How to Ask Better Questions?

Melissa Harstine is our guest for the 309th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. Melissa is a Customer Research Strategist who helps her clients pull out the best insights for her clients, so they can increase their reach and results. In this episode, Melissa gives us a breakdown of how we can all increase our customer research skills and why they matter in the first place. Check it out below: Melissa’s beginnings as a journalist at a small nonprofit for the elderly and how she was able to connect with her target audience. Writing for a demographic much different than your own – how’s it happen? Why she decided to hone in on a niche and how it worked out for her. How to connect with potential clients in your local business networking groups. Her advice on asking better questions during the research phase. Why you need to lead with empathy and how to respond to people’s demeanor and tone. The specific questions she asks clients to pull the best details and information for a project. How she packages research and presents it to prospective clients. The key to communicating value and knowing your target market. Working with well-known leaders in the industry through building relationships. Finding dream clients once you actually know what you’re looking for. How to turn research into strategy. Her process for pulling out the best pieces of customer research. Why it’s important to stop overbooking yourself and what to avoid. Questions you *probably* shouldn’t ask. How she presents the research report to her clients and helps them apply and implement in real time. Should you position yourself as a “thought partner?” Resources you can use to become a better researcher. How The Copywriter Accelerator helped her grow her business. How to add more value for your clients. Tune into the episode by hitting play or reading the transcript below.   The people and stuff we mentioned on the show: The Copywriter Think Tank Kira’s website Rob’s website Melissa's website The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Underground Free month of Brain.FM Episode 12 Episode 28 Episode 154 The TCC Shop  Full Transcript: Kira Hug:  Customer research is one of those things all copywriters need to do in order to truly connect with the audiences we write for, but not all of us like doing it, and some clients hate paying for it. Doing it well can be a bit of a challenge. Today's guest on the podcast is messaging strategist and copywriter, Melissa Harstine. She talked about how she went from a copywriter without a niche to specializing in customer research for a variety of clients, including other copywriters. As we talked, she shared her favorite interview questions, ideas for selling research to clients, and how she turns her research data into a strategy her clients can execute on. It's a great interview you won't want to miss. Rob Marsh:  But first, this episode is sponsored by the Copywriter Underground. That's the membership for ambitious and growing copywriters. As a member, you have access to copywriting and business training, group coaching calls, copy critiques, our bimonthly newsletter, and a lot more, all designed to help you grow your business. And if you join now, as in the week that we're releasing this podcast, you not only get your first month for just $17, which is a screaming deal, but you'll also get a hard copy of our 24-page Copywriter's Definitive Guide to Pricing, which includes data about what copywriters of all experience levels are charging for 22 different project types, as well as things like the six figure niches and so much more. So go to Thecopywriterunderground.com to join now. Kira Hug:  And if you want to get your first month for just $17, like Rob said, use the promo code, TRY IT, that's all caps, TRY IT, and that will get you in for $17 for your first month. All right, let's jump into the interview with Melissa. Melissa Harstine:  Yeah, so I started my career actually as a journalist, and I was working at this little nonprofit newspaper for the elderly in Kansas. So it's like a regional newspaper, super-niche, super specific audience, and there was a day that really stood out to me in that kind of season of my life. We got a letter from one of our readers, and she said, "I subscribe to more than 35 different newspapers and magazines, including AARP, Time, Newsweek, and your paper is the best and has the most helpful information for people like me." Right? So we're this little nonprofit newspaper in Kansas, and if you objectively held us up against Time or AARP, not going to win any awards, but what we had going for us is we knew our audience super well. We were out in the community knocking on doors, showing up at the senior center, having these conversations, and we were able to create this really valuable newspaper, this great writing, this great content because we knew our audience. And so that was really the foundation for me in developing not only my interview skills but also I think just the ability to connect with people whose lives are so much different than my own, right? I'm 22 straight out of college, knocking on the doors of people who are my grandparents' age, and they're just like, "Kid, you're so young. How do you write for us old people?" But it's really fun now to kind of look back at my journey and see how that was the foundation for so many other things to come. So fast forward a little bit, I ended up in a different type of nonprofit communications, ended up in burnout, like I think a lot of people do in that field, decided I wanted to work for myself, had that flexibility, that freedom, and started this local marketing studio. And so at that point, I was just kind of a generalist copywriter saying, "Yes," to everything. Everything from, sure, Grandma Linda, I can set up your Facebook profile for you for five bucks, or whatever it is, to writing a whole website for $400, right? Kind of I think that's a common thing that people go through as they're growing their business and just learning what skillsets do I have. What needs are there in the market? How can I make this work? Over time, I realized that I really wanted what now I would call a high-ticket productized service. I wouldn't have called it that at the time, but basically, I wanted to be able to work more closely with maybe two to three clients a month at a higher price point. So instead of working with 14 to 17 clients at a time, feeling like I was pulled in all these different areas, doing all these different types of copy, and design, and marketing strategy, and whatever, really have this narrow-focused niche that allowed me to just make my business a lot easier to market, to sell, to deliver consistently. And so kind of through that transition from generalist marketer to more of a specific copywriter, at that point, I started doing website copy, case studies, some content, right? And I think that was when I first met you guys in the Copywriter Accelerator, was when I was going through that transition from a local business to an online business in 2020, like many people were, trying to figure out now that my potential target market is a lot broader, how do I market myself effectively? And I knew that by being more focused, having this more specific target market, this more specific service, this niche, it was going to be a lot easier to sell one market effectively. And so cut again through this kind of continual years of experimentation, observing what's in the market, going from general marketing to different types of copy, ended up in customer research, and it was really interesting how that happened. I had been writing case studies for a while for Amisha Shrimanker. She's one of my biz besties. I met her in the Copywriter Accelerator, and she was like, "Hey, Mel, you're so good at these interviews. You ask questions I wouldn't even think about asking. What would you think about doing the research for my upcoming launch copywriting project? My business is growing, I need support. I'm wondering if you'd do this with me." And it never occurred to me until that moment that customer research was a service that I could offer to somebody else. I was just like, "Wow, this is amazing," because, again, I look back at my journey and these common threads, and it was doing interviews when I worked in the newspaper, doing interviews writing website copy, that was always kind of my approach to writing, to case studies, all of these different things, and at the right moment, the pieces came together, and I found this really unique micro niche that was not only a perfect fit for my talent stack, my skillset, my vision for my business, but also honestly an untapped space in the market. I know of some exclusive researchers who are working in the e-commerce space, and tech, and SaaS, and corporate verticals, but I really don't know anyone else who does just research for service providers, or course traders, program leaders, and such. I mean, I know some copywriters are starting to offer customer research or market research as an additional package, and I'm sure we'll get into that later as well, but really this was a way for me to show up, add value in a way that fit my skills, and just really was a way to meet a need in the market. Rob Marsh:  Okay. That's amazing. I mean, just following a career from one point to the next point, to the next point, and I want to step back before we get into all of the client research stuff, but as you launched your business, started this generalist agency, micro-agency of your own, I'm really curious, how did you start finding those first clients, especially coming out of a different kind of job or a different situation where you're totally burned out? How do you get excited, and get out there,