An Essential FAQ Question for Marketing Agencies and fCMOs
If you run a marketing agency or if you are a fractional chief marketing officer (fCMO), a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section on your website is vital
Why?
One big reason is because there’s so much low-cost competition on sites like Fiverr and Upwork. Relative to those on-demand marketing talent solutions, you need to answer why it’s worth it for your business leads to pay a premium for what you offer.
If you have an FAQ on your website, you likely already address:
Your scope of services
The types and/or sizes of businesses you help
How businesses can get started with you
Whether you require a long-term contract (often, this Q&A is only included if you don’t, as most businesses are looking for less risk with the ability to go month to month, at least to start with)
Some FAQs I’ve seen go a bit further to address why marketing is crucial to the success of client businesses.
Here’s a question that appears far less often in agency and fCMO FAQs — but it’s one that gives you a lot of leverage:
“How will I know my marketing is working?”
A few months ago, at an Alignable speed networking event, I connected with the Founder and CEO of Staying Power Marketing, Staci Hazeur. We set up a 1:1 call to talk further and, in the run-up to that call, I checked out her website. That’s when I saw this question in her FAQ and how she answers it:
You can answer this question with as little or as much detail as you want. But as you can see from Staying Power Marketing’s example, this common client question presents another website call-to-action opportunity to get your lead into your sales ecosystem.
Other great questions for your FAQ
I also frequently see the Q&A “How long will it take to see results?” As agencies and fCMOs know, many factors go into answering this — chiefly, which marketing channels are used and the level of investment for sufficient content volume to break through the noise and beat the algorithms. I’ve seen that experience- and skills-infused answers that ultimately boil down to “it depends” can still go a long way to building trust with your leads who — because they’re taking the time to read your FAQ — are more ready to buy than others who are browsing your site.
Here are two other places to go for FAQ questions that automatically pass the SEO test — because they’re based on what humans have typed into search engines and addressed in top articles and blogs indexed by search engines:
ChatGPT. Try asking it, “What are 20 questions that businesses ask when they research marketing agencies to use?” If you have a few key marketing channel specialties, you can modify this question and ask it multiple times with a variation for each specialty in order to generate questions that align more closely with what you offer. (Another related tip: increase the number in front of the word “questions” to get content for both your FAQ and for new blog posts and/or search query-based landing pages to add to your site.)
Google Search Console. After connecting your website to it, if it’s not already, go to the Performance section on the left, and then click on the Queries tab. You’ll see search queries that real people have typed into Google that resulted in them landing on your site.
More guidance to create an FAQ that stands out from your competition
One of my most popular posts is on Three Ways to Optimize Your Website FAQ. Check it out here.
