What business are you in?

When I work with a coaching client, I ask a lot of questions starting with…

– What business are you in?
– What products do you sell?
– What services do you provide?

When a potential customer takes a look at your website, brochure, mailer, biz card…

– What do you want them to learn?
– What do you want them to think?
– What do you want them to feel?
– What do you want them to know?
– What do you want them to do?

When it comes to websites, I ask…

– What problem(s) does your website solve?
– … for whom?

When I get a sense of the answers from my client’s perspective, I ask…

– How would your marketing team answer these questions?
– How about your sales team?
– How would your customers answer them?
– How do you know?

If the answer to the last question is not convincing — and it almost never is — I suggest that we work on finding a way to get solid answers to these questions before we do anything else. It is rare for a CEO, sales manager, marketing director and a select group of customers to agree on a description of a business and its products/services, let alone the message(s) they are trying to communicate.

If you think it is time to make sure your company is strategically aligned, here are some real world tools from Kevin Connolly, marketing guy.

How can a small businesses build its brand?

I spotted an interesting question on LinkedIN today, “For Small – Medium Size Business Owners, what is the #1 Marketing tool they should be using to build their brand.”

A lot of the responders talked about techniques… writing articles, blogging, networking, direct mail, “the internet.” It occurred to me that the #1 tool that every small to midsize business should use to build their brand is attitude. My suggestion…