You know the old saying, “being in the right place at the right time”? That is usually used as a sign of luck, rather than carefully planned action. But what if we could be at the right place at the right time more often than just by luck?

I have found over the years, that you can market anything a lot easier if you ask yourself one question:

What question does the customer have, but isn’t even consciously aware of?

Let me give you an example. A while back I wrote a post about hypnotizing yourself to sleep. Now, at a bit past midnight, right before a holiday, I shared the link on StumbleUpon (a social bookmarking site). Imagine, hundreds thousands of people, all online, all knowing that they probably should be asleep already (and likely feeling), knowing the busy day that is ahead of them, suddenly being delivered a message about how to get to sleep easily.

The effect, as you can imagine, was hundreds of visitors within just a few minutes after sharing the post. The reason for this is simple - I answered a question they didn’t know they had - at the right time, and the right place.

And this doesn’t just work for blog posts. You can certainly extrapolate this idea for other uses in other channels. For example, right around February, there will be a lot of people who forgot about their New Year’s resolutions and are feeling guilty about it. Maybe they stopped exercising just a week after New Year’s, despite having committed to lose weight this year. Maybe they didn’t actually spend more time with their family like they had planned. If you happen to be a personal trainer, or a family psychologist, that’s the right time to answer their (unasked, unthought of) question…”how do I get back on track?” and lower their anxiety. That’s the right time to deliver the message.