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Writer's pictureHeidy Rehman

25 questions that can help improve your small business marketing strategy

Updated: Dec 1, 2023

Marketing plays a pivotal role in the success of any small business. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just launching a new business, you’ll need to create a marketing strategy and then refine and enhance it as your company grows.


Knowing how to get this right can be difficult. To help you, we’ve put together a list of 25 insightful questions to start you off.


We've designed these questions to go beyond the obvious and delve into consumer behaviour, psychology and emerging trends. Hopefully, they’ll provide you with a fresh perspective on how to connect with your audience and grow your business.


But before we get into those, let’s look at the more fundamental questions you should ask before you formulate your marketing strategy and campaigns.


Fundamental marketing strategy questions


Top 10 fundamental marketing strategy questions


1. What is your unique selling point (USP)?


Your USP is what makes your product or service unique and appealing to potential customers. Essentially, it asks the question — Why should your customers choose your product over those of your competitors?


Your marketing should focus on what sets your product or service apart from rival offers. So understanding your USP is essential.



2. Who is our target audience and what are their pain points and needs?


Your target audience is the specific group of individuals (for B2C companies) or organisations (for B2B firms) that your business intends to reach and engage with through its products or services.


It’s important to recognise that this group is not broad or random but rather a carefully-defined segment that shares select characteristics, behaviours and needs.


Pain points are the specific challenges, problems or frustrations that your target audience faces and which your products or services have the potential to address.


Identifying these pain points is crucial because it helps you position what you offer as a solution to real problems.


3. What are your short-term and long-term marketing goals?


Short-term aims tend typically to span weeks, months or a single fiscal year. They are essential for maintaining focus and measuring progress toward immediate priorities.


Long-term marketing goals encompass the broader, overarching ambitions of your business over a longer period — often spanning multiple years. These goals are instrumental in shaping your company's future and should align with your vision.


It’s important to strike a balance between your immediate goals and where you want your business to get to over the longer term.


4. What is your current online presence and how can it be improved?


Your current online presence refers to where you’re visible and what you do across the various online platforms and channels. This includes your website, social media profiles, online reviews, search engine optimisation (SEO) rankings and anywhere else you can be found online.


To improve this, you first need to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your current digital footprint. You will then be able to pinpoint areas where you can enhance what you’re doing in a way that better aligns with your business goals and customer expectations.



5. What channels are your target customers using to consume content and make purchasing decisions?


It’s important to focus your efforts on and understand the platforms and channels most relevant to your target audience.


This will ensure you allocate your resources and budget more effectively. It will also help you tailor your content, extend your reach, enhance your customers’ experience, stay competitive and build better relationships.


6. What is your budget for marketing initiatives and how should you allocate it effectively?


This is about determining how much money you can invest in marketing and how to distribute those funds efficiently to achieve your marketing goals.


You need to set out a financial roadmap for your marketing efforts. That way, you’ll be able to define the scale and scope of your marketing activities, avoid over-spending, measure your return on investment (RoI) and adapt your approach as the market changes.


7. Is your branding and messaging consistent across all marketing materials?


Branding encompasses all the elements that define your business's identity and image. This includes your logo, colour palette, typography, design style and overall visual identity. It also includes intangible aspects, such as your brand's personality, values and the emotions you want to evoke in customers.


Messaging refers to the content and language you use in your marketing materials. For example, your taglines, mission statements, value propositions, product descriptions. It’s the overall tone and voice of your brand.


Many companies use brand guidelines to ensure their branding and messaging are consistent across all their communications — internally and externally.


This can help build brand recognition and trust.


8. How do you plan to gather and leverage customer feedback?


Information from your customers should include their opinions and suggestions based on their experience (for the full period of the customer cycle).


Customer feedback can be collected in various ways. For example, surveys, feedback forms, reviews, interviews, social media connections and customer service interactions.


How you leverage this data will depend on the insights and data you collect and how this is used to make informed decisions and improvements.


Ideally, you should analyse, interpret and act upon feedback to improve your products or services. This will help refine the experience of your customers and drive business growth.


9. What is your content strategy and how can you create valuable, shareable content?


Your content strategy covers the type of content you’ll create, where and how you’ll distribute it and why you’re creating it. It should align with your business goals and target market.


The aim should be to provide genuine value to your target audience that is engaging enough for them to want to share it with others.


High-value content tends to educate, entertain, inform, inspire or solve problems for your audience — so this is what you should aim to produce.


10. How will you measure the success of your marketing efforts and what result metrics will you track?


You need to assess the outcomes and results of your marketing efforts so you know you’re achieving your desired objectives.


To do this, you need to establish specific metrics or data points that are chosen based on their relevance to your goals and their ability to provide insights into your marketing effectiveness.


