Your Brand’s Biggest Secret: It’s Not About You.

May 16, 2018

It’s a little hard to swallow, but it’s true.  Prospects don’t care about your brand.  Not at all. That’s the big secret, and the bad news.

Here’s the good news.  Prospects care very much about what you can do for them.  If you can do something no one else can do, or do it in a way no one else does it, or do it faster, or easier, or smarter, or greener, or prettier — if you can do it differently and better — they want to hear all about it.

What does that mean for you?  For starters, talk less about yourself.  Make it all about your prospects.  What are their goals or challenges or opportunities?  What’s frustrating about the solutions they’re using now?  And how can your people or product or service fix it for them?

Here’s a simple exercise.  Go through your website or social media content or sales literature.  Print it all out.  Take a black marker and cross out everything that talks about you and your company (look for pronouns like “we” and “us”).

Now take a highlighter and highlight everything that talks about your prospect and their wants and needs (look for “you”).

Those highlighted parts are what prospects read and care about.  The blacked-out parts?  That’s the stuff they’re skimming or skipping.  Now refine your content until the highlighted parts outnumber the rest by three-to-one or more.

Here are three questions to jumpstart your thought process: *

  1. What do you offer that no one else can?
  2. What’s a recognized weakness in your industry that you can exploit or eliminate?  (Think about waiting for the doctor or the cable guy, as examples.)
  3. How can you make life or work easier for your prospect?  More convenient?  More fun?  More efficient?  Better?

*  Use these for strategic planning, too, by imagining what you could do.

(If you’re ready to pivot and make your prospects the focus of your branding, Idealogy can help.  We can facilitate a planning session to help your team reimagine your products and services, or simply help you refocus your messaging on what your prospects need and want.  Just reply to this email to learn more.)