4 Essential Brand Questions You Need to Answer
Hi Friends,
Been quiet lately as I’ve been doing a bit of traveling and dealing with a 6-month-old who has now decided to start crawling and chasing the dog, giving me and Melissa a run for our money. 🙃
But obviously, I wouldn’t change any of this.
So this week I’m in San Diego & Seattle giving a lecture on branding for my Marketing That Matters Masterseries (M3) and an exercise we’re facilitating is what we like to call The Focus Test.
There are 4 seemingly simple questions that every entrepreneur, business leader, and marketer should answer to help crystalize their brand foundation and align their marketing efforts.
Let’s explore these 4 questions in-depth and I highly recommend taking the time to answer them with your organization.
👉 Who are you
We can easily look at this through a Socrates lens and ask ‘Know Thyself’, but for the sake of this exercise, we’re going to flip it around and dive deep into your business’s motivation.
What’s your source of passion or purpose? What’s the reason your business existsts beyond making money? Why do you do what you do?
Go deep and really try to find out the answer to this question because if you don’t know or believe who you are, why would your customers care to find out?
👉 What do you do?
We sometimes think we know what we do, but in the eyes of your customer, you might be selling something else. Answer this question by thinking critically and try and define the category.
Branding is a game of categories and the more we can (re)define a category, the better chance your customers will be able choose your business and you’ll win.
👉 What is your offering?
There’s nothing worse than meeting someone at a networking event or conference and receiving a long-drawn-out answer to the question “what do you do?”.
Or what about going to a website only to scratch your head and ask yourself what in the world are they selling and if I wanted to buy, what would I buy and how?
Point is that we can all use clarity in articulating our offering in a clear and concise manner. Your customers will appreciate it, your marketing will be more effective, and in the end, why do we want to make it harder to connect with our audience?
👉 Why does it matter?
You’ve established your offering and can articulate it clearly, but why should anyone care? Why should you matter to your audience?
A deep question with deeper reverberations into your brand ethos and purpose. At the end of the day, it’s being able to answer this question that should really pull through some core brand statements and impact your marketing message.
Like I said above, 4 seemingly simple questions that when answered succinctly by an organization, can truly help to grow and scale the business to new heights.
We should remember that in brand-building, MATTERING is thew new marketing and that fully engage your tribe and create a culture of mutual engagement, we must matter with every touchpoint.
Answering these questions should help you to figure out how to matter to your audience and what you should be offering them.
Need help navigating your organization with answering these questions? If so, I’d love to help. Respond to this email or shoot me a TWEET.
As always, I’m all 👂’s
- Steven
- Steven
My Current Reading List
I need some recommendations on new books so if you have one, please respond and let me know.
Strategy is your Words by Mark Pollard (I’ve been following Mark and his Sweathead Strategy Community for a while and his newest book is so far a great read)
48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (More of a coffee-table book that should be looked at often as it’s brilliantly written and 100% applicable to today’s culture)