By identifying and tracking the right data points, you can make informed decisions about where to allocate resources, how to refine your marketing strategies and ways optimise your campaigns.


25 questions to help you delve deeper into your small business marketing strategy


1. What are the emotional triggers that drive your customers' purchasing decisions?


People make buying decisions based on their emotions — happiness, fear, trust, excitement, etc.


By understanding these triggers, you’ll be able to create marketing campaigns that resonate with your target customers on an emotional level. This should help make your brand more memorable and persuasive.


2. What are the psychographics of your target audience?


Psychographics extend beyond demographics (age, sex and location). They explore the values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles of your target audience.


Knowing your audience's psychographics can help you craft messaging and marketing strategies that align with their beliefs and aspirations. This should make your brand more appealing.


3. What are the most common objections or barriers preventing potential customers from converting?


This involves understanding the issues, concerns or hesitations that potential customers commonly have when considering your product or service.


Some may be interested in your product or service but haven't yet taken the final step to convert. In that case, they may need some additional reassurance or incentive to get them over the line.


Gathering feedback should help you understand and overcome any obstacles that prevent potential customers from buying from you. For example, it could be price, product quality, trust in your brand or the complexity of the buying process.


4. What are the top objections or doubts of industry experts and how can you address them convincingly in your marketing?


This affects some industries more than others. For example, the highly-processed or fast food sector.


It’s always worth researching and understanding these objections and then looking at how this may impact the perception of potential buyers.


You should then be able to develop marketing strategies and campaigns that address them in a way that will convince buyers of your product or service.


5. What is the lifetime value of a customer and how can you increase it?


The lifetime value (LTV) of a customer represents the total revenue a customer is expected to generate over their entire relationship with your business.


Understanding LTV will help you allocate your resources more effectively.


Ways to improve LTV include fostering customer loyalty, encouraging repeat purchases and cross-selling or upselling.


6. What are the top-performing keywords and long-tail search terms in your industry?


You should know the specific words and phrases that people use when searching for products or services in your industry — bearing in mind that these can change over time.


Incorporating these terms into your website and content marketing can boost the search engine optimisation (SEO) of your website and make you more discoverable to potential customers across other digital platforms.


7. What are your competitors' marketing strategies and how can you differentiate your business effectively?


By analysing what your competitors are doing, you’ll be able to spot gaps in the market or areas where you can improve.


Looking at what's working for your competitors and what isn't should help you develop marketing strategies that set your business apart and attract the audience you want.


8. What micro-moments do your customers experience and how can you be there when they happen?


Micro-moments happen briefly during a customer’s journey. They are characterised by being intent driven.


For example, they include ‘I want to know’, ‘I want to go’, ‘I want to do’ and ‘I want to buy’ moments.


If you can capture these moments by creating real-time marketing strategies that address your customers’ immediate needs and preferences, you can add value to your business.


9. How can you use personalisation in your marketing campaigns?


Personalisation is about tailoring your marketing content, offers and recommendations to what individual customers want.


By homing in on their specific needs, they could be encouraged to engage and spend more.


To do this, you’ll need to analyse your customer lead data and profiles. AI-driven recommendations could also help.


10. Do you have customer journey maps and have you found ways to optimise them for a seamless experience?


A customer journey is the path that customers follow from the moment they first become aware of your business to the point where they buy or engage with your products or services. It is sometimes referred to as a sales or marketing funnel.


It typically includes stages of awareness, consideration, purchase and post-sales experience.


This journey should be as smooth and enjoyable as possible for the customer — by removing or minimising any obstacles or areas of friction.


11. What is your customers' ‘fear of missing out’ (FOMO) trigger and how are you capitalising on it?


Creating a sense of scarcity or loss aversion can be a great way to motivate customers to interact or buy.


Understanding what will prompt this and building it into your marketing campaigns can help drive sales. For example, it could be a time-limited offer, an exclusive invitation, rewarding early participants or any situation where people perceive a sense of scarcity or urgency.


12. Do you use storytelling in your marketing to connect with your audience on a deeper level?


Storytelling will allow you to tap into the emotions of your audience.


If you can create narratives that resonate with your customers’ experiences, values or aspirations, you’ll be able to develop a deeper emotional connection between your target market and your brand, product or service.


This emotional connection is essential for building brand loyalty and trust.


13. Do you incorporate user-generated content to create a sense of community around your brand?


This is about encouraging your customers or users to share their experiences and opinions about your products or services (which you can then also use as content).


This can help create a feeling of togetherness among your customers and strengthen their connection to your brand.


14. What metaphors or analogies can you use to simplify complex concepts or products?


This is about finding relevant comparisons to make your complex products or services easier to understand and relate to.


For example, smartphones with advanced features are often compared to a pocket-sized computer. This helps people see it as a versatile and powerful tool rather than just a phone.


