What’s the Better Question?

Do we spend too much energy trying to come up with better answers to the same old marketing questions?

“How can we increase our landing page conversion rate by 15 percent?” is a fine question, but is it really the most important question that we can ask? Does it focus our creativity on the juicy problems that scream out for solutions, or does it just happen to be the most obvious question at that particular time?

What would happen if we stopped focusing on marginal gains, and instead explored questions that challenge our most limiting assumptions?

Landing pages, email campaigns, and webinar offers are often just knee-jerk answers to generic questions like “how can we create more content to attract mid-sized companies?” A much harder (and more productive) question may be “who are we really focused on serving, why do we care about this particular audience, and how can we become such a perfect fit for their needs that they’d have no reason to look elsewhere?”

This type of question is more challenging because it forces us to make difficult choices, narrow our focus, and be much more specific with our work. They lead to the breakthrough outcomes that make a mere 15 percent bump in response rate seem comparatively trivial.