Marketing Circuit Questionnaire

First Element: For a small business, you are your brand.  Your vision, values and reputation make your business.  For larger businesses the brand can embody similar vision, values and reputation.  So, you and your brand are central to your online marketing, whether your are a local business or a community group.

1.1 Why do you do what you do?

I cover this first question in two posts, Why You Do What You Do and Finding Your Why.  Taken together these posts trace how my understanding of my own business is developing.  This questionnaire is a developmental tool and I'm finding returning to my earlier answers is often a way of developing new insights as I understand how my thinking has moved on since the last time I looked at the questions.

1.2 What makes your business unique?

In the post What Makes Your Business Unique? I explore  some of the answers I arrived at when I asked what my business woud be like taken to the ultimate level, whilst in Finding a Unique Business Identity I answer some related questions from the questionnaire.  Perhaps this illustrates how difficult it is to identify what it is that makes your business unique.

1.3 Your Brand

Building Your Brand asks what you and your brand stand for.  This is a fantastic question for causes marketed online but it is for anyone who is hoping to change things through their business.

1.4  Your Origin Story

People who view your website may have never met you.  Your origin story is one way of helping people get to know you before they make contact with you.

Your business story is not necessarily the same as your origin story.  How important is it and how can you use it?

1.5  Your Global Proposition

Your global proposition tells  the world what your business is about.  Whilst you will revise it in the light of experience, it should support all your products and services. 

1.6  What are you offering your followers?

Every business or cause needs to know who are their potential active supporters.  So, many leaders need online and and offline approaches to finding followers.

1.7 and 1.8  What are your strengths and weaknesses?

This post advocates the use of the SWOT and PESTLE analyses, expanding on the questions in the circuit questionnaire that focus solely on strengths and weaknesses.

1.9 List any ways in which you compromise or dilute your position, mission or message today.

Businesses, especially inexperienced sole traders, are often tempted to compromise.  This may be seen in businesses that are under-valued or providing services to clients who are not ideal.

1.10  What signs of brand authority can you point to?

A summary of ways you can demonstrate authority on your website.  These are mostly external, independent evidence of the quality of your service.

1.11  Partners and Allies

Explores a range of approaches to partnerships in the local economy.

1.12  The Value Triangle

How to balance the demands of quality, cost and time using the value triangle.

1.13  Setting a Goal

From time to time, your business or organisation will set new goals.  This post explores some things to consider and lists some alternatives to generating a profit!

1.14  Brand Names

Like many people I am sceptical about brand names.  What meaning do they have in the local economy?

1.15  Your Unique Perspective

I use my own business to illustrate my unique perspective.  What's yours?

This section is complete for now.  I can add new material on request.  If there is anything you wish to add, correct or suggest, go into one of the posts and leave a comment.

Second Element: In the circuit questionnaire, this element is about your products and service.  Sometimes though you will be marketing a cause as well as or instead of a product or service.   So, causes, products and services seeks to integrate causes into the questionnaire. 

2.1  Delivery of Products Services and Causes

Delivery of products services and causes covers how they are delivered to the customer. member or client.  The relationships between these three types of offer can be complex.  Causes often have an unexpected role in businesses.

2.2  Formats of Products Services and Causes

The same product service or cause can be delivered in a variety of formats.  Often for reasons of costs, you are limited to choosing one format.  What are the options and how do you choose between them?

2.3  Unique Causes Products and Services

Unique causes products and services are not always advantageous.  A cause may not be popular but may still be urgent and important.  Unique products and services are often easier to promote than unique causes but they interact in various ways.

2.4  Origin Stories for Products Services and Causes

Origin stories for products services and causes will relate to specific offers and are not the same as your personal orgin story or business story.  This post offers some questions you can ask to find the story behind a specific offer.

2.5 and 2.6  The Golden Triangle

The Golden Triangle helps you find the unique offer that you enjoy, plays to your strengths and appeals to your market.

2.7  Just How Important are Features?

You sell your offer on its benefits but there comes a point in any sale, where the customer wants to know exactly what they will get.  So features are important but just how important are they? 

2.8  Price and Profitability

Setting prices can be tricky for causes as well as products and services.  The trick is to find a price that will make your offer profitable.  And how do you set a price for a cause?

2.9  Launching New Offerings

Question 2.3 asked whether your offer is unique.  This question is about how you plan to get a new offer onto the market.  This is particularly important where you are testing the potential of a new offer.

2.10  Making Changes to Your Offer

This question looks at the circumstances under which offers change.  Some changes are external and you have no control over them.  Internal changes come from you as you understand your market better.

