 In this video, I'd like to offer you four questions to improve your marketing. So these four questions are ones that I invite you to answer fairly quickly, just instead of taking months or weeks to answer this, just answer this in a 15-minute sit-down session. Okay. And just answer them first. And then, as you go along and continue building your business, keep coming back to these four questions and add more answers to it so you can get a better, better understanding of your audience and of your ideal client. Okay? So here we go. The first question to ask is, what are the issues or problems, frustrations, challenges and questions that your clients originally sought you out for? Now, if you have existing clients, this is the, you want to ask, think about this with regards to them. If you don't have clients yet, then you can interview people who are similar to your clients or if even possible, talk to people who are buying a service that's similar to yours. But again, the question to ask, write down your answers to this. What are the issues that your clients originally sought you out to resolve? What are the problems that originally got them to seek out your services? Okay. The key word here is originally. Once they started working with you, they may realize that they need to be asking deeper questions or more foundational types of work that you need to do to help them resolve the symptoms. But originally, they sought you out usually to solve some kind of frustration in their life or to heal some kind of pain that's obvious to them, okay? As a service provider, you know that usually to heal a client's pain or to solve their problem requires going deeper to the root issues, but your clients typically don't know to look for those root causes when they first come to you. So what did they originally come to you for? So if you're in the health field, let's say you are a holistic health coach, right? Your clients may originally have sought you out to heal a particular pain in their body or a particular habit that they want to stop, they want to quit. They just say, help me stop this habit. But you know they really needed to ask questions on a deeper level in their life or in their behavior that is a root cause of some of their symptoms. But what is the surface symptoms that they're really seeking you out for that got them that energize them to want to find a solution. It was painful enough for them to want to find a resolution to that problem, right? Or if you are a relationship coach, maybe the surface, what your client originally sought you out for is that their marriage is on the rocks. Maybe unfortunately your client found out that her spouse is cheating on her and that's obviously a very painful issue that now she wants to resolve that problem. But really you know that there's something deeper to the relationship that needs to be resolved, right? Some healing that needs to take place at a deeper level. But again the original issue is what I'm trying to get you to write down here. In my relationship with my clients, my clients usually come to me because they want to grow their income or stabilize their income or they want to grow their visibility. They want their message to be more visible and they come to me and for help with that and I know that instead of just getting them more traffic, they really need to be optimizing their services and to be optimizing their marketing message so that the traffic becomes so much easier to get as a result. So again, what is the issue that your clients originally came to you for? Go ahead and write down some answers to that question, anything that comes to mind for you and you may want to pause this video and write some answers down before you go on to the next question. And then as you keep building your business as you go in the weeks and months and years keep coming back to this question and the following questions and add more answers to it. This will help refine your services so that you are addressing people where they're at and so that you can help them more and you're also going to be improving your marketing as a result. The second question that's interesting to answer is do you know what is the triggering event that got your clients to seek you out? Now this may be similar to the original question but it's phrased in a different way so it might trigger some more answers for you and it might trigger a greater understanding about your client. So what was the original triggering event? So for example, if you're in the health field, the triggering event might be that your client's doctor gave her a diagnosis. And now she's really concerned and now she's seeking, she doesn't want to go the traditional route, she wants to seek out more alternative solutions and that's why she sought you out. Or maybe she had a pain that suddenly started coming on. That was a triggering event. In my field actually, in my business, clients, they either, maybe they were taking care of a family member for a while, they were trying to build their business and now the family member has passed on, they were a caretaker, the family member has passed on and now they really want to build their business. Or maybe they turn a certain age or they just moved to another part of the country and now they're ready to rebuild their lives and build their business too. So there's some kind of triggering event and if you come to understand that triggering event, it'll help you to relate to your clients on a more resonant level and even you can use these ideas in your marketing to say, you know, to use some of those triggering events in describing your, describing those triggering events in your marketing a bit so that your clients, when they come to your website, they say, wow, this person really gets me and people like me, okay. So really all these questions are to help you understand your ideal audience better so that you can shape your services to be more resonant to them and make your marketing more optimized for them as well. All right. So you might want to write down some answers to that question and then unpause this video when you're ready. Now, the third question to answer, again, this is similar to the other questions but it's phrased a different way, hopefully it'll get you some more ideas. Third question is what are the symptoms of the problem that get people to seek out solutions like yours? So imagine that your ideal client type of person is in Google and they're searching for a solution to the problem. What kind of symptoms are they typing in to get to a solution like yours? Okay. What kind of symptoms? So for example, you know, again, I'll use the health field example. Let's say that someone has a problem, really someone has a problem with their heart, like they have a heart issue. But the symptoms that they're typing in is like heart beating faster than normal, you know, or they're typing in occasional numbness in the right arm or something like that, that's signifying a deeper and challenging issue. Or they're typing in overweight, how to lose weight, that's a symptom of deeper problems that are involved with diet and exercise and even mental, your thoughts and emotions, things like that. So what are the symptoms that your clients are probably typing in to Google to try to solve their problem? Okay. So go ahead and write down some of the answers to these questions and then let's go on when you're ready. Okay. So, oh, and one more thing about the symptoms is the reason why I keep talking about symptoms rather than deeper issues is because clients are human beings, really. We have evolved to think about the short term and solving problems in the short term. Unfortunately, we have not evolved to solve problems for the long term. I know this is unfortunate and hopefully we are evolving towards thinking more long term and that'll take some time. And of course, people will learn how to think long term in certain areas of their life and hopefully your clients will learn to think long term as they work with you in the area of their, that area of their life. But they usually are thinking short term. So that's what we're trying to figure out what they're thinking about in the short term to solve and then they find you and then you can help them think long term. Okay. They don't usually think, how do I solve the problem 10 years from now? But how do I solve the problem right now? So write down some of your answers to that question. And then finally, the fourth question is probably you're going to be your favorite, but during the course of working with your clients, what are some other issues and deeper root problems that you love to help your clients with? The clients typically don't know to ask you this and as they get to work with you, you help them solve some of the deeper issues or maybe some of the side issues that also help them solve their original issue. So go ahead and write this down. Some related challenges that you love help make people solve, some of the root issues that you help people resolve. So I would love to see some of your answers. If you'd like to share them below this video, I'd love to see it. I know it'll help other people as they watch this to get some more ideas and hopefully we can create a community here as you answer these questions and help each other out to brainstorm and get a better understanding of your ideal audience so you can help them more truly and connect with them more resonantly so that they do want your help.