Mia Fileman 0:05
This is Got Marketing? – a fud-free, fluff-free, no-nonsense podcast for marketers looking to work smarter.
I’m your host, Mia Fileman – a marketing strategist with over two decades of experience, and an entrepreneur.
I’m tired of marketers telling you what you want to hear. Instead, I tell you what you need to hear. During the show, I chat with creatives and strategists about all the aspects of marketing, but especially marketing campaigns. Unpacking and dissecting marketing campaigns is what I do for fun.
Got Marketing? is brought to you by Campaign Del Mar – the marketing education platform where marketers and entrepreneurs go to upskill.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Hello, everyone! Welcome back to the Got Marketing? Podcast!
I just wanted to say such a huge thank you to all of you for tuning in. You have helped make this a top-20 podcast in Australia which is just a wee bit exciting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
Today, we are going to talk about becoming a customer fanatic because, for me, good marketing comes from really good listening. It’s really not rocket science.
Yes, I love data. I’m a marketer. But beyond data, the thing that helps marketers create truly memorable marketing campaigns are insights.
To have this juicy chat out with me, I’ve invited Nadine Nethery onto the show today. Nadine is the founder of CAN DO! Content – a strategic copywriter for women-led brands who want to intentionally attract, delight, and retain their dream customers.
Over the years, Nadine has given global e-commerce success stories, game-changing start-ups, and industry-disrupting service providers the words to shine. But what I love about Nadine and why I wanted her to join me on the show is that she’s not the kind of copywriter that makes words sound good. She’s a strategist.
I read every single one of Nadine’s emails, and this woman is a marketer. She takes copy and turns it into a genuine connection and touchpoint for your brand.
With that intro, welcome, Nadine!
Nadine Nethery 2:40
Hi Mia! Thank you so much for having me! It’s such an honour!
Mia Fileman 2:43
Absolute pleasure! I’ve been a long-term fangirl of yours.
Nadine Nethery 2:47
Aww. Likewise!
Mia Fileman 2:51
That’s great to hear!
All right. Well, let’s dive in. What are we going to talk about today?
Nadine Nethery 3:00
We’re going to talk all about really truly genuinely getting to know your audience and how that can give you the clarity and confidence to not only write copy for your business but market in a way that really resonates with your customer, your audience, and just genuine connections that ultimately get your customer to take action. That’s really what you want.
Mia Fileman 3:28
Yes.
Look, most of the people that listen to this show are marketers. They understand that. They know they need to do it. They just probably don’t know how to do it and do it quickly and cheaply as well.
Let’s backtrack a bit. Let’s go back to the beginning. Let’s outline the problem. I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing a lot of tone-deaf marketing at the moment. What’s going wrong? Why is this happening?
Nadine Nethery 4:00
Especially businesses that are still trying to find their feet when it comes to marketing are jumping at any opportunity, any trend that comes up online, and trying to integrate it into their marketing – whether it’s a Reels trend or a current situation that might work for some brands but is not really on brand for them.
The problem there is they are jumping at current situations. It’s opportunistic and it is not leading with empathy which is what marketing really should be all about and truly speaking to your customer and giving them what they need rather than the agenda that you want to push.
Mia Fileman 4:41
Yes.
I don’t know about you, Nadine, but I have a corporate background, and we would never take anything to market – campaigns, major marketing materials, TVCs, or any sort of messaging to market – without first focus grouping it.
Nadine Nethery 5:00
Yes, exactly, and that’s where the problem is. Maybe a few men in suits somewhere can come up with an idea. I’m sorry to say it so bluntly, but often the case. Someone comes up with this glorious idea, think it’s genius, and gets it out there rather than again asking the person on the receiving end – the audience – to have a look at it and see whether it sits right within cultural circumstances and societal norms as well.
I would always – even with copy – make sure you sense-check it with people before investing big money, time, and effort into it, and making sure you haven’t missed the mark somewhere.
Mia Fileman 5:42
Absolutely.
