Susan Payton: 3 Basic Questions That Improve Small Business Marketing

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Marketing is often the catalyst to move from surviving to thriving, but with so much noise on the newest platforms and best practices, it’s easy to forget the basics that create the foundation of valuable marketing and strategy.

Let’s look at three questions that, when answered, will improve your marketing messaging, SEO strategy, and bottom line.

1. What Is The ONE Thing We Do Better Than Anyone Else?

Whether you’re asking this as a person or as a business, it’s important to know what you’re better at than anyone else. Not only can you focus resources on this one thing so you can go from good to great, you can also ensure the answer is included in all marketing and sales pitches. The answer may be so simple it’s depressing, but simplicity is the key to success because it’s better to be known for doing one thing well than a lot of things kinda OK.

2. What Are Our Top 3 Key Differentiators?

A natural extension to #1 is to identify the things that differentiate your business from the competition. Or what you want to differentiate your business. While the first key differentiator will likely be the ONE thing you’re better at than anyone else, dig deeper and outside your company walls. Ask customers, key stakeholders, and employees what five or so things keep them coming to you over your competition, and what they say about your brand when they refer you business.

If you don’t get three answers that are the same, your marketing and sales can be tightened up. If you don’t get the “right” answers, your customers are coming to you for reasons you don’t think are valuable and/or your customers don’t even know the best reasons to come to you. If you don’t get any answer or just generic answers — and this does happen — it’s time to start screaming these three differentiators from the mountain tops, in every marketing piece, on your “About Us” page, in every sales deck, and every employee training document until they permeate everything you do.

3. Who is Our Audience?

If marketing is communicating an idea in order to achieve some measurable business goal, than knowing who you’re talking to is the foundation of any successful marketing activity. Segmenting your audience and creating personas of the top three most important segments will help you understand who your audience is, what they care about and why they come to you to fill their needs. This information feeds directly into every marketing messaging and strategy.

Asking these three basic questions concisely and having them readily available to your and your entire team will make sure you’re all on message, saying the right thing on the right channels and the right time. Now that’s ROI!