17 Nov The 3 Most Important Business Questions to Ask Yourself as the Owner
Marketing’s job is to craft a message – a story that speaks to the emotions of your audience and connects them to your business. For your story to be effective, it needs to focus on serving your clients and customers. Namely by addressing their specific fears, worries, and pain points. Simply put, solutions sell! Creating your business story sounds easy enough and it is if you ask yourself the 3 most important business questions. Keep reading, and grab a piece of paper and pen to jot down your answers or thoughts!
1. Who Will You Serve?
Successful businesses know who they serve and who they don’t. You have to choose a target market to fit your business, your offering, or your service. This is an essential step that sets successful businesses apart from the rest! Once determined, this target audience will be the central character of your story, and offerings. Now you can craft a narrative that speaks directly to them. One where they respond with “that sounds like me”, rather than “that sounds interesting”. Keep in mind larger businesses with more offerings and services can serve multiple audiences – you just need to craft more stories to speak to each one. Or fine-tune your story, so that they have no interest in looking beyond your business.
Bonus Tip: An easy way to define your ideal client or customer is to look at your current network or client list and see whom you most prefer working with. Make a list of the characteristics & demographics of these people – now you have a basic client avatar to answer question number two.
2. What Problem do you Solve?
It’s worth repeating that businesses serve by solving problems. Many businesses wrongly think that customers are buying their products and services when customers are actually buying a solution to a problem. We meditate to relieve stress (meditation teacher solves the problem of stress). Hire a marketing coach because we want to grow our business (coaches shortcut the path to success). Book a professional wedding photographer because we want good wedding pictures to look back on (photographers solve the problems of capturing memories). Think about your offerings through the lens of the problem it solves. Then craft your story to speak to this specific problem and how it affects your specific audience. Recently, the problems facing your audience (and the world) changed – so your story and service may need to shift as well. Change is important to remain relevant in an ever-changing market, and to answer question number three.
3. Why Should They Care?
Part of your business story involves defining and proposing a solution to your client’s problem. Successful businesses take this a step further, filling in the story so it matters to your customer or client. The simple act of having a solution isn’t enough. Plenty of other business offers similar solutions. How do your speak to your client’s fears, worries, and pain points? When it does, it will matter to them and they will buy from you. For this question, the more specific your answer, the better! This is how you can find a niche, and create a service or product that they may have yet to find. And that other businesses have yet to offer. That’s a win-win in our book!
These 3 most important business questions are your formula for selling and growing your business, over and over. Define a problem, target an audience, propose a solution that resonates with them, and then give people a clear next step to buy. If your service-based business needs help finding the right path forward, we are here with strategic coaching, sales & marketing plans, and implementation. Get in touch with us today and let’s get started!