You talked about the copying of trends, the jumping on the bandwagon, and the culture-jacking that all seems to happen. Another really concerning thing for me - but I would love your take on it – is the rise of plug-and-play templates.
It’s just “steal this sales page messaging” and just literally copy-paste your brand name in there. “Here is swipe copy. Here are auto-generated captions.” It’s “don’t be original – just follow this formula.”
What’s the problem with that?
Nadine Nethery 6:23
Again, the bro marketers have started this trend where everyone thinks that something that works for someone else – without actually knowing why it works or potentially doesn’t work – could work for their brand.
It’s easy to look up to someone and think that their success can become yours by simply taking their formula and plugging your bits and pieces when, in fact, the problem with that is that all your effort is going into filling the gaps and putting your bits and pieces into an existing formula, and that takes the whole focus off the audience and actually speaking to their objections, their false beliefs, their desires, the current situation that they’re currently in.
All your focus is exclusively on finding A and B to plug it into this and this gap. Also, once you’ve got it out there, there is literally no opportunity for you to tweak things and work out why things aren’t working simply because you don’t understand the formula that went into the particular sales page, email sequence. You have no idea why people don’t open the email, why they don’t click, why they’re not buying, and why things simply aren’t happening for you.
Mia Fileman 7:37
Yes, it’s like you’ve potentially been given the answers to the test – maybe not your test, somebody else’s test – but none of the questions.
Nadine Nethery 7:47
Exactly.
Mia Fileman 7:50
I’m a bit of a contrarian. Let’s say that, in a perfect world, somebody else’s plug-and-play templates, somebody else’s audience was your audience, they market to the exact same people that you market to, they have the exact same offering, they’re in the same industry, their customers are your customers, why not? In that case, well, why not is because it’s already been done before.
Nadine Nethery 8:16
Yes, exactly.
Mia Fileman 8:18
Why would they choose you over the person who did it in the beginning? Do you want the imposter brand? Do you want the copycat? Or do you want to go to the original source to get the goods? Why would they want you?
Nadine Nethery 8:35
Yes, and you’re missing that opportunity to truly create something that is so uniquely associated with your brand as well.
You want people to associate certain terms, certain expressions, certain ways of saying things with your brand. If you simply copy what someone else has put out there, there’s going to be that disconnect where the reader goes, “Hang on. That is completely different to what this brand sent me two weeks ago.”
It all needs to fit together, and the only way to get it to gel and to really work for you is to start with the audience and build that empathy and genuine interest in your customer.
Mia Fileman 9:16
Sure, yes.
In the intro of this episode, I talked about how for me marketing is really about very good listening, that your customers will tell you everything that you need to know, and not even your customers – your audiences. They hold the secrets to all of your marketing.
Can you talk us through that? What does that actually look like for gathering those insights, gathering that customer fanaticism that we need to have as brand custodians to channel into our marketing?
Nadine Nethery 9:54
Yes.
It all starts with asking the right questions. So many times, I see brands send out surveys with the best intentions, but all I get is tick boxes and drop-downs where I’m giving you not much more than data to work with.
What you really want to piggyback off is the actual language and the sayings and getting to the bottom of how people describe their frame of mind, their problems, the things that are holding them back. You want to be able to reframe their problems in their own words. That saves you not only guesswork and coming up with fluffy language which doesn’t actually resonate.
It does 80 percent of the lifting for you, I’d say, because ultimately copywriting is 20 percent having a thing for words and knowing the right formulas and knowing how to structure it in a way that guides the reader to the point you want them to get to, but 80 percent is understanding the audience and being able to use the words, use the expressions, and use the exact terminology that your audience describes their problem in because that’s the only way your reader is going to nod along and feel truly heard, seen, and understood, and motivated to work with you and choose you because you truly understand them.
I would start with a customer survey to begin with. It’s super cost-effective nowadays. For example, Google Forms is free to use. It is super simple to come up with an on-brand survey that you can then send out to your existing customer list.
