“No question is a silly question” is my philosophy. When I was studying for my A Levels my dad gave me a piece of advice I’ll never forget. He told me that if I didn’t understand something then the odds were that someone else in the room wouldn’t either. And that if I could be brave and ask the question then I’d be helping someone else too who might not have the confidence to speak up. So without fail in every maths class my arm would shoot up with a question.
It turns out that I must’ve been taught by aliens in my previous school because I was THE only person in the room with questions. The only person who didn’t get it. But I continued to ask questions – sometimes more quietly to my neighbour rather than disrupting the whole class. (There’s also a story about asking the right person but that’s another post entirely) And eventually I started to get it, formulas started to make more sense and things fell into place – because what I’d been missing was some of the foundations. So even though I’d aced my maths GCSE I hadn’t been taught some of the essential building blocks of mechanical mathematics.
Last week at Give Back Works networking we had a presentation by the Tutor Doctor who was explaining that when these building blocks are missed there is then nothing to keep building on. If we think of building a wall and we miss a brick, there is nothing to layer up on. The structure becomes weak and can crumble under pressure. I think marketing your business can be a bit like building that brick wall. If you are missing an important link like understanding your ideal customer, or how to use a specific piece of technology then it can prevent you for progressing and achieving the success you are striving for in your business. Not because you don’t have a good product or service, not because you don’t know how to run a business, not because you are bad at marketing. Just because something hasn’t clicked into place and filled your knowledge gap. Sometimes it’s even a case of ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’. Something isn’t working and you need to find out why. You might not even know exactly what the question is!
And that’s why I take the approach that no question is a silly question, I’m still that girl at school with her arm in the air with questions she believes with also benefit others. But I can’t ask all your questions for you, so come along and ask them yourself!
I’ll be joined by Claire Davies The Greedy Wordsmith and Alex Dyett from Flickering Light Studio at the Marketing Clinic for the Back to Work Marketing Brunch where we will be answering your questions on marketing, copywriting and design to help fill some of those blanks when it comes to building your marketing foundations.
Last week I met with a new client who has been in business for decades, but they still don’t have some of the basics in place when it comes to marketing. It hasn’t stopped their business from being successful but now it’s time for them to scale the business with ambitious growth plans to enter new markets and instead of the marketing getting more complex I’ll actually be making sure all the basics are covered first so we can layer on the next level of activity securely.
But don’t let that stop you if you’ve got a hard question, bring those too, I love a challenge!
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