Preparing Your Self Promotional Marketing Materials: Inquiries

Explore these inquiries now and as your business develops. Allow them to suggest themes to create your promotional marketing materials and inform your Rule of Threes work. These themes may also suggest feature stories or background materials for a media kit.

1. How long have you been interested in what you are doing now? Think back to childhood games and interests. In reflecting about this as an artist, I connected with crayon drawings from my childhood that have real kinship with the way rhythmic pattern and color show up in my current work. As a coach, I am aware that I have ALWAYS been the person my siblings, friends, and classmates turned to for insight, clarification, and strategizing.

2. What are you least good at in connection with your work? Why? How has this affected the way you talk about your work? (Become aware of ways you let worry about your weaknesses sabotage your perception of what you have to offer. Are you apologizing for your weaknesses when you could be coming from your strengths?)

3. Here are some quantitative questions. There are no right or wrong answers, just opportunities to understand your assets. For example, smaller numbers may imply exclusivity, larger numbers may imply popularity.

a. What is your education/training? (It is as newsworthy to be self-taught as it is to be a college graduate.)
b. How long have you been doing what you are doing now? Are you applying skills from different backgrounds to your work?
c. What kind of equipment and protocols do you work with? Does high tech or high touch dominate?
d. What is your output, client load or volume? What does this say about your methods? Your goals? Your values?
e. What themes are emerging in your current work? What themes have you worked with in the past? Talk about the transition.

4. How do your clients and customers benefit from the diverse influences and experiences that have made you who you are?

Example: You are an actor. Your passion for simplicity and order make you an extraordinarily reliable cast member and support your quickness at memorizing parts.

Example: You are a sales manager. You came up through the ranks without business school training, learning from a great mentor and taking seminars and workshops that were pertinent to your work in a just-in-time fashion. As a result you have a hands-on, pragmatic, and can-do approach that inspires others to reach beyond their perceived limits.

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Learn more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive small business marketing resource that turns marketing and self promotion into a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood. Find out about those aspects of your work you might otherwise overlook and not use in your self promotional marketing materials.

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Self Promotion Index || Self Promotion, Small Business Marketing, and Your Business Values || Expand Your Vision of Your Small Business Marketing and Self Promotion Practices || Your Effective Self Promotional Marketing Tool - The Rule of Threes || Preparing Your Promotional Marketing Materials - Inventorying Your Unique Appeal || Preparing Your Promotional Marketing Materials - Inquiries || Elevator Speech || Self Promotion Resources: Websites and Books || Reprint Terms for Self Promotion Articles

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Contact an acknowledged expert on self promotion Molly Gordon at:

Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com

As a business coach and small business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater Seattle Area and internationally