Your Customers Have Questions...

Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management thinkers of our time, famously said that the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.

He's right.

Just think about the lines outside of Apple stores when a new iPhone is released.

One of the biggest challenges to this end is ensuring that you answer and address your customers' questions.

Your customers have questions, and these questions are both a problem and an opportunity for you.

They're a problem because they're likely preventing people from doing business with you. 

But they're also an opportunity for you because if you can uncover and address their questions, you can dramatically increase the likelihood that people will do business with you. 

Here are four simple steps you can use to understand your customers' questions and improve your marketing to drive sales: 

1. Find out the questions that customers have

You can find this out via survey, like an email survey, a social media survey, or even a popup page survey on your website.

Your customer service department is a goldmine filled with lots of questions. Be sure to work with customer service to uncover the most popular questions your customers are asking. 

2. Read reviews online, both of your company and competitors

To determine the types of issues customers face, you can monitor social media to see what questions people ask of your company, your competitors, and each other. 

3. Build a database of these customer questions

Your customers' questions will vary depending on their segment, level of brand awareness, and stage in the buying journey. So it's important to consider these factors and to group your questions as such. 

Once you have a massive list of customer questions, rank them by their frequency and importance. You can now audit your marketing and sales collateral, landing pages, website, social posts.

You want to look for the gaps to see where you can add or remove them to bring clarity and help provide answers to the most common and most important questions throughout your customer's journey. 

4. Prioritize and schedule updates to your assets to address these questions 

Plan to repeat this 4 step process at least once a year. When you can preempt your customers' questions with great marketing, it's like reading their minds!

As simple as it sounds, answering the right question at the right time is key to driving sales and accelerating growth.