Power Up: Uncover what makes your audiences' tick.

A lot of start-ups shy away from audience research.

You think your audience will be concerned you don’t have a clue or worse, they’ll ghost you and leave your questions unanswered. But fear, not.

At Scale Up, we live for those “aha” moments when we uncover what makes audiences tick. And guess what? Talking to your audience holds the key to insights you won’t find anywhere else.

There’s no substitute for hearing straight from the horse’s mouth - that’s why we’re asking you to take our survey and give us the inside scoop on what you think about research. Fill it out here and you might win something fun! 👀

Now, let’s dive into why research is key to unlocking the secrets of success.

😇 You’re letting people know you respect what they think and need - and they can tell you how to stand out and give them what they can’t get elsewhere

You need to know who else your audience considers as an alternative to your product so you can differentiate and deliver what they can’t get elsewhere. 

It’s also important to hear from those who’re already using your product. How did they solve the problem before they found you? What do they like? Why did they switch? 

This is a surefire way to spot opportunities to stand out.

💡 Putting it into action!

In a recent project with a mental health tech start-up, we surveyed potential users to ask how they track their feelings between therapy sessions. Voice note apps emerged as a popular alternative due to their ease of use. However, a key drawback was the time it took to detect changes. 

This made it clear what the audience needed - an easy way to log their experiences between sessions. But also what could make the new solution stand out - a quicker and easier way to visualise progress.

✨ Building a relationship and understanding how to show up and communicate

To effectively reach potential customers, it’s crucial to know where they seek help for the problem you solve and the decision process they go through. Talking to your audience is the quickest way to understand their behaviours, questions and concerns.

Ultimately, speaking to your customers means you can easily find the right words so when they come across your product they’re thinking “this is EXACTLY what I’m looking for” - making the switch to your product a no brainer.

💡 Putting it into action!

In a project with an employee benefits platform, we interviewed HR managers and employees to harness the language they used to describe benefits they were looking for. 

This resulted in their marketing headline changing from:

Empower your team with flexible benefits.

To

Give your team the freedom to choose what matters.

We tested these headlines using A/B tests which showed using the audience’s own words had a 76% probability to beat the original headline, and doubled the conversion rate.

This helps you understand how you should speak to your audience in a way that resonates.

🤓 Get them more invested in what you are delivering - by focusing on what really matters to them

It’s all well and good creating a great product with lots of shiny features, but what if your audience needs are sitting elsewhere?

You need to know what creates value for your audience so you can focus on delivering more of this. 

As a founder, you create your business on a set of theories. Validating or invalidating these can help push things in the right direction. 

💡 Putting it into action!

In a recent project with a pension app for the self-employed, talking to the audience completely altered the way the businesses understood their retirement mindset.

Originally assuming self-employed contractors would be interested in retiring early, through interviews we discovered what they want most is to enhance their freedom to choose whether they work or not.

Follow-up surveys confirmed this, in fact, only 20% agreed they wanted to retire as early, compared to 60% who wanted more freedom and control over whether they worked or not and 66% who agreed they’d prefer to ramp down the work they do as they get older, rather than stop altogether.

The key takeaway, you need clarity on who your ideal customers really are and why they would buy from you. This will make sure you are laser-focused on creating value for the people who are actually worth it.

✏️ We’re putting our money where our mouth is and conducting some audience research of our own. If you’d like to contribute to this research surrounding research (confusing, I know!), tap here to complete a quick survey.

(Plus, you could win a free mentoring session for your startup with one of Scale Up’s experts if you give us a helping hand 😉)