What if I told you that “how did you hear about us?” is a dangerous question that leads companies to the wrong strategy? And what if I gave you a much better approach?

First off, what’s wrong with asking “How did you hear about us?”

Most customers will give you one of three answers — Google, word of mouth, or content (YouTube, blog, social, etc.)  But what can you really do with this information?

Buy more search terms? Start a referral programme? Create more content? You’re already doing those things and so are your better-funded competitors. Plus, AdWords and referral bonuses are expensive. (And cash is drying up right now.)

What should you ask instead?

When you ask “how did you hear about us” you’re relying on the customer’s dubious memory. They’re using recency bias and telling you the last step in a very long journey. Big companies understand this, so they spend thousands on software to unpack “attribution” in its various forms — stepwise, first click, last click, etc. But I’ve always had doubts about that approach.

In reality, you mainly just need to know where the journey started. That way, you can intercept prospects before they even consider your competitors.

So, instead of that awful survey, call your recent signups and ask them this:

1. What does our product help you do?* (e.g., learn Spanish, meditate, attribute marketing spend, etc.)
2. Do you remember when you first realised you needed to _________ (insert answer to #1)? 
3. What was happening at the time that made you realise it?
4. Where’s the first place you looked? Who did you ask? What did you ask for?
5. What’s the first thing you tried?

*Ask question #1 even if you already know the answer. It’s a good way to get “now you can” language for your headlines and it primes the respondent to think about their goals rather than your product.

Repeat the conversation 5-10 times until you start to see a pattern. That should give you enough information to find your “locksmith moment” and formulate a more cost-effective marketing strategy.

Remember, it’s much cheaper (and less competitive) to acquire prospects at the beginning of their journey. Still, they might not be ready to buy this early, so you’ll want to develop a kickass lead nurture stream. (If you’d like help with lead nurture and inbound lead-gen,  join our Inbound Lead Gen workshop on June 6th & 8th.)

(texto extraído da newsletter Startup Core Strenghts)