The Question and Answer Economy : How Customer Questions Drive Revenue Growth

The single greatest advance of the last quarter century is the internet and the subsequent democratization of all of the worlds information.

The benefits are obvious and realized collectively. 

Far beyond just providing access to more data, new revolutionary patterns of thinking and breakthrough possibilities in technology have emerged.

Any piece of information or data is instantaneously available to anyone, anywhere on a supercomputer that fits in a pocket.

On balance, that's a really good thing and we all enjoy it.

From a business perspective, the downside is more personal and individual. 

It gets to the heart of your business and why you exist. 

With around 2 billion websites to choose from, why should anyone spend time on yours?

Think about it. 

Digitally speaking, I can go anywhere I want.

What brings me to you?

More and more, it's because of a question I have and the perception, often contained in a moment of truth lasting no more than half a second while glancing at search result listings, that your page has an answer for me.

People will find your site based on the questions they are asking.

They will stay and buy based on the answers they get. 

Customer behavior is now almost entirely driven by questions.

Their initial experience with you is driven by that first query. Everything that follows is a recovery from that moment.

The search for something by your customers defines your work more than ever.

This is more than SEO, or even SEO 2.0

The process you need to work through is about your potential to map your revenue model to how your customers think. And because of Google and the pervasiveness of search, we all now think in questions.

The Question Based Digital Economy

Going back to the earliest origins of civilization, we know the dominant technology of an era can change how we think.

When we started drawing on cave walls we started to think in terms of symbols.

When language developed, we thought in words. We now dream in language.

Soon after language developed, we began to pass stories that held information about different elements of society.

Once upon a time, a story was a new form of technology. It contained data and enabled it to be shared in a permanent and compelling way.

Leaping ahead to today, we have nearly unlimited digital storage containing all the worlds information. It is accessible via a truly dominant technology; the search engine.

The search engine itself has slowly changed how we think. It's altered our thought patterns, which then shifts actual patterns of behavior.

We have so many answers to us now. Consequently, we tend to think more and more in questions. 

And even that is evolving. 

Because of autocomplete, we tend to think in the early stages of a question.

Now we just start typing, sometimes before we even have the thought complete in our own head. We get to choose in real time and in a seamless interface from options that help us complete our questions.

The Future of The Question and Answer Economy

But typing is so 2018........

All of the cramped thumb work we have gotten so good at is going away.

Quickly.

The interface the world is racing to is voice.

According to comScore, by 2021 fully 50% of our searches will be done by voice and 30% of our queries will no longer be via a screen.

Half of all searches. In 24 months.

Voice changes the game, and not because it promotes more access and mobility. It is more than that.

We know that the nature of what customers are searching for actually changes when that search is done by voice.

Voice search promotes more question oriented phrases. As we discussed, this offers you more opportunity to provide answers and acquire new customers.

Searches via voice are also different in their length, and in the information they offer you about your customers.

A key principle of the question based economy is that not only is the customer able to get more information from you, but due to the very nature of their questions, you are able to get more information from them.

Voice offers you more information on your customer simply because they give you more words.

That lengthens the tail and allows them to be more specific, nuanced and intentional about what they are looking for.

And because of the increase in the number of question based queries, and due to their increased length, we can get much better about determining intent.

Once upon a time, we built funnels based on a click path. Now, we can build funnels based on question oriented phrases.

These phrases signal intent to purchase based on the actual words used.

This also allows us to better score leads or inquiries and prioritize customers based on the question word they engaged a search with.

3 Steps To Better Monetizing Question Flow

1. Think like your customer

The first step is to get closer to your customer and think like they do.

To do this well, you need to get really humble.

Most businesses are not very good at thinking like their customer. The primary reason is because they are led by senior leaders that 'know what they want' and 'understand how this works'.

To drive more web traffic and revenue you must get closer to the questions your customers have that led them to your business.

Answer the Public is a fantastic tool that scrapes and shows you the autocomplete data and results for any domain on the internet. It is free and really easy to use. You can get your autocomplete results in less than 5 seconds.

This step is focused on learning.

The takeaway is a firm list of 100-200 questions your customers are asking that you need to have clear answers for in your content.

2. Exchanges of value

The second step is to understand the exchange of value you are currently having with your customers.

Take your results from Answer the Public, and type in the same questions. Spend an hour just being a customer. Try different queries.

Like what you see? Would you buy?

Then you can use a tool like Spy Fu and check out competitors. What sites are competing for the same keywords? What are they serving to potential customers on similar queries?

What queries are they answering that you should?

This step is about determining where you want to compete. The takeaway is an additional list of at least 25 questions competitor sites are doing a better job of answering. Additionally, you should have a clear idea of the project plan for the content you need to create to better address your actual search queries.

3. Driving for results

The third phase is driving for results based on what you learn in step 1 and 2.

Maybe you have someone you manage that does SEO, maybe you have an agency, or maybe it is you. It really doesn't matter.

No matter your set up, if you own revenue, you need to own what drives it. Get in the weeds and understand what you and your team are doing to capture question flow and how you are monetizing that.

It is during this step you need to create new content, with new keywords, that is aligned with the new customer question list you developed in steps one and 2.

For far too many people, delivering a good customer experience means just being nice, or saying thank you. Some of the worlds largest companies only care about answering questions when they show up in a social feed.

Saying thank you is important, and answering questions on Twitter is necessary.

But, more often than not, those efforts are late.

Really late.

To grow you need new customers. They need more than a thank you.

They need an answer, and they need it now.

The good news is, if potential customers want something now, that means you can grow now.

All you need to do is the work to connect with them.

This is a brief excerpt from a book currently in development, "The Question and Answer Economy : How Customer Questions Drive Revenue Growth". You've read the content, now feel free to participate by leaving a comment or sharing this post. Thanks for being part of the journey -- Jason