4 Market Research Tactics I Stole From a Free Webinar for an Online Course I Have No Intention to Buy
Steal from untrusted gurus instead of feeling icky towards them
I’ve been struggling to make money with my artwork.
Either I suck at marketing them or they just simply suck. It’s not up to me to decide what the answer is. The market decides.
But the art industry is very very crowded.
Then, Facebook’s algorithm decided to show me an ad for another way of making money with my art.
It is a webinar on how to create a business of selling an online course to teach others how to create art. This sounds like a good idea to make money with my MSPaint skills. If I can’t make money creating art, then perhaps I can teach it?
The problem is, I haven’t gained any interest (creating digital art with MSPaint) to move forward with the idea.
Before signing up, I knew right there and then that the webinar wasn’t the right fit.
Plus, I don’t know who the guru is. No trust is built. It’s possible that I’m about to get scammed into buying something that won’t help. However, despite all that, I’m still curious. I’m sure there’s something to learn from it.
Instead of being too critical about the webinar, I decided to be “open”.
Leverage the guru’s effort to validate a product or service
The guru wouldn’t be teaching a free webinar for an online course/coaching service without any research. Otherwise, the whole pro bono effort to “educate others about their potential to make money” would be a waste of time. Free webinars exist to give the guru the opportunity to gain enough trust and desire, so they can get you to buy their product.
But the webinar I attended didn’t have a lot of valuable information to give away.
Most of the stuff that was discussed is something that hasn’t been said already. Instead of gaining my trust, I became more skeptical about it. Despite my skepticism, what I realized is that there are a lot of artists out there (myself included) who are desperate to make money from their artwork.
It is an under-serviced market that I can also tap into.
Pay attention to the chatbox when the guru prompts you to “Enter your comments below”
The chatbox is a convenient way of capturing your potential audience’s psychograph (assuming you wanna tap into the market of “struggling artists”).
Whenever the guru asks questions, you learn more about your potential customer’s desire, pain, where they live, their goals, etc. A chatbox is a smart customer-research tool because whatever information is captured there can be used to further improve the way you position your product or service. Plus, the whole exchange comes in the form of conversation, so it doesn’t feel like the guru is really doing customer research.
The takeaway?
Delivering a free webinar to conduct customer research is much more time-efficient than crawling through social media for comments and reviews.
Whatever tools or apps the guru uses can be added to your own marketing funnel
The entire process starts with an ad.
From there, there is a sign-up form to collect your e-mail and info. Then you are prompted to attend the webinar. After that, the guru will sell you its product or service. That’s the basic form of a “marketing funnel” — the process of acquiring new customers.
Now, by participating in the funnel, I can take note of the tools the guru used to get me to sign up and attend the webinar. Whatever tool that was used can be added to my own arsenal of tools/apps I can use on my own. But that’s not the main takeaway. Tools are just tools. They’re not useful if you don’t know how to use them. So how do you use them?
Well, you can be creative and build your own or save time by copying the guru’s marketing process.
Again, the guru wouldn’t be using the marketing process (the funnel you are in) unless it’s been validated to be effective.
Learn how to handle objections during the Q & A session
The Q-and-A session is a wealth of information.
The only downside to it is if no one is asking a question. That could mean, a lot of the attendees were not interested, or they didn’t understand exactly what was being offered. Either way, it’s not a good sign.
But if the attendees are asking a lot of “can you please clarify this” kind of questions, you know you’re on to something.
Unlike the chatbox, which, contains a lot of noise, the Q-and-A provides higher quality information because it pushes others to ask in real-time. Most people are hesitant to ask a dumb question in front of an audience, so you know the question is coming from an unpretentious place.
I’ve attended enough free webinars (regardless if it’s scammy or legit) to get a good grasp of the whole marketing process. Because to this day, I still struggle to market and promote my artwork. But my hope is that you learn to steal like an artist.
