Have you ever had a conversation with someone that just sort of sticks in the back of your brain until you either have a huge a-ha moment, or it sends you down a rabbit hole of research?
I actually have these really deep types of conversations pretty often with my kids. In case you don’t know, I have three kids, they are 16, 17, and 19. They are all three, in that “young adult” stage of life. I find it super interesting how each of their minds works. I love having conversations with them about what they want from life and what’s going on in the world. All of that information brings a lot of joy to my life.
What My 17-Year-Old Taught Me About Life, Business, and Marketing
I recently had an incredible conversation with my 17-year-old. We are working on life skills and we took a trip together to the bank. We were there so that he could deposit a check for the very first time. I went along with him so that I could walk him through the steps. I want to be sure that my kids are fully self-sufficient when they step out of my door.
While we were at the bank, my son, Jack, was filling out a deposit slip. This deposit slip was on transfer paper so that he would have a receipt of the transaction for his records. He was so curious about how the transfer paper worked and he asked me. I told him, I wasn’t sure but that if he just wrote on the top copy, it would transfer to the bottom copy.
Then he asked me, “Don’t you want to know how it works?”
And I was like, “No, not really.”
What he said next surprised me… He said, “You’re not curious enough.”
He wanted to know all of the things! He wanted to know who invented it, exactly how and why it works, how much pressure you need to use, what kind of paper it was on. All of it.
This made me stop and think. How curious am I about life?
Why You Need to Get Curious
We all go about life and we do things that are normal for us, but for someone who hasn’t done it before, it’s not normal. It’s new. My son, he’s incredibly curious. He wants to know how all of these things work.
When I was teaching him how to drive, he was also very curious about how each part of the car worked – like the speedometer and the shifter – and how they all worked together. If you can’t tell, he wants to be an engineer.
Curiosity should be a huge part of your life, your business, and your marketing. Curiosity is so incredibly valuable.
Marketing – An Art and a Science
Marketing is more than just throwing a bunch of things out there and seeing what sticks. It’s more than just spraying and praying. It’s more than just getting as many leads as you can and hoping some of them want to work with you. It’s more than hope. Hope is not a marketing strategy at all.
Marketing is an art and a science. It’s about the art of copy, imaging, and the creative aspect of the human psyche.
And, it’s also a science. Science is where curiosity starts in our lives. When we’re in 3rd grade, we’re so curious about how the world works. At a certain point in our lives, we lose that curiosity when it comes to our day-to-day lives.
4 Ways Getting Curious Will Help Your Marketing
When we take time to reinstill that curiosity into our lives, our businesses, and our marketing, we are able to create something that is truly different than everyone else.
1. Curiosity helps us to think like our consumers.
How will they react to a particular image or our messaging? Our copy, or our offer?
When we become curious, instead of becoming defensive, when something doesn’t work, we have an opportunity to look at things from our ideal client’s perspective.
When we know our customers, we are better able to serve them.
2. Curiosity gives us opportunities for new ideas.
Being curious will help us to come up with new marketing strategies or angles. Or different ways to communicate. Or even maybe different products, services, or solutions that we now realize that our clients need. And the reason we realized that is because we became curious about what it is that is keeping them stuck in this stage. Whatever it is, we can now offer them something as a solution.
3. Curiosity allows business owners and marketers to learn faster.
When we ask questions about what is or isn’t working in our business or in our marketing, we’re better able to learn fast. And when we learn fast, we’re better able to implement fast, and when we implement fast, we’re better able to get results fast.
4. Curiosity can improve our communication and storytelling.
The reality is, in today’s market, storytelling is super important. Being able to convey our message and our story to our ideal audience, in a way that they connect with, is what’s really going to create an outstanding brand versus a ho-hum brand.
Being curious about where your messaging is connecting, and more importantly, where is it not, will provide you a treasure trove of valuable, actionable information.
When it comes to marketing, without being curious, we become frustrated and impatient.
If you’re ready to grow your business, increase your revenue, and scale your impact, contact me today! If you want to know more about the one thing your missing to grow to seven figures, listen to the latest episode of the Marketing Matchmaker Podcast! And, if you want to grow and scale your business to 6-7 figures, take the Profitable Scaling Quiz today to make a difference in your tomorrow!