The Most Important Question to Ask in Business and Marketing

As humans, we are naturally curious. We ask a lot of questions.

Research shows that adults ask around 20 questions per day and children ask, on average, 70 questions per day [no parent is surprised to find out their number is 2.5x higher I’m sure].

On average, Google answers over 85 billion search queries a day. That’s a lot of questions.

With all of the questions asked, what would you say is the most important question you can ask? What gets at the heart of challenges, solutions and change?

It may seem obvious, but often the most overlooked question is ‘why‘.

Why gets the heart of curiously and exploration. At the center of business is the innate need to answer a calling, answer a question and solve a problem.

Understanding the ‘why’ is the way of getting to the insight and figuring out how we move forward.

Change is the only constant.

Business is a people’s business. Whether you serve businesses [b2b] or consumers [b2c], you and your business are working directly with people. The one constant in life is that change happens and humans adapt.

Our needs have significantly changed throughout the years, especially with the rise of technology and navigating the pandemic.

As humans evolve, reviewing business and marketing tactics on a regular basis is key to success. Make sure your personas are current so your marketing, messaging and targeting is primed to reach your customer as they continue to grow and change. For example, over the last few years, customer preference and brand loyalty have decreased and path to purchase has changed significantly, shifting to more self-education over previous methods of discovery. Asking questions on how your customer daily life now vs. a year ago and beyond shines light into how their consumption and needs are changing and where your brand has the opportunity to meet them where they are.

Asking why. Solving with how.

Marketing and business is about strategic decisions that come from a true understanding of your data, business, market and consumer. To get there, we need to ask the question ‘why’ to get at the heart of the changing environment and solve with how to help us figure out what it all means moving forward.

Let’s get started:

1. Ask the question ‘why’

Dig in deep – about everything. Nothing is off limits here. Continue asking the question layers deep.

    When you are evaluating your digital ad campaign ask ‘why’ as you look at the numbers. Why did this ad perform best over the other – was it the photo, the copy, the call-to-action? Is this different from last campaign? Why would it be different? Did our customer change in how they are interacting with our ads via device, day part? Why has that changed?

The key to asking the question why is to continually sift through information until you find clear insights that help you tell the story of the data and how your consumer is changing, thus impacting your brand goals and bottom line.

Once you understand the insights …

2. Solve with how.

Once you clearly see the story your data and research is telling, it makes the changes and pivots you need to make more obvious. This understanding helps you make shifts, big and small, for your company. The ones needed to transform your business, your brand goals and bottom line.

Because people are changing, our marketing and business strategies need to continually be asking the questions around ‘why’ behavior is changing, what it means for our strategies and tactics and how we best pivot to reach our customers.

Ready to ask why and solve with how? Select ‘Get in-touch’ on the right-hand panel, fill out the form, and we’ll get started.