I never liked going to the supermarkets with my mom and dad when I was little. It was a routine chore on every damn weekend, which I couldn’t escape from. My young mind wanted to stay at home and play video games rather than pick milk from the shelf and potatoes from the pile.
The boredom of the entire trip doomed upon me specially when I sat by the window seat in the car while my parents spent the time discussing taxes, work bitches and Mrs. Susan’s tasteless lasagna at last night’s dinner.
Yet in all those loathsome trips, one thing always fascinated me – The billboards on the roads. I would gaze outside the window upon every billboard. It intrigued me how an image and a few words could make so much sense and heavily impact a person.
The words along with images had so much influence on me that I would read every billboard and try to make out the story behind that advertising. The ones that caught my attention the most were the billboards with questions. It somehow made me obligated to answer whatever the hell was asked in the billboard.
A billboard would only say “Why Not?” with an image of a healthy woman eating farm fresh salad. Immediately I would form the story for it. The woman is healthy because she is eating fresh salad from a specific farm. She is choosing a lifestyle that is good for her.
And since then I have had this vivid attraction with digital marketing.
Why ask questions in marketing?
It’s true to say that questions have a great impact in marketing. In fact, let me rephrase it. Questions have a great impact in every field, whether it is blogging, teaching, lecturing or advertising.
Your words are like the trunk of a tree. They just stand in one place with the main big idea. Questions however become branches of the tree. They bring actions, opinion, suggestion, comments etc. and thereby actually help your main idea grow and spread around.
One question will branch out million answers.
So, to understand how questions impact digital marketing, let us first understand “Questions.”
A question is,
“Derived from the Latin root word, quaestio, which means to seek. “
It is interesting to find that inside the word ‘question’ itself is the word ‘quest,’ suggesting that within every question is an adventure, a pursuit, a curiosity which can lead us to a hidden treasure.
Questions Make A Ripple Effect Wherever Asked
Questions have the tendency to ignite an urge into people to respond with their respective answers. When different answers accumulate for one single question, it starts a rapid fire response.
Suppose you are giving a lecture on professionalism in a room full of 500 people. They are all listening to you. Some are yawning too. Some want to know when the “after lecture lunch” will be served. But then, you wrap it up by asking, “Do you think women are less professional than men?”
When a few answers come up, immediately there will be a sizzling hot debate, discussion and strong comments coming from all of the 500 people.
Now, how does a question make ripple effect in digital marketing?
Because everyone is now on social media and everything is connected to it, when a person responds to a question associated with your product, it immediately gets shared on their connected social media. It goes on twitter, facebook and instagram.
This introduces your product to a new audience.
This new audience will further like, rate, comment or share your product. And this starts the ripple effect.
You asked one question on your product and it reaches a million different destinations because people love to respond and share their feedback and opinion.
Try posting a question on your product on twitter and see how many tweets, retweets and comments you will get. Your mind will be blown.
