Just ask "Why" 5 times!
Pioneered by Toyota, here's an example of using the 5 Whys technique:
Problem: Our Google Ads failed to get us the goal of 50 sales this month.
- Why? – Our landing page conversion was seriously low.
- Why? – Most people exited the page within less than 20 seconds.
- Why? – The messaging on the page didn't resonate with them.
- Why? – Our ads were shown to the wrong keyword searches.
- Why? – Our keywords were incorrect because we initially run ads for keywords with the most volume, rather than keywords that actually relate to the product we offer.
Counter-measure: Re-do keyword research based on search data collected on Google Ads and run a new ad group.
You could take it to the 6th, 7th, or 8th why. But usually the five iterations of asking why is enough to discover the root cause of the problem.
I guess we should really start with why.