2.11  Availability

How do you navigate times when you are very busy or times when things slacken off?  Are these seasonal changes or do they happen for other reasons.

2.12  From One-Off to Repeated Sales

This post looks at the difference between one-off and repeated sales.  If you have a good one-off service it does not follow you can convert it into repeated sales.  However, if you can this can be very successful.

2.13  Trustmarks

Trustmarks can be used to endorse your service or reassure visitors about the safety of your site.

2.14  Quiet Times for Your Business

A quiet time may be an opportunity for a special promotion or to take a break.  Whichever you choose be mindful of the dreaded cash-flow cycles!

2.15  What You Don't Do

What You Don't Do does not necessarily imply limitations to your ability to provide a service.  Sometimes limitations can be imposed to strengthen your offer.

This section is complete for now. I can add new material on request. If there is anything you wish to add, correct or suggest, go into one of the posts and leave a comment.

Third Element: You don't really sell causes, products and/or services.  You sell your Proposition, your statement of what it is you are really selling.  This might itself be a cause but it is just as possible your proposition for a cause will appeal to self-interest.  This is the key to the Circuit marketing qestionnaire and possibly the hardest element to grasp.

3.1  What Does Your Proposition Offer?

This post takes an overview of your proposition offer, describing three general types, ie how to fix a problem, prevent a problem or find an opportunity to gain.

3.2  What Makes an Offer Unique?

It is worth thinking about what makes your offer unique.  This post suggests a variety of ways in which an offer can be unique and suggests context is also important, eg if you are the only one of something locally, you may have an advantage.

3.3  Keeping Your Promise

Any transaction implies a promise about the outcome and the issue is how to show your potential customer your business can keep its promise.  This post looks at ways your can convey your capacity to meet their requirements.

3.4  Demonstrate Your Benefits

You need to do more than name them, you really need to demonstrate your benefits.  Identifying your benefits is one thing but you need to be able to demonstrate you can deliver them.  As you dig deeper you may find a range of benefits that appeal to customers at different times and places.

There are advantages and disadvantages to agreeing to an offer or refusing it.  It is possible to antcipate your prospect's response, using the yes / no matrix.

Your Prospect's decision to invest in your offer is closely related to your benefits.  Prospects need to understand the value of purchasing support from you.

3.5  The Proposition Value Triangle

Your Proposition's Value Triangle is a way of testing exactly what your customer needs.  This post explains the three possible value combinations for a web design service.  The principles apply equally to any offer.

3.6  Hard Evidence

Hard evidence is well-researched and ideally independent of your business.  It is not always available and so don't worry if you don't have it, use soft evidence instead.

3.7  Soft Evidence

Soft evidence is generated by your business and acts as social proof, demonstrating you have customers and they are satisfied.

3.8  Using Scarcity

This post shows how to market using scarcity.  It is a powerful tool if the scarcity is genuine, so be aware of what is genuine and what can look like a hard sell.

3.9  Using Urgency

Slow decision making can be a problem for your prospect as much as it is for you.  Sometimes urgency can work to your prospect's advantage.

3.10  Market Position

Your market position will be leader, challenger, niche or follower.  These approaches are helpful where we need to understand other business.

3.11  Managing Multiple Offers

Whilst most High Street shops will have very many offers, most freelance businesses offer few alternative offers.  However, you need to decide whether you need more than one offer and if you do, manage your multiple offers.

3.12  Conversations with Target Markets

Many freelance businesses depend upon conversations with their target markets to sell their offers.  Other traders perhaps need less conversation or even none at all!  This post looks at in-person and online conversations and discusses using a seed launch to develop a product.

3.13  Questions Your Prospects Need to Answer

Be aware of how many questions your prospects need to answer.  For your email list, you need to smallest number of questions possible.  For your offer you may need to ask a large number of questions to determine if it is right for them and they are right for it.

3.14  Third-Party Prospects

You have third-party prospects where someone buys your product or service on someone else's behalf.  When can you increase prices for gifts or celebrations?

3.15  Understanding Your Offer

Your prospects may have difficulty understanding your offer.  Why might they have difficulty, how can you help them and using which media?

3.16  The Longevity of Your Promotion

How long should you leave something on the market?  Some offers benefit from a short promotion and others from a long-term promotion.

3.17  Indirect Benefits of Your Offer

There can be a range of ways in which your customers and others benefit indirectly from your offer.  This looks at some examples and explores how indirect benefits can come about.

3.18  Negative Side-Effects to Your Offer

Every offer will have negative side-effects.  The question is how to turn them to your customer's advantage.

This section is complete for now. I can add new material on request. If there is anything you wish to add, correct or suggest, go into one of the posts and leave a comment.