better clarity for both us and our customers, because confusion is never gonna result in any sales or any satisfaction, but clarity will.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I love those takeaways.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I love, yes, energy.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you're excited about something, other people get excited about it too, right?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then, yes, it's really easy to complicate things.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Real easy, especially when it's yours, right?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, well, they have to understand, you know, there's all these different things.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, no, they don't want to do any of the thinking.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so that always makes it a challenge.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you again so much for joining me today.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate all that you shared.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully, for those of you listening or watching, you got something out of today because I know I did.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And if you did, it would really help me out if you would rate or subscribe wherever you're listening or watching.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, have a great rest of your day.