Who Are You?

There are two ‘who’s’ when it comes to finding your voice.  

The first, and the focus of today’s article, is “who are you?”  The second is, who is your audience, which will be covered in a later installment in this series.  A quick hint on the second one:  Your target audience, your potential customers, are NOT everyone.

You likely have a pretty good sense of who you are. 

But when it comes to marketing, you need to know more about yourself than just who you are as a person.  You need to know who you are as a business person.  You need to know who you are as a business. You need to know who you are as a brand.  It isn’t enough to just say “I’m Mike and I run a business”.

Whether we realize it or not, a lot of business decisions have a very personal element attached to them.  The saying ‘people will forget what you did, but people will always remember the way you made you feel’ applies in this case.  So when building your business brand, remember your personal brand is very tied up in that as well.  Some business relationships will be strictly transactional.  But a growing number of business relationships are becoming based on personal relationships.

When it comes to getting your story out there, it is very much YOUR personal story that needs to be part of it.

The next step will be to get your business story out there.  Who are you as a business?  A brand? This will help with a few other steps down the line when telling your story as well.  Things like: why did you start this business? What is your main product and/or service?  Why is it the best choice? What do you stand for?  All of these topics will be discussed later in the series.

You may have noticed that when it comes to telling your story, there are a lot of questions.  These questions I am giving you right now are the very same questions that your prospective customers have?

When looking for a company to do business with, people will often research various businesses within what they are looking for.  They will want to know what makes your product service the best for them.  They may want to know what you stand for.  They may want to know all of what you offer.  And they may want to know what motivates you.

In short, they will want to know who you are. They want to know your story.

The best story, along with the best product or service, will get the business.  And if you are able to deliver on what you are promising, you will get loyalty.  Your customers will advance your story.  They will tell your story to others who may be looking for the same thing.

There is much more that goes into knowing what your story is.  Finding someone who can help you get to the bottom of these details will be extremely beneficial.  In doing this with other clients, new information was able to be found.  Questions you may not think to ask yourself will get asked.  Furthermore, having someone removed from the business will work with you to expand your answers.  This will create a depth to your story that you might not get on your own.

It may be a tough exercise.  It will require you looking deep within yourself to learn some of these things.  And it’s only the first part of answering ‘who you are’.  It is one thing to tell yourself who you are. It is entirely different to find your voice and get the story out there.  After all, it isn’t yourself that you  need to tell the story to.  It is your audience.

And who is your audience?  Stay tuned for the next installment.