As you know, I spend a lot of time interviewing my clients so I can help them create marketing content.
I ask them questions that, ideally, they’ve never been asked before, so they say things they’ve never said before, creating opportunities for truly novel content.
My favourite question, though, is surprisingly simple.
I’ve asked this question to consultants, directors of charities, major tourism operators, agriscience innovators, world-famous authors, and countless others.
Every single time, it’s revealed something interesting, something fresh, something new.
So here it is:
“What’s surprisingly easy about your work, and what’s surprisingly difficult?”
That’s it. That’s the whole question.
But it forces the answerer to think deeply about preconceptions others might have about their work, and compare them against their own experience and their own prior assumptions.
It gets them to dig through their memories and pick out real, tangible, and clear examples.
And, remember, specificity sells.
So here’s what I want you to do today:
Write down your answers to that question. What’s surprisingly easy about the work you do? And what’s surprisingly difficult?
Then, read what you’ve written and ask yourself this:
Who’s looking for these insights, right now, to help them decide who to work with?
And where can you put your answers so the right people see them?
Because that’s all marketing is:
Demonstrating your value at a distance. And the first step is identifying your value, which starts by asking yourself where your value comes from.
And it comes from the stuff you find easy that everyone else finds hard, and the stuff you find hard that forces you to exert extra, value-adding effort.
So ask yourself what those things are.
And then talk about them.
Kelford Inc. shows you the way to always knowing what to say.