What causes your problem?

This is the step where you need to make use of your knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking. Perhaps, you will generate a lot of causes that can be attributed to your problem, and if they come to your mind, you definitely need to work on them.

The causes list may be short or long, it depends on the problem that you have. Moreover, some causes may have sub-causes and it is absolutely normal. The more detailed your list will be, the easier it will be for you to develop a plan on how to deal with these problems.

Let’s continue with our example. So we have defined the problem previously, the lack of brand awareness. Now we need to define what causes it.

We don’t use content marketing:

1. We ignore Facebook although our audience uses it actively
2. We don’t have an Instagram account through the visual aspect is rather important in our business
3. We have a Twitter but we rarely post there

• We don’t actually have clear unique selling points
• We never attend conferences
• We don’t have a brand ambassador
• We don’t have a blog
• We don’t have famous speakers
• We don’t use digital ads for promotion
• We aren’t ready to spend big money on advertising

This list may be as long as you wish. Perhaps, you will also include in the list of your problems the inability to nurture business relations, the inability to understand the target audience, or even the fact that you’re offering a bad quality product.

No matter what the causes are, you need to be fair. It will also be great to use the brainstorming technique to define as many causes as possible to work on them later.

The most interesting part – the analysis

After you prepare all the information, the time comes to analyze what you’ve got. You need to choose the causes that have the biggest impact and that must be addressed immediately. You will also notice that some of the problems may be solved by making one decision.

For example, on our list, we have indicated that we don’t use content marketing and don’t have a blog. By creating a content marketing team, we can easily solve these problems. Additionally, it can help find some partners and even determine some employees who will become the opinion leaders and will attend the conferences to build brand awareness! As you can see, the solution is rather easy. We’re sure that the solution will be easy for your business as well!

It goes without saying that each business problem requires a new diagram from you. If you mix up problems to save time, you will just waste it. Here, the precise information is of vital importance, so don’t ignore this requirement.

To get the maximum effect from this diagram, consult your employees and team members about the problems that you have and their causes. Perhaps, they know some information that will be useful to you. I, as an experienced marketer and paperwriter, wish you good luck with your business!