Answer Questions with Content

Questions are a staple of our lives. They are what inspire us to explore, learn, achieve, challenge and wonder. Imagine your life for just one day without asking a question — whether out loud or in your head. What the heck would you do all day long? (See, I can't do it.)

Well, neither can your prospects and customers. Each challenge that arises is a question generator. What, where, when, how and why is a thought-process structure we've embraced since childhood.

We're demanding. We want proof, knowledge and evidence before we believe. (Well, most of us do.)

The trick to marketing that creates extremely high degrees of relevance for buyers is to answer their questions.

Problem solved. Just go do that.

If only it were that easy. In order to do that productively, we've got to know our buyers really well. We've also got to be able to erase what we know about our products and solutions to put ourselves into our buyers' heads and come up with the questions they'd have when facing particular situations.

The problem with questions is that once you know the answers, they're no longer questions. Which is precisely why marketers have difficulty in matching their content to buyers' needs.

This is why buyer personas are a great tool to use. They help you embrace the role and situations of specific customer types. Incorporating actual customer intelligence and experiences into them gives you a frame of reference. Including feedback from salespeople and customer service reps can help flesh out the composite. Try to find out what questions they're being asked.

Now, try to step into that persona and choose a situation.

Begin asking questions. Make a list. Check yourself to make sure you're not coloring the process with your product knowledge, that you're staying in character. This is easier if you try to answer the questions without talking about your product at all. Talk about what it enables (or what your buyers need it to do) instead.

What you'll find is that one question will spawn others. In short order, you'll have a long list of questions that can be representative of the answers your prospects need across each step of their buying process. Use that to drive your content development.

Answering questions with content is most effective when you choose only one at at time. Explore it from different angles, apply different contributing factors and go for depth. You'll build engagement as a result of the increase in relevance.

Comments

[Russ Henneberry]

Great advice and I would say that it is easier than ever to "hear" the questions that your prospects and customers are asking... using keyword research tools and social media sites like Twitter.