Get Clear About Who You Are & What You Offer

Jenni here! While doing some research for some of our new marketing materials (hurray, an official sales deck!) I started doing some digging for stats. I'll get more into why stats are a great thing to have in your marketing in a future blog post, but using stats effectively was a valuable lesson that I learned from my early marketing days as a coordinator.

While stumbling around the internet, reading business reports and various online marketing info, I came across a piece of compelling data from the Harvard Business Review: 

THE #1 REASON YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL BUY FROM SOMEONE ELSE:

1. They can't understand who you are
2. Your packages aren't clear, so they don't know how to buy you

THE #2 REASON YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL BUY FROM SOMEONE ELSE:

    3.  They don't feel like they can trust you.

This should be sounding all kinds of alarms in your mind. Or at the very least causing you to pause and think through your marketing. When I read this stat, my brain leapt to a couple key conclusions:

1. Clarity is key
2. Simplicity is not optional
3. Gaining your customer's trust is imperative

But this begets a better question — HOW? How do you demonstrate to your potential clients that your method or process is actually going to work, they will get desired results, or (here's the big one) you're actually worth the pricing you're charging?

Clarity, my friend. 

Around here at Primd, we say that there's three big questions that you need to understand about your brand to truly stand out:

• Who is your brand?
• Who is your brand for?
• How is your brand different than others that do what you do?

Getting clear on these three questions is the very best way to show your best potential clients what to expect from you, which goes a long way in building trust. 

We've created an offering based on this exact need in our favorite clients. When they were writing the copy on websites, or were looking for blog topics for their editorial calendar — they struggled difficult to answer some of the basic questions, like who they were writing to, or what they wanted their dream clients to do once they'd landed on their website. We began writing our Brand Plans simply as a way to help our clients hold onto who they were and how exactly they helped their people, while they went about doing, making, and building all the rest of their businesses. 

SNEAK PEEK: EXERCISE FROM THE BRAND PLAN

Today's posts is a bit of a sneak peek from  our brand strategy, The Brand Plan process — we send our clients through an intentional time of digging deep into who they are, who their clients are, and what makes then unique in their market place. 

If you're still in that phase where you think you know what you're doing, but you struggle to explain it in simple sentences, today's post is a great place to start.

The Brand Plan exercise: Defining WHAT YOUR BUSINESS DOES

We want you to pull out a piece of paper, and divide it into thirds. In each section, you're going to pretend that you're at a cocktail party, and you've been asked what it is that you do. You're going to practice answering that question three times, in three different ways.

 

One: What are you selling?

For this first time answering this question, think about the "low hanging fruit" answer. We want you to write your answer based on the product that you sell to your clients. So for example, you could answer: "My name is Jenni and I am the co-owner of Prim'd Marketing. We sell plans, brand identities and websites to small to mid-sized businesses."

Straight forward, literal and tangible. 

 

Two: What Skills or Unique things do you bring to the table?

For this second time, look beyond just the literal things you are selling, and think about the strengths that you bring to your clients that are specifically yours. This example might sound like, "My name is Jenni and I am the co-owner of Prim'd Marketing. I am an expert communicator and designer, and I use my skills to help brands create and share who they are online."

 

Three: What do you give your clients?

This third time, we want you to think about what you do from your client's point of view. We've adopted the mantra of Kendrick Shoppe, a sales coach in our industry, who has her clients answer the question "So that you can..." Putting your skills and packages through this lens forces you to examine what it is that you're really offering your clients. For example this might sound like, "My name is Jenni and I am the co-owner of Primd Marketing. I help small to mid-sized businesses with plans and designs so that they can have a polished and cohesive brand, and they can feel more clear and confident about how they talk about themselves online."

Moving through these three ways of answering the question "So what do you do?" will help you get a clearer vision of how exactly you're helping your favorite clients. And when you're more clear, you can use these benefits to show potential clients a) what you're going to do for them b) how you're going to do it using things that are unique to you and c) what they're going to get gain by working with you. 

Take some time to look back at your "Work with Us" or "About" pages of your website. Use this exercise to refine some of the language, or even better, some of your headlines. 

More about The Brand Plan

This exercise was taken from one of our Brand Plan worksheets. It's our signature service that we think is the very best way to get clear within yourself and help your clients even more.  If this sounds like something that could help you, get in touch with us!

 A CUSTOM GUIDEBOOK THAT : 

• Helps you make business decisions, based on your visions and growth plans
• Teaches you about your customers: what their pains points are, why they buy, and how to talk to them
• Understands the nuances of what make your brand unique from others in your marketplace
• Takes your real-life personality and passions, and show you how to fuse them into your business and online presence
• Defines the things that are important to you, making sure that you’re staying true to the heart of your business.

THE BRAND PLAN SHINES LIGHT ON WHAT MAKES YOU, YOU.

Our 6-week intensive program is designed to put words and plans to all of the business concerns and ideas bouncing around in your brain. We flush out and filter your ideas based on your passions, personality and business savvy. Then we distill those ideas into one 20+ Page plan that helps with so many parts of your business, you just might carry it around in your computer bag.