8 Marketing Questions for Every Business

MONDAY MARKETING MINUTE

The mind is a great thing. Here are 8 questions for your inspiration sessions to ask so you’ll market your business better in 2014. Get yourself comfortable in a quiet spot with a cup of coffee, a pen and paper. Do this alone and later with your key people if you’d like. But for now, it’s just you, and your mind connected to infinite intelligence; ready to write what inspiration brings your way.

Get a sheet of paper and write down these 8 questions, leaving space for your answers.

(You can get my own Brainstorming “How Can I Market Better” sheet by requesting it at: www.terscott.com/contact). Sometimes marketing can be this simple; “you don’t get because you don’t ask”. Here are 8 questions to ask:

1. How can I attract customers, clients, patients?
2. How can I maintain existing clients and recapture those that I’ve lost who have gone elsewhere?
3. How can I generate leads?
4. How can I cultivate referrals?
5. How can I continue to develop and maintain my company image?
6. How can I promote name recognition for what I do with my company?
7. How can I grow and increase my data base?
8. How can I increase my profits?

Plan to spend at least 30 minutes on each of these questions. Consider scheduling a 30 minute session per day to do each of these questions while reviewing all of them and adding to the each as you do so. Carry 3 x 5 cards and jot down ideas as they come to you outside your formal inspiration session and enter them when you are in your sessions.

When you are letting ideas come to you you’ll find them coming to you faster than you can write them down so just abbreviate your words, write fast, don’t question things, don’t have a conversation with yourself saying things like “this won’t work”; just listen and write. Edit later! When ideas start to slow, change the question slightly, then listen again and write again. Only after you’ve done this on your own, go to the Internet and use the question as a search phrase and find get ideas and sources. Enter the words and ideas that your session brought you as your key word search. Write down what you’ve found.

After you’ve completed your own private inspiration sessions for each of these questions, then open this up as a brainstorm session with key employees, staff and even key customers. You could even create an “Inspiration Board” for your business. These are key people in your industry and community that you bring together on a monthly or weekly basis to think of creative ways to market your business. Learn more about how to do your Inspiration Sessions and create and manage an Inspiration Board at my other blog: Attainment Rules.

If you prefer, you can type into a word document during your inspiration session but I have found that ideas come faster than I can type (and I can type pretty fast). Also there is something about writing your thoughts that connects you to your ideas and ingrains them into your subconscious.

Schedule your 30 minute Inspiration Sessions as soon as possible and move your business ahead this year by exploring the possibilities in these 8 marketing areas.