What's your one question?

Every business has one. 

A question you're asked, again and again. 

'Are you suitable for children?' 'Do you accept dogs?', 'Where are you?' (that often really means - 'what are you near that I've heard of')... or something equally simple. 

Or there's something that visitors get wrong, again and again. It could be something like not realising you're close to/or a long way from a place, or not realising how much there is to do. Or maybe your visitors often regret not booking in advance for a great local attraction or restaurant? 

Whatever it is, it can be frustrating because you feel like you have to keep repeating yourself. 

It can be a barrier to visiting you - some people have this question but don't get round to asking or don't get the answer quickly enough, so they don't visit.

But it's also useful.

However frequently you're asked, there are probably plenty of people who don't ask and therefore don't visit. 

You probably think you've been really clear. Could you be even clearer? 

I saw a brilliant post on the Keswick Brewery social media. It said, 'we're often asked if we're dog friendly?", accompanied by a photo of about 5 dogs in the brewery. That's the most straight-forward way of getting their point across. Simple - yet few do it. Ideally that question and photo will be repeatedly shown, and also used on their website and in mailings etc. 

Here's a quick challenge for you: make some tweaks to your marketing by answering the question or addressing the misconception more overtly, more often. 

Is there something you can add to your home page? 

Can you use a photo or video to answer the question? 

How often do you post about it on social media? Could you do it in different ways, three times as often? 

Can you change the way you answer the question? 

Could you perhaps even make a feature out of it? 

A long time ago I did some consultancy work for a hotel near Kings Cross. It was a good hotel in a sea of terrible, filthy hotels. The owner knew he had a problem - how could he say his hotel was clean without it sounding defensive? How could he make that statement more credible? How can you show that a place is clean, without it looking like an add for cleaning materials? I dressed the hotel owner in a white lab coat, pink mob cap and gave him long pink Marigolds with fluffy bits at the top, and a bright yellow mop and duster. We photographed him, and then and took more photos of him cleaning the loos, dusting the surfaces etc and used them repeatedly. Almost instantly his bookings went up, and visitors loved his humourous approach.