How do you create content that answers buyers' real questions? Here's how to run a content workshop using a process based on They Ask You Answer.
In 2017, Marcus Sheridan introduced his "They Ask You Answer" concept to the world. While a lot has changed in the years since its creation, buyers haven't.
When you approach your content planning for the new year, you'll start with search engine tools or ChatGPT to plot the path ahead. Don't. All you need are your customers.
Follow this process to connect your market sizing, ICP, and personas to buyers. Read on to learn how to run your content ideation workshop based on the They Ask You Answer principles and get a FREE supporting template.
They Ask You Answer is where the rubber meets the road for content marketers.
They Ask You Answer accepts that every buyer has a set of questions they want answered - by answering them, you earn trust. Trust leads to happy buyers.
The concept promotes the idea of being transparent. That means simple changes your competition is afraid to make, like:
There's none better than the author himself, Marcus Sheridan, to explain its origins:
As Marcus moves through his book, he addresses "The Big 5":
These are the common types of questions that every buyer has.
1. Cost
Money matters. For some buyers, that's the ultimate decision factor. For others, price is secondary to quality, cultural fit, and alignment with goals.
They Ask You Answer asks organizations to think in their buyer's shoes. When deciding vendors you like to know the cost. So do your buyers.
By publicizing pricing, you build trust. You'll also find people who cannot afford you qualified out. That gives you more time to speak to buyers who can convert.
2. Problems
Just like you ask negative questions about a product or service, so do your buyers.
They want to know what could go wrong with using your type of software. What's the impact of having the wrong strategic goals set by a consultant?
These questions are inevitable. That's why it makes sense to get in front of those questions and be seen as helpful and honest by your buyer.
3. Comparisons
As you build your positioning, you're encouraged to think of the alternatives your buyers have. That's not always other vendors or consultants.
The positioning canvas, the result of a positioning exercise, captures the alternatives. Your buyers will ask how you compare to each of those.
You must talk to the comparisons and help your buyer make informed decisions. The competition exists, whether you acknowledge it or not.
4. Proof
How often do you buy without hearing what friends, families, or peers think?
This group of questions is where your buyers want to see that by choosing your software or services they're making the right choice.
Our brains seek signals that something is good, safe, or bad. Your buyers want to be reassured of their choice, meaning reviews, recommendations, and references.
5. Best In Class
Your buyers want to see which options best align with their interests.
This is more than price. Your buyers want to know things like what the best provider is for their company size, consultants in their industry, or companies in their location. It can even stretch to ethics and values
Buyers love to see how you fit their needs, not the other way round.
The role of a workshop in the They Ask You Answer process is to involve customer-facing in planning and creating marketing content.
The workshop is a logical step after you have:
But this is the beginning of a new process. The workshop is not one-and-done. That's why we'll share three stages to approach the workshop, and then the importance of coaching to keep the momentum here.
To make your workshop a success, you need to follow a pre-in-post flow.
Pre-Workshop
At the pre-workshop stage, you want to be clear about:
- Who should attend,
- What the agenda is,
- What your goals are, and
- Participation
Attendants
Who you invite to the session depends on your company size. For start-ups, you'll want anyone customer facing - i.e. CEO, founder, Head of Marketing, Head of Sales, Head of Success, and key members of the team from each of those areas.
Agenda
The agenda is crucial to encouraging clarity on the role of They Ask You Answer, why it matters, and the process you'll go through. You'll want to provide 45 minutes to document and discuss the questions. All in, the session will run 60-120 minutes.
Goals
The goals from this process are your choice, but typically you'll aim to:
- Capture a minimum of 50 questions asked by our ICP
- Produce a 12-month content calendar
- Create a process to capture and develop new content based on new questions
- Create a process to review and refresh one piece of content every month
Participation
Communicate expectations for participation. That should be:
- To read a copy of They Ask You Answer,
- Read through your positioning canvas,
- Keep your ICP and persona PDFs to hand, and
- Make a list of ~30 questions (each) that your buyers have asked
The last one meets the most resistance. For the workshop to be successful, your participants need to do this - even if there's duplication.
To help, recommend how your team can think about questions by grouping them in two ways - firstly, with the Big 5, and then the buyer's journey.
Encourage your participants to look through emails, customer tickets, sales calls, and more to find the questions.
In The Workshop
With participants well-prepared, it's time for the workshop.
Before, you'll use our template to create structure and clarity on capturing the questions. This template is key to making your content plan post-workshop.
To structure the workshop, follow this flow:
When explaining the process, you want to cover the steps to take in this session:
- Grouping the questions by the Big 5 and buyer's journey
- Determining who asks the question (your personas)
- Gauging how often they're asked, and
- Assigning a priority (i.e. we need to answer this question ASAP) to each question
You need to be the facilitator or set a facilitator who can keep pace and set the rules of the game for the session around respect and participation.
Post Workshop
Once the workshop is done, you'll need to thank the participants, reiterate the value of the exercise, and get to work on turning this into a content plan.
Turning the question bank into a content plan requires some basic, but crucial steps:
One quick note on coaching.
They Ask You Answer isn't one-and-done. You must embrace it wholeheartedly. To do so, this ideation workshop must remain the cornerstone of your content marketing.
Provide your team with the tools to capture new questions and schedule monthly reviews of this content.
And when it comes to producing this content, continue to be a coach. Support the content creators with best practices and get feedback from your buyers.
While this process has been built on They Ask You Answer, it doesn't replace the value of reading / listening to your copy. I encourage you to head to Marcus' site to get a copy ASAP. Read it. Annotate it. Read it again. It'll become your best friend.
Get Your Free They Ask You Answer Workshop Template
Lastly, if you'd like to run this They Ask You Answer workshop for yourself, click below to download a copy of the template to build your question bank and run your workshop.
If you have any questions about running the process, email or let's connect. Good luck!