Our Customer Research Process (For Content Marketing)
Our Customer Research Process (For Content Marketing)
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Megan Mahoney
- August 16, 2022
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Most say they have done customer research once they know the answers to these questions:
Based on these insights, the previously mentioned keywords (“how to start a coaching program,” “Marketing tactics for coaches,” and “careers in coaching”) are clearly not a good fit because our target demographic is veteran coaches. However, these keywords are a good fit:
Now imagine I had done zero customer research. Even if I got lucky and picked the right keyword (Kajabi alternatives), you can see that copywriting like the introduction below would not resonate with our target audience:
So even though the keyword is the same and both personas have the same general pain point – improving coaching efficiency – customer research is also essential for great copywriting.
To give you some actionable information on how to do thorough customer research, this post explains the exact customer research framework we use with every client.
Here’s a post on the webinar platform software that discusses the live chat feature I mentioned earlier:
Now remember the accounting software I mentioned? The key differentiator is that it offers real time accounting. See how I discuss it here:
- Title
- Industry
- Company size
- Generic pain points
- Title – Coach
- Industry – Biz, Life, Exec coaching
- Company size – A few assistants
- Generic pain point – They want to improve the efficiency of their coaching programs
- How to start a coaching program
- Marketing tactics for coaches
- Careers in coaching
Upcoach is a coaching platform that helps veteran coaches coach more efficiently. Most of them have a team of 2-5 people, and the main reason they switch to our platform is that their existing platforms don’t provide engagement features.
So they are tying multiple platforms together (including habit trackers, to-do list builders, and accountability groups) with Zapier. So many different logins and zaps breaking causes friction and causes clients to churn. As a result, clients are churning, and the coach feels like a failure because they didn’t deliver the transformational results they promised.
Usually, the catalyst that causes them to search for a new platform is a review from a student saying, “This isn’t what I expected from you.” That’s a dagger to the heart of someone that dedicates their life to transforming student lives.
- Online course completion rates
- Best habit trackers
- Best coaching platforms for life coaches


How to Conduct Customer Research
I perform customer research by interviewing someone from CS, sales, and either the founder or the marketing team. I talk to CS and sales because they are closest to the customer. Sales can tell us what the customer’s life looks like before the product, and CS can tell us what the customer’s life looks like after the product. As content marketers, it’s our job to bridge the gap by showing prospects (those talking to sales) what their life could look like with the product (those talking to CS). So getting both perspectives helps us do that. Then, I sometimes interview the founder as the founding story can sometimes give golden insights into the key reason why the product exists. So now that I know who to interview, what should I ask?What Questions To Ask
The questions you ask have a significant impact on the success of your customer research. To help you out, here is the list of customer research questions that I use as a guide. However, I should mention that it’s important to ask follow-up questions when relevant. That said, here’s an overview of how my interviews usually go.Why Was This Product Created?
The founding story usually gives the best detail into why the product exists. Even if you can’t ask the founder, someone else on the team probably has the answer to this question. This discussion helps me understand what the product’s unique selling point is and the main pain point that it solves. For example, when I interviewed the founder of upcoach, he said he had created a course himself and was disappointed to see that it only had a 7% completion rate. By transforming it into a cohort-based course with Zoom calls and accountability features, completion rates soared to 94%. The problem with this was that he still had to connect multiple platforms manually, and the overall experience (for both students and himself) was cumbersome. Therefore, he created upcoach as the first all-in-one platform that offered engagement features for coaches who wanted to make a bigger impact. So the major pain point the product solves: It’s an all-in-one platform that creates a better experience for students and coaches. I often write a founding story and tie it to a keyword when I first start with a client, as it really helps me understand the key purpose of that tool’s existence.Who Are The Best (and Worst) Customers?
The next thing I want to learn during the customer research process is what the best and worst customers look like. It’s important to ask both the sales and customer success teams this question as sales teams will know who closes the fastest, whereas CS will know which customers tend to churn the fastest. Obviously, even if you can close a customer easily, you don’t want to target them if they have a low LTV. As you’re fishing for customer data, it is important to ask the basic information like:- Title
- Industry
- Company size
- General pain points
- Are the accountants purchasing the software well versed in ERP systems, or are they only using SMB accounting software?
- Are they aware that a solution like yours exists (i.e., do they realize a solution exists to their pain point, or do they believe it’s something they have to live with?)
What Does Their Life Look Like Before This Product?
It’s important to understand exactly what customers are doing before they start using your product. So my first question is, “How are they handling the situation before coming to you, and what parts of this process are most painful?“ Many people assume that customers are using a competitor’s product before switching to yours, but the reality is that most people are doing the process manually or with an entirely different system. For example, users purchase upcoach, most of them are using a collection of:- Project management software
- Online course hosting software
- Habit trackers
- To do list apps
- And more…
What Does Their Life Look Like With This Product?
Now that we know what their life looks like before the product, it’s important to understand how their life is different with the product. So the first question I ask is, “What are the biggest pain points the product solves, and what is the benefit of solving those pain points?“ You’ll find that most reps will say something generic like:- It saves them time
- It makes it easier
- It makes it cheaper
- Sales reps save hours every week as they no longer have to run live webinars.
- Each prospect can see the product within minutes of learning about it rather than waiting to schedule a demo/onboarding call. This gets more prospects into the webinar, and you can get in front of them while the pain is still hot, which ultimately increases total sales.
- Sales reps can prioritize the most qualified prospects, which helps them close more profitable deals.
- The chat feature
- The interactive buttons feature
- The on-demand (webinar plays within 5 minutes of registering) feature
- Sends messages directly to the team’s email (so live attendees never receive chat responses live, which creates a poor user experience)
- Requires the team to be on every single webinar to respond to chat messages, otherwise, they go unanswered (so the team still has to be on every webinar, which defeats the purpose of automated webinars)
Demo
Now that I understand the most important features, I want to see exactly how they work so that I know exactly how to talk about them (and I can include screenshots where necessary). So the next step is the demo. During the demo, I ask them to take me through the process of how a user would use the product. Then, at every feature, I ask these three questions:- What is the main pain point this feature solves?
- What are the main benefits of this feature?
- Do competitors have this feature, and if so, how is yours different/better?
Case Studies
The final element of my customer research process is asking for key case studies. This is useful because I can incorporate examples into the content. For example, following the webinar software example, I found that one of their customers added interactive features to their webinar and saw watch times increase from 70% to 90%. So that’s a really useful piece of evidence I can use whenever I’m discussing the interactive features. Even if you can’t reveal the customer, it’s really useful to get case studies so that you can create hypothetical scenarios in your content. For example, the accounting software I work with had a customer that (prior to switching to my client’s accounting software) had accidentally overspent on Google ads by $50,000 in a month simply because they didn’t have access to up-to-date financial data. (The key benefit of my client’s software is that they provide real-time data, so the client would have known the day they started overspending rather than tallying it all up at the end of the month and saying Oh sh**!). So even if you can’t use that exact case study or reveal that customer’s name, you can make up hypothetical scenarios. So in the content, I might say something like, “For example, if your Facebook ad costs suddenly skyrocket, you’ll know the day it goes over budget rather than receiving a shock at the end of the month.“ It also tends to unearth more benefits that the person forgot to mention.How Customer Research Plays Into The Writing
I already showed briefly how customer research impacts writing, though I wanted to drive home how critical customer research is to creating content that converts. First, almost all of my content is very product focused (bottom of the funnel). Therefore, I’m always discussing the product within the content. So here are a few examples of how my customer research plays into the end product. Here’s a post on upcoach targeting “Kajabi alternatives:”