You can also survey – if you’re a service-based business, for example – customers that inquired with you but didn’t end up buying with you. That’s another great way to get to know those objections and things that you might have to tweak in your messaging or in your offer as well.
Ask open-ended questions. Literally, I like to call it the story arc. I take them on that journey from when they first realised that they had a problem. What did that look like? What was going on in their lives? Then, how did they go about fixing that problem? What made you the perfect solution? What was going on while they were working with you or using your product? How does their life look like now once they’ve worked with you and they’ve got that product in their lives?
Make sure they’re open-ended. Keep it to a maximum of ten questions, I’d say, because we’re all busy. People are trading their time for not much benefit for them, seemingly.
It also helps to then give a small reward to the survey as well. It doesn’t have to be huge. Even a little chocolate hamper that you give away among anyone who answers. We are all somewhat selfish. Let’s face it. If you get a survey request and there’s something in it for you, you’re much more likely to respond.
Once you’ve got those responses, sit down over a cuppa and take the time to sift through it all and make up a spreadsheet. Come up with a spreadsheet or a way that works for you in how you organise those findings and literally look at any objections that are coming up, any needs and desires – what people are looking for, why they were coming to you in the first place, any false beliefs as well around price point potentially, around not having enough time. There are so many facets of beliefs that can hold people back from actually taking action. Then, the transformation – how their life looks different now.
Sort it into these buckets. That will help you pick up themes and pillars and also sticky terms that keep popping up again and again. That will educate objections you have to overcome. Even in the lead-up to a launch, for example, it helps you create content that gradually guides your audience to be ready to actually receive the offer because you can’t launch something without actually priming your audience.
Very powerful as well once you have those glorious insights, I would look out for people who were very generous with their insights and also are happy to jump on a phone call with you. Incorporate a question then asking them whether they’re happy to jump on a call with you because that allows you to dig deeper.
Book a Zoom call because face-to-face builds relationships and is much more personable than a phone call. Ask them further questions to the points they’ve given you. Again, open-ended questions, more listening than actually asking questions. You want them to share with you.
Go deeper and ask them to elaborate on certain ideas that spark your interest. Make sure you’ve got a variety of insights as well – a variety of opinions – so you can then cover all angles.
Mia Fileman 14:59
Let’s get to it. Marketers are not doing this for a couple of reasons.
One, they don’t like filling out surveys themselves, so they don’t think that their customers are going to do it.
Two, they don’t know what to ask, but you’ve just solved that for them. Rewind and go listen to what Nadine said about how and what to ask.
Three – and this is the main one – they don’t want to read the answers. They’re very worried that they’ve poured their life into a product or a service and someone’s not going to have nice things to say about it and it’s hard to read.
The answer is put on your big girl undies and get it done. Otherwise, you are pushing shit uphill with your marketing if you are not doing this. You are stabbing around in the dark, hoping to hit something.
This is what you need to do. It’s a non-negotiable in marketing to understand what your customers are saying. Rather than be defensive, if they have something perhaps not incredibly positive to say about your brand, you need to try to remove any sort of personal feelings and look at that very objectively. Try not to take it personally.
I think marketers especially are very good at ignoring the overwhelming positive responses we receive when we talk to customers and focusing on the few negative responses and taking that so personally.
Yes, there’s a lot to be learned from the negative responses, but we need to remove ourselves from the equation. This is not personal. This is business. We just need to really look at what the customer is saying and see how we can address it in our marketing and in our delivery.
Nadine Nethery 17:00
Yes, there’s so much opportunity in those seemingly negative comments where there is opportunity to tweak your product to be even more successful and to generate more sales or to develop new products that speak to this particular audience that didn’t quite get the outcomes that they were hoping for in the product they purchased.
Take it as a way to improve your business and continually learn and grow and implement processes that move you forward rather than hold you back.
Mia Fileman 17:29
Yes, and I have an example of a client who received quite a few negative reviews because people had expected a certain thing was included with the product. She was like, “Well, I don’t know where they got that notion that that should be included.”
