The Deep Dive: Criminally Profitable Market Research
Written By Tony Wang 

The Single Most Important Marketing Lesson That Made Over $25 Million

Using the principles you’re about to learn, I generated over $25 million in commissions, and enabled my clients to make fortunes.

That’s why I believe this is the single most important marketing lesson that can help you attract the right clients and grow your coaching business faster. 

You’ve probably heard hundreds of times that you should “know your niche” and have an ideal “customer avatar” . 

However, there’s a difference between simply knowing the surface level pains and desires of your market (which is what most new business owners do) versus deeply understanding your prospects and what makes them tick. 

I got this idea from copywriter Ben Settle and you can think about it like this…

Have you ever watched one of those crime drama shows like “Criminal Minds”?

Where the law enforcement team tries to get inside the heads of the bad guys they’re tracking? 

They try to crawl into the criminal’s mind, understand their motivations, predict their next move so they can be properly positioned to capture them. 🕵️‍♂️

Of course, you’re not selling to criminals (I hope not), but this is exactly the depth of understanding you should have regarding your market.

Create Marketing Messages That Are Almost Impossible To Ignore

Once you can get inside the heads of your market and understand their true motivations, you’ll be able to craft marketing messages and position yourself in ways that are almost impossible to ignore. 

When you do this, your ideal clients will choose YOU and ignore other solutions (including your competitors) because you just “get” them more than anyone else.

Believe it or not, the secret of all this comes down to doing in-depth research on your market. 

And look, I get it. 

Market research is not sexy.

Especially when there’s all the flashy marketing tactics, funnel hacks and copywriting tips out there. But it is literally the foundation to your marketing and sales success as a business owner. 

If you fail to understand or apply this, you’ll continue going around in circles hiring copywriters and marketing “experts”, spending your life savings on another business coach, or feel too indecisive launching your offers without getting outside feedback. 

If you’re a newer coach, then investing the time to do deep market research is how you gain an instant competitive advantage without having to spend thousands of dollars building your brand. 💸

If your coaching business is already off the ground, then doing this research allows you to understand your customers better and more deeply than your competitors to make you an even more obvious choice.

Are Your Sales Struggling Because You’re Too “Close To The Case?”

To continue with the crime drama analogy… 

You know how there’s always that scene in those crime movies where the detective is driven to the brink of insanity as they struggle to figure out who the killer is? 

And someone points out to them they’re way too “close to the case”.

That can also happen to you when you’re trying to market and sell your own products and services. 

When you’re so passionate about your products or services, you can get so caught up with your own offers that you lose touch with the core pains, struggles, worries, frustrations and desires of your market.

A Strange “Backwards” Way To Sell Products and Services

Once you gain this deep understanding of your market, you’ll be able to sell them virtually anything.

I know this because I used to work with dozens of advertisers (clients) in the same exact niches. 

My business model was buying targeted traffic, sending people to a presale page, and then redirecting them to an advertiser’s offers based on the conversion rate, available cap, and so on. 

Because the products I sold were all so similar, it was far less important to know about the products themselves than it was to understand the market. 

In fact, I’d write most of the marketing pages for the campaigns without ever even seeing the product! 

I know that sounds completely backwards, but it’s how a lot of the old school copywriters did things too. 

They would research the hell out of their market, write an ad promising all the benefits, then create a product from there. 

They would try to fulfill as many of the claims as possible. Any claims they couldn’t fulfill, they would just remove from the ads.  

And these ads would sell like crazy!

Keep in mind this is not about overpromising, or selling terrible products or programs, or anything that. It’s simply knowing what your market truly wants and finding a way to deliver that.

What You Must Know Before Doing Any Marketing or Selling 

Now let’s get into the nitty gritty market research to attract your ideal customers and clients. When you get this down, your marketing will all of a sudden “work” because your messaging will be hard to ignore. 

These days, when I take on a new copywriting or consulting project, I have a list of 40+ research questions I try to find answers for, before even typing a single word.

Yes, it can sometimes be a time-consuming process, but it pays off in the long run. 🎉

And if you’re someone who lives, breathes, and loves what you teach then you should have no issues going to this level of depth with your research. 

You can find these answers by browsing online forums, reading 2-star Amazon book reviews, and most importantly, talking to your customers. You can also do things like questionnaires but just keep in mind those responses may not be as genuine or specific. 

ChatGPT can work too if you understand prompting, but the answers may be a bit vague. Talking to real people will always be your best bet. 

Here’s some of the research questions you can use to help push your marketing and positioning to new levels (credit goes to advertising legend Gary Bencivenga for some of these)… 

Market – You must know your market’s most urgent problems, frustrations, desires, worries, insecurities, pet peeves, beliefs and assumptions.

Some questions to help you discover them:

• Who consists of the 80/20 of the market? The 20% who generate 80% of the sales? 

• What are your prospect’s most urgent pains, insecurities, worries, fears, and frustration?

• What are their values?

Product or Service – This part should be easier since you know it very well. If you want to go deeper, you should know exactly how you can solve your prospect’s most urgent problems and satisfy their desires in a way others cannot.

Some questions to think about: 

• How did your product or service come to be? What need was it designed to fill?

• Is there an interesting story behind its creation or launch? (People love good stories)

• What makes it unique and how does it fill your prospect’s needs better than the competition?

Proof – Everyone is bombarded with hundreds of sales and marketing messages a day. Most prospects these days are extremely skeptical, so to tip the scales in your favor, use as much proof or demonstration elements as you can. 

Gather up proof elements like…

• Your expertise and track record 

• Testimonials

• Guarantees

I believe proof is the single most important element in selling your product or service. Why? Because it’s the hardest to fake, and people know that. 

So it’s definitely worth your time gathering and creating as much proof as possible to prove what you’re selling works.

An example – I’m working with a client right now who developed a potent spiritual process to help people gain fast relief from their mental and emotional problems. 

Because it’s somewhat of an abstract claim, we are planning to gather real before/after brain imaging data of people using the processes. This means investing in a wireless EEG device or renting out an fMRI machine for a few hours. 

The total cost of doing this will be around $1,000 – $1,500 but the resulting proof elements will create multiples of that in new sales. 

Don’t Skimp On This Research

Now I know you might feel overwhelmed after reading all this. 

And that’s totally okay. 

You certainly don’t need to know ALL of these things to successfully and profitably grow your online business.

But the more you know about your market, and can demonstrate why your product or service is their best solution, the easier it will be to close sales. 

You also don’t need to implement all of this at once. 

Keep these questions as a checklist somewhere handy and add more to it as you progress in your journey. 

Then, refer back to this list as you’re creating your content, emails, sales pages, and videos to ensure they’ll be relevant and “top of mind” for your audience. 

But whatever you do, don’t skip this step.

While you can certainly have a profitable business without a deep research of your market, the most successful business owners in your industry know who exactly they’re selling to and what makes them tick. 

It just takes a little bit of extra effort to do these things most aren’t willing to do, and you’ll end up making far more sales and building a thriving business. 

If you found this article helpful, then I invite you to apply to my private newsletter where I show you how to gather this market research, along with other marketing tips.

It’s 100% for you if you’re a business owner in the spirituality space.