Me? I’m a huge “I-have-to-write-it-down” kind of person. And since I’ve joined the world of marketing, I’m even more of one… I’m constantly writing down notes, reading other marketers’ blogs for ideas and best practices, studying the latest digital marketing trends, and even “Twitter-pating”.

My Evernote clipboard is like an overstuffed scrapbook, bursting at the seams with colorful tissue paper, stickers, globs of paint, and torn fabric.

But through all the “studying” and research, do you know what I’ve learned about marketing?

Marketing is:

–       Best learned on the job

–       Best learned through trial and error

–       It can’t really be taught

–       Measurable by results

–       …And it’s easy to lose the big picture

Back in January 2016, I gave a presentation on how to wrap your head around content and digital marketing to a group of female entrepreneurs. Most—if not all—the women in the room are sole business owners, and struggle with the concept of how to embrace digital marketing in today’s day and age.

The presentation talked mainly about taking a step back and thinking about content marketing as two different entities. In my presentation, I called them the King and the Queen. The “King” represents content, and the “Queen” represents distribution—or social media. But that’s a blog for another day.

If you’re interested, you can check out more about this here.

Anyways, before I began my presentation, I handed out this worksheet, titled “Think About Your Own Story”. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, it helps to take a step back, and ask yourself these questions:

1)   What are your biggest marketing challenges?

2)   Who are your buyers, and how can you solve their problems?

3)   What can you learn from your buyers?

4)   What are your content and social media goals?

5)   What is the goal you want to get across with your content or marketing?

Big deal, right? Maybe not for some…but I shared this with my audience, and now I’m sharing this with you because this is what helped me wrap my head around marketing—once and for all.

This is also what I like to call “brain management”.

So, again, if you are at all like me, then this worksheet could help you. Just by pulling yourself back from a problem that you are too immersed in, and asking yourself some pretty basic, yet thought-provoking questions, you begin to see a clearer path towards your business and marketing goals.

Download your own free copy of the worksheet, and start thinking about your own story, and how you can use that knowledge to power your marketing and your business!