It’s like, “Hang on a second. Why don’t you go out and run a poll?” “Hey. If you’re buying this product, do you expect that this is with it? Do you expect the batteries to be included with the toy – yes or no?” It was really interesting. The majority of people were like, “Yes, definitely. If I’m buying this product, I expect this.”
It’s like, “Okay. You don’t have to include it.” What you need to do though is manage those expectations. I’m not saying you need to go and include that, but you need to make it very clear that batteries are not included.
Nadine Nethery 18:20
Yes, exactly. Totally.
Mia Fileman 18:24
This thing that you’re talking about – there’s a name for it. That’s voice of customer data. As marketers, we love to use all of this wonderful flowery language and jargon. We will describe something in a way that customers might not describe it.
I have personally come up against this. No one – and I mean no one – really says in the morning, “Oh! I need a marketing campaign!” That’s not the language that they use, right? “I need great marketing to launch my product.” “I need help with getting my name out there.” They don’t say, “I need a marketing campaign.”
This is where the voice of customer language comes in because, if we are using terms and language that they are using in our marketing, it’s more likely to appeal to them because they have a need for that as opposed to a marketing campaign.
Nadine Nethery 19:24
Yes, and it makes it outcome-driven again as well because all that fluffy language – you know, “get your marketing campaign and launch this” – people can’t relate to it whereas, if you give them tangible pain points, outcomes, things that actually are happening for them on a daily basis, it makes it so much more relatable, and people actually feel understood.
They think you get them rather than just trying to sell your product. You are on the same page, and you understand their pain and you are literally there to help them get to where they want to be.
Mia Fileman 20:00
Yes.
What about brands who don’t have customers yet who are launching a new brand or they are launching a new product or service and they can’t survey existing customers?
Nadine Nethery 20:12
You can still tap into audiences that are hanging around online. Luckily, everything is so easy nowadays. You just need to know where to look.
Take a step back and work out where your ideal customers – the person that is perfectly positioned to buy your service or product – would hang out online. That can be Facebook Groups. Let’s say you’re selling baby products, your local mum community on Facebook would be the perfect place to start.
You can put a survey together again – surveys with a little incentive – to ask people. Or you can also just listen and have a look at the common topics that people are talking about – things that are occupying mums that are on their mind all the time – then see how they relate to your solutions. Again, it’s about listening and picking up themes and pillars and words that mums are using to describe their problems as well.
If you are a product-based business, you can look at reviews on Amazon, for example, of similar products and sift through those again for sticky terms and themes that are coming up, things they are criticising, for example, or that were annoying them on your competitor product. It’s all opportunities to tweak your product, your campaign, and your messaging to make sure you give them everything they want.
Mia Fileman 21:38
Yes, so good!
I’ve got a couple of my little secrets – tricks of the trade that I like to do to get insights.
One of the things that I do is I offer marketing for marketers. Campaign Del Mar is where marketers go to upskill. The congregation points that you mentioned where my people hang out are Facebook Groups like Women in Marketing.
What I’ll do is I’ll jump into that Facebook Group for ten minutes a day and I will search for a term like “launch” or “campaign” or “promotion” or “new product” and I will see what comes up. I will screenshot those babies because sometimes it is so good. Unbelievable. They are literally speaking my language.
For instance, one of the things that keeps coming up is that marketers are burnt out from social media. They spend even more time on social media than everybody else and it’s getting to them personally. They are struggling to keep up with this beast, and I provide the perfect solution to that. It has been such a great source of validation but also voice of customer language.
The other thing that I do which is similar to what you have suggested is I will go to competitors, and I’ll have a look at their frequently asked questions because this is often the kind of questions that people want to know the answers for that relate to me.
A good example for a service-based business is “How long is it going to take for me to complete this project with you? Do you have a payment plan?” Then it’s like, “Right! I need a payment plan!” People are wanting payment plans.
