Stop Asking Your Audience What They Want

I once watched a founder spend three months building a product nobody asked for.

Not because he didn’t do his research. He did. He sent a survey to his entire list. He asked the question most marketers ask: What do you want me to build next?

He got 23 responses. Most of them were vague. A few were contradictory. One person asked for something that would have taken a year to build. He picked the idea that sounded most interesting to him, built it, launched it, and made four sales.

The survey didn’t fail because his audience didn’t care. It failed because he asked the wrong question.

The problem with open-ended surveys

When you ask people what they want, you’re asking them to do creative work for you. Most people won’t bother. The ones who do will give you answers that are either too abstract to act on or too specific to be useful.

You’ll get responses like “something about mindset” or “a course on scaling”. These are usually ideas so broad that they could describe a hundred different products. Or you’ll get one person’s very specific problem that nobody else has.

There’s a deeper issue too. People are notoriously bad at predicting what they want. They’ll tell you they want one thing and buy another. They’ll say they want a comprehensive course and then only watch the first three videos. Asking people what they want gives you data about what they think they want, not what they’ll actually pay for.

Open-ended survey responses are also coloured by what sounds impressive. People don’t want to appear unsophisticated. So they reach for big, ambitious answers, the kind that make them sound like serious professionals. They dont give you honest answers about the actual problems keeping them up at night.

The fix is simpler than you think

Don’t ask an open question. Present two or three options and let people choose.

This sounds obvious. It’s also almost universally ignored.

Here’s why it works. You’re not asking your audience to do creative work. You’re asking them to make a decision. Decisions are easy. Creation is hard. When you give people options, their cognitive load drops and their honesty goes up. They’re not performing. They’re just picking.

More importantly, you’re only presenting options you’d actually build. This matters more than people realise. A lot of product research is really just a way to avoid making a decision. By limiting the choices to things you’re genuinely willing to create, you force yourself to have an opinion first. And then use the survey to validate and prioritise.

The result is that you get a clear signal on what to build, a warm audience who already has a stake in the outcome, and data you can actually act on.

The hidden benefit nobody talks about

Here’s what most people miss about this kind of survey: it’s not just research. It’s the beginning of your launch.

When someone tells you which of two products they want, they’ve made a micro-commitment. They’ve said, in effect, I’m interested in this. That’s not nothing. That’s a foot in the door. By the time you launch, these people have already told you they want what you’re selling. You’re not introducing them to an idea, you’re following up on a conversation they started.

This is the difference between launching to a cold list and launching to a primed one. The survey email that asks “which of these would you buy?” does double duty. It gathers information and it generates intent.

A list that’s been asked for their opinion is a warmer list than one that hasn’t. That’s just human psychology. We like things we’ve had a say in.

How to do this in practice

Keep it simple. Two or three options is enough. More than three and you’re back to creating cognitive load.

Write the options the way you’d write a headline. They should be specific enough to be meaningful, short enough to scan in two seconds. “A course on email copywriting” is too vague. “How to write emails that convert cold subscribers into buyers in 30 days” tells them exactly what they’re voting for.

Send it to your full list, not just your engaged segment. You want volume. Even a 1% response rate on a list of 2,000 gives you 20 data points — enough to make a confident call.

Then do something most people skip: reply to every response. Not with a pitch. Just with a question. Ask them why they chose what they chose. Ask them what their biggest challenge is in that area. This qualitative layer is where the real gold lives. This is the exact language your future sales page needs to use, the objections your emails need to address, the transformation your product needs to promise.

What you’re really building

A well-designed survey isn’t just a research tool. It’s the first touchpoint in a relationship between you and a future buyer.

When someone tells you what they want, they’ve opted into a conversation. When you follow up, you’ve deepened it. By the time the product launches, the best customers in your audience won’t feel like they’re being sold to. They’ll feel like they helped build something they already believe in.

That’s not a small thing. That’s the difference between a launch that grinds and one that flows.

Ask better questions. Build what people already told you they want. Everything else gets easier from there.

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