Building your Brand Story - 5 important questions to answer
Today, we're talking about building your Brand Story.
To effectively communicate your company's products and services, you need to be able to articulate your story – who you are, what you do, who you do it for, how you do it, etc.
We're always working on this in some way, shape or form. Both for ourselves and our clients.
Your potential customers need to understand what you do and how you can make their lives better somehow. If you're a purpose-driven company, then your purpose, mission, and ‘why’ should be central to this.
Below are some of the key questions to ask, why they're important, and suggestions on how you could answer them.
When providing examples, we've used our business – Focus Mode.
1. Who are you?
The answer to this question is about your business's general area, without getting into any specifics. Use terms that are common to your industry. Clarity and simplicity are essential here.
For example:
"We're Focus Mode. We're an ROI-driven boutique digital marketing consultancy."
2. What do you do?
Here it would help if you focused on the outcomes and benefits of your work.
Don't get into the 'how' yet – by getting too features based and detailed. It's more about the value you create for the people who use your product or service.
For example:
"We help ethical, purpose-driven businesses create sustainable digital marketing campaigns that generate revenue on autopilot.
3. How do you do it?
Here you talk more about the nuts and bolts of what you offer — your services and products.
It can be challenging to do in one sentence (we haven't managed it!), especially if you have a sophisticated offering. Again, simplicity is your friend.
For example:
"Focus Mode is a boutique consultancy helping ethical, purpose-driven businesses do better digital marketing. We offer Strategy & Planning, SEO, PPC, Email, Social, CRO, Analytics, and Content Marketing."
4. What's your mission?
Having a clearly defined mission (or 'why') helps communicate what your brand stands for beyond just the products and services you offer.
It can help potential customers identify with your values and learn more about the kind of beliefs you hold.
Here's Focus Mode's mission:
“Our mission is to help purposeful companies achieve their purpose. When you're successful, we're successful.
We donate a portion of our profits via Kiva, supporting low-income entrepreneurs and students in over 80 countries globally. Kiva's mission is "to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty".
We believe that everyone holds the power to create an opportunity for themselves and others but may not have the financial means to get started.
If we work together, we can help you fulfil your purpose, and in doing that, we fulfil our purpose - to help others realise theirs. It's a beautiful, virtuous cycle!
5. Who are your target customers?
You need to be very clear on who you're targeting and why. Personas, audience profiles, demographic data and research are all useful tools at your disposal to support this.
You can start by answering the questions, "Who do you serve?" "Who buys from you?" "Who loves what you do?"
For us, it's:
"We work with owners, founders and digital marketing teams within purpose-driven, ethical businesses".
So, there you go — five questions you can work through to start building your Brand Story.
If you can get clear on these five, you'll be able to clearly and succinctly explain who you are to the people you meet and in the communications and marketing your business puts out.
Thanks for reading. I hope it was useful.
If you need some extra help with your planning, you can download the framework for these questions, and many more, in our FREE Campaign Planning Workbook. Just fill in the form below and we’ll send it over.
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