Who the Hell Are You? Path to Building Your Brand

If you want your customers to understand you, you need to understand yourself at first. This may seem obvious, but a lot of companies don't get it.

However, if you do get it you can turn it to your advantage and have your customers understand who you are, why they should care about you and how you're (better) different from your competitors - key in building a crystal clear brand. And let's face it, brand has become a vital component of any successful company today. So let's figure out who the hell you are.

3 examples

To kick things off, we'll take a look at 3 companies with a razor-sharp definition of who they are:

3-key questions

There are 3 key questions prospects ask themselves when they come across your company, so if you want to turn those prospects into buying customers you'd better have some really sharp answers ready. The 3 questions go like this:

Who are you?
Why should I care?
What makes you different?

In the following we'll look into these questions and - more importantly - how to answer them, so read on.

Who are you? "The manufacturer of the Mini-cars, all based on the design of the original Mini."

1. Who are you?

Any prospect will at his first encounter with your company - be it your website, your product or an advertisement - start off by asking "Who are you"?

The answer is often quite straight forward: "Baymard.com is a website with a (free) marketing strategy course for entrepreneurs".

Now go ahead and grab a piece of paper and write down your answer.

It's important your answer also mentions what your main offer is: "a (free) marketing strategy course," and who you have specialized to serve: "for entrepreneurs and start-ups". If you haven't found your niche audience yet, then read another of our articles A Simple Strategy for Start-Ups to Kick Fortune-500-Butt, it ought to help.

Why should I care? "Because your living room gets to be cool while you still have money left for what really matters to you."

2. Why should I care?

The next question a prospect asks is "Why should I care?".

This is where it gets tough for most companies. What would your answer be?

To answer this question you need to fully understand who you are and what you're really delivering to your customers. There is a simple 3-step technique for this:

Start by writing down the product you are selling to your customers, your main offer.
Now say "meaning" after the sentence you just wrote. Keep doing that until you're left with what you are really helping your customers do (typically 3 iterations or more). The true benefit of your product.
Find the essence of those answers; the answer to the "Why should I care?" question lies here. Finding the essence is difficult - take time to figure it out because it's a critical part of the task.

Using this site as the example again, it would look like this:

"A (free) marketing strategy course for entrepreneurs".
Meaning "entrepreneurs will learn how to create their own marketing strategy for free" meaning "they will receive more customers because they know how to market their company" meaning "they will make more money" meaning "they will become successful and admired entrepreneurs".
The essence is "learn marketing" and "become successful". Now we can restate this "essence" into an answer for the "Why should I care?" question; "because you will learn how to market yourself to success".

Now take the paper from before (where you wrote your answer to "who are you?") and complete the 3 steps above and find your own answer to the "What's in it for me?" question.

Now it's time for the final question.

What makes you different? "Unlike our competitors, sweetriot believes in art - each month we put new art created by independent artist on our tins."

3. What makes you different?

You've covered who you are and why your customers should care. Now comes the most important part: "what makes you different?".

Potential customers will want to know what makes you different from your competitors, what makes you stand out from the pack. If you can't answer this question satisfyingly (because you aren't doing anything different), then you will never be able to build a strong brand. If that's the case we suggest reading our article about being remarkable first and then come back.

So you know what makes you different from your competitors? Just jot down your answer and you're done. If you need a little inspiration, the answer for this site would be: "Unlike our competitors, Baymard have interactive videos and tasks embedded in all our articles to make them easier to understand and more engaging".

Remember to include the benefit: "[to make the articles] easier to understand and more engaging," from your differences: "unlike our competitors, Baymard have interactive videos and tasks embedded in all our articles," in your answer. This way your customers can see why you differences should matters to them.

Positioning statement

Congratulations! By answering all three questions you've now got yourself a positioning statement. The first - and single most important - step in building a brand. Your positioning statement tells how you wish to be perceived by customers, press, investors, retailers, bystanders, virtually everyone. It is therefore the core of your business and what you'll want to convey at every single opportunity you get. Your answers should read as a sentence:

"(Who are you?) Baymard.com is a website with a (free) marketing strategy course for entrepreneurs. (What's in it for me?) You will learn how to market yourself to success, and (What makes you different?) unlike our competitors Baymard have interactive videos and tasks embedded in all our articles to make them easier to understand and more engaging."

The reason this is so powerful for your company and your branding efforts is because you now have the essence, the core purpose, of you entire company in a three sentence paragraph that can be explained to anyone in about 30 seconds. And 30 seconds is just about all the time you get.

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