15. How can you gamify your marketing to make it more interactive and engaging?


This means incorporating elements of game design and mechanics into your marketing strategies and materials to make them more interactive and engaging.


This can include points, rewards, challenges and competitions to encourage collaboration. Customers could also earn badges or points for participating.


16. What is your ‘origin story’ and how can you use it to build trust and authenticity with our customers?


This is the narrative that explains how and why you launched your business. You can share what motivated you, the challenges you’ve faced and the values that inspire you.


Sharing your story can build trust and authenticity with customers because it humanises your brand and demonstrates that there’s a face behind your corporation.


This approach can work in tandem with behind-the-scenes stories of employees or how you all work together. It can help customers connect with your journey, your values and the people in your business — making your brand more relatable and trustworthy.


17. How can you use humour strategically in your marketing to engage your audience?


This needs to be done with care so as not to offend or alienate your target audience — but humour can be a powerful tool to capture attention and create a likeable brand image.


People are more likely to remember and want to interact with companies that create a more enjoyable and memorable experience.


Similarly, you can create nostalgic moments for customers which can help tap into feelings of sentimentality. Your target customers may be more likely to engage with you if they feel an emotional attachment to your brand, product or service.


18. How can you turn your existing customers into brand advocates or ambassadors?


This is about encouraging your existing customers to enthusiastically promote your brand to people they know — friends, family and networks.


It’s important to bear in mind that they’re only likely to do this if you provide an exceptional customer experience, exceed their expectations and actively seek feedback.


19. What emotions do your competitors' marketing campaigns evoke and can you elicit different emotions to stand out?


This involves examining the emotional responses that your competitors' advertisements or promotions generate among their audience. For instance, do their campaigns make people feel excited, inspired or secure?


Once you understand that emotional tone, you can build strategies and marketing campaigns that bring about different or complementary emotions. For example, if competitors are focusing on excitement, you might aim to evoke a sense of calm, trust or nostalgia to stand out and appeal to a different segment of the audience.


20. What is the psychological impact of your brand colours and can you adjust them to influence customer perception?


Different colours can evoke specific emotions, associations or moods in people.


For example, blue is often seen to convey trust and professionalism. In contrast, red can signify excitement or urgency.


You need to be aware of your brand's existing colour scheme and whether it has any unintentional impact on how customers perceive your business.


Using the psychology of colour can help strategically shape your customers’ perceptions of your brand and align them with how you want it to be seen and interpreted.


21. What is the cognitive load of your marketing materials and can you simplify them without losing effectiveness?


This refers to how much mental effort or processing capacity your customers need to understand and engage with your marketing materials.


Is it too much? For example, is your marketing filled with jargon or is it difficult to navigate? If you overwhelm your target audience's cognitive capacity, you’ll make it harder for them to absorb your message.


You can fix this (without diluting the effect) by using clearer language, a more intuitive design and streamlining your content.


22. Can you create marketing content that taps into your customers' aspirations and dreams?


You may want to create marketing content that connects with the hopes, goals and desires of your customers — personal, professional or lifestyle related.


By using uplifting messaging, visuals or storytelling, you can show how your brand can help them get to where they want to be.


23. What are the cultural or societal trends that could impact your business and how can you adapt to or leverage them?


There may be shifts or changes in society or culture that can influence how people buy, what they want and what they need.


For example, awareness of sustainability has been growing, focus on health and wellness has increased and consumer attitudes towards technology have changed.


Your goal is to determine how your business can either leverage evolving trends to thrive or adapt to them to remain relevant and competitive.


This would similarly be the case for emerging technologies and platforms, such as AI. You need to work out if they can be applied to your marketing efforts and, importantly, if that can be done in a cost-effective way.


24. What is the environmental impact of your marketing activities and can you make sustainable changes without sacrificing your impact?


Many companies are looking to reduce their carbon footprint, including across their marketing activities.


Your marketing carbon footprint can be broad and include advertising, packaging, product promotion, transport and more — all of which generate waste and emissions.


What’s important is to strike the right balance between reducing your environmental impact and reach your marketing goals within budget.


Ideally, sustainable changes should enhance, or at the very least, maintain the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.


25. Are there offline marketing opportunities you are overlooking?


While digital marketing is crucial, offline strategies can still be effective (depending on your target audience and industry).


Examples of offline marketing opportunities include events and conferences, partnerships and direct mail. It may be worth evaluating these opportunities to see if they can help set you apart from your competitors.



This is not an exhaustive list because the nature of marketing is evolving as is what you need to do to develop and implement a successful business strategy.


Hopefully, these questions will encourage you to think creatively and consider unconventional ways to improve your small business marketing strategy — ultimately helping you stand out in a crowded marketplace.


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