Do You Know Who You Are? What you represent? The values you stand for? What your brand purpose is? The kind of personality you are? How you meet people’s needs?

If you aren’t able to say. And you don’t really know. Do you think you’ll be able to tell others effectively? Do you think you’ll be able to communicate how you can add value, help make their lives better or give them what they’re looking for? And will you be able to build relationships with people