Nadine Nethery 23:41
Yes, FAQs are such good opportunities to again overcome objections in a gentle way. FAQs should cover real questions, but then also help you give you that gentle nudge that you might need to help you answer that. “The course takes time, but I can actually do it.”
As you said, it’s a hidden gem for objections and false beliefs and all the things that can make or break you.
Mia Fileman 24:11
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Let’s talk about something that’s very, very scary for all people – which is scary but shouldn’t be – which is picking up the damn phone and talking to your customers like they used to do in the good old days.
Why is this important?
Nadine Nethery 25:09
It’s everything, really.
People only give you so much in surveys. That’s why surveys are the starting point and then you handpick the people where there’s more potential. It’s that eye contact – ideally, Zoom. That’s my preferred way to do interviews.
Eye contact just builds connection and, again, gives people a sense of security, especially if you frame the call at the beginning to take out that stress because – believe it or not – your opposite, the audience member who put their hand up to jump on a call with you, they are going to be just as scared and overwhelmed as you are.
If you can set the expectations at the beginning, don’t call it an interview. Call it a chat and tell them that there are literally no false answers. It’s all about their honest opinion. They shouldn’t be scared to be really, really brutally honest. That takes that pressure off that the person thinks they need to perform, and they need to give you certain answers that you want to hear because that’s what you do not want.
Again, listen more than asking questions. Let them speak. Don’t interrupt – very important! I always ask for permission to record the session. Most people are fine with it. I’ve had hardly any who have said, “I’d prefer not to.”
Then, you can transcribe the call. There is a service called otter.ai that I use where you get a certain amount of free minutes a month. There’s a pay plan, obviously, but to get started, you can upload the video file and then it transcribes the interview for you which again gives you great opportunity for those sticky terms and sentences. It also means you don’t have to frantically scribble and seemingly not listen. It allows you to totally focus on the call and give your opposite that sense of security and willingness to open up.
Mia Fileman 27:03
Yes.
Let’s now talk about how you use this. You’ve got all these incredible insights now. You are getting the information directly from the customer. They are telling you what they want and what they don’t want. How do you then put that into action?
Nadine Nethery 27:20
As I said, start with your little sorting system. You ideally rank things as much by the frequency that that particular problem comes up.
Then, you have a look at how you can use it in your copy. Depending on which content piece you’re working on – let’s say your website – as I said, FAQs is a great place to overcome those objections and actually turn objections into FAQs.
Product descriptions as well are a fabulous spot to actually integrate the tangible outcomes that people are getting. Rather than focusing on the features which obviously need to be mentioned, turn them into benefits.
If something is dishwasher-friendly and mums are time (28:06 unclear), you can say, “So you can spend more time with your bub rather than doing the dishes.” You can link features to tangible outcomes, benefits, and ways that their lives are going to look so much better.
You can also help people – future-pace as it’s called – picture themselves with your product and service and how their life is going to look different. Too many times, people are pushing the Negative Nancy – focusing on how terrible their life is. People know their lives are missing something. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be looking for the solution. You don’t need to tell them that they’re depressed or overweight. They know all that.
Shift your marketing and actually focus on the positives – that there is a solution. “Life can look like this…” Perfect spot to insert you on – you know, the needs and the wants – the outcomes that people are looking for. It just shifts your whole take on marketing to a positive place rather than that guilt-driven action and people actually feeling so terrible after reading your copy that they are just so desperate to buy anything.
It empowers your audience to make educated choices because they feel like you truly understand them.
Mia Fileman 29:26
Yes, so good.
Now, it’s important to mention that, with all of this, please only survey people who represent your ideal customer. It is irrelevant what your husband’s auntie’s cousin’s daughter thinks about your marketing and branding. Not all opinions are created equal.
A lot of the objections that I get from people saying, “Oh, but if I’m only doing five customer interviews, how statistically significant are those customer interviews?” Well, if they represent your target audience personas, if they represent your ideal targets, then they’re very relevant.
As we’ve spoken about, it’s finding those common threads. If you have five interviews and you start to hear the same things and these patterns emerging, that is absolutely a thing that a lot of other people are going to feel. If you are already seeing that in five interviews, then you bet your bottom dollar that it’s happening across the wider audience segment.
Nadine Nethery 30:29
Yes, and I have so many inquiries where I’m talking people through the importance of audience research. Pretty quickly, I get, “Well, if we only have ten customers to work with,” or “I don’t have any clients yet, how relevant is this going to be?”
It’s all about the quality over the quantity. Even if we get – as you said – five responses that give us everything, that can totally educate the copy and the direction for the messaging significantly.
Mia Fileman 31:02
Yes.
A great example of how to actually use these insights in your marketing, Jess Ruhfus – the founder of Collabosaurus – told me this great story about her platform.
She has a marketing technology platform – an app that essentially is a brand-to-brand collaboration tool. That’s a bit of a mouthful to try to explain and it can be quite difficult to put that in words. She ran focus groups, and it was somebody in that focus group that said, “Sorry. This may seem like a dumb question, but are you a matchmaker for brands?” She was like, “Yes! Yes, that’s what I am!”
That is her tagline. That is on her metadata on her website. That is everywhere. That came from a focus group. That changed the game because now people get it. “This is a Tinder for brands.”
Nadine Nethery 32:04
Yes, it’s genius!
Your customers can say it so much better than you ever will. The amount of times I sift through survey responses – I have 50 of them – and I read the one answer then I go, “This is it. Literally, it’s the tagline. It is it!” It is the best feeling when you go, “This person has just done the bulk of my heavy lifting. It has literally made it all fall into place.”
Spend the time. I know it seems annoying, but it is so worth it.
Mia Fileman 32:34
Awesome. All right. Let’s do a quick recap.
Please go and talk to your customers. Please go and listen to them. Hang out where they hang out. Be a low-key stalker. Listen to the words that are coming out of their mouths. Collect those insights into a spreadsheet or a document so that you can go back to them. Use that as the starting point for any of your messaging or any of your marketing.
Don’t be afraid to pick up the damn phone and have a good old chat over a cup of tea with a customer. It is going to save you so much pain down the track hearing directly what their pain points are rather than making assumptions.
“Oh, well, that seems to be somebody else’s pain point, so I’m sure it’s my pain point, too.” Not necessarily! Very few businesses are exactly the same – have the exact same offering and the exact same target audience.
What else, Nadine? What else have I missed?
Nadine Nethery 33:33
Lead with empathy – from a genuine place of wanting to help your audience because they’re smart. They’re going to pick up if you’re there to push an agenda or push your own sales. Lead with empathy and the rest is going to follow.
Mia Fileman 33:49
So amazing! It was such a pleasure chatting with you.
Let us know how brands can work with you or tap into your incredible brain.
Nadine Nethery 33:58
Yes, I’ve got several ways of working with me. I can help you with your audience research. Do the heavy lifting for you before we write copy together. If you already have all the glorious insights, there are ways to work together as well.
I would highly recommend hopping over to my website – candocontent.com. You can also take my quiz to find out your customer charming superpower which is going to give you very specific tips how you can maximise your unique strengths when it comes to copywriting as well.
Otherwise, you can find me on Instagram at candocontent and all the places that I hang out online. I’d love to have a chat to you!
Mia Fileman 34:40
Amazing. I’ll put all of those in the show notes so that people can easily get in touch but Nadine – as I’m sure you have understood from the last 35 minutes – is a legit marketing expert, so it has been such an honour, Nadine. Thank you!
Nadine Nethery 34:58
Thanks so much for having me! It’s been an absolute blast!
Mia Fileman 35:03
Thank you!
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Podcast reviews are like warm hugs. They’re also the best way to support a small business. You can also connect with me, Mia Fileman, on Instagram or LinkedIn. Feel free to send me a message! I’m super friendly.
