Course 0.1: Customer Interviews | Welcome and Introduction
0.1. Welcome and Introduction
Full Presentation /Deck:
Welcome to the course: How To Conduct Customer Interviews.
In the last few years, I’ve spoken with over a hundred founders and marketing executives.
When I ask them about their marketing strategy, most of the time they just hand me an Excel file with a list of channels such as SEO, SEM, social media, content marketing, paid acquisition campaigns, and so on.
This is all well and good, but it’s missing one very important thing:
- Who are we marketing to in the first place?
- Who is the customer?
- What are their pains, hopes, fears, and dreams?
The problem here is that organizing teams around channels creates a culture where no one looks at customer experiences and the customer lifecycle as a whole.
Instead, each team focuses on its own initiatives, which leads to fighting over budgets, inconsistent messaging, and a disjointed marketing strategy.
Imagine instead that your entire company — your sales team, product team, marketing team, customer support, etc. were aligned on EXACTLY who the customer is and how to communicate with them.
That all starts with TALKING TO YOUR CUSTOMERS.
Take this quote from Steve Blank, the father of Lean Startup methodology, who says that the “key to startup success is getting out of the building and getting in front of the customers. Great products and great companies aren’t built in a vacuum. They’re developed over time as teams invest in listening to their prospects and customers to better understand their needs.” (link).
Intuitively we all know this, but a lot of founders avoid this process because it takes too long, they don't know who to talk to, or they did some casual interviews and thought that was good enough.
Even worse, they seek validation for products they have ALREADY built.
That’s why, throughout this course, I’ll be walking you through the four parts of designing and implementing customer and prospect interviews, including how to make customer interviews a regular part of your marketing and go-to-market strategy.
But, first, let me introduce myself — I’m Myk Pono and I’ve helped dozens of companies like Google, Smartcat, CallFire, Barracuda, and others use the power of customer research to create an Ideal Customer Profile, brand story, customer acquisition strategy, content strategy and more.
My series, the Marketing Playbook, has been read more than half a million times.
I’ve conducted over 300 customer interviews and now I’m excited to take those learnings and help YOU and your organization design a powerful customer research strategy to know exactly who your customers are, what they want, and how you can deliver value to them.
Here are a few key objectives for this course:
The first objective is to understand the key principles of an effective customer interview. The second is to learn how to design and implement effective customer interviews. And the third is to show you how to generate data you can use to improve your product, strategic messaging, and go-to-market strategy.
We’ll achieve this through principles, processes, examples, and practices with a couple of pop quizzes and challenges along the way.
By the end of this course, you’ll have a step-by-step process for planning, conducting, and interpreting your customer interviews into powerful insights that will fuel your marketing strategy, product development, and more.
Welcome, and let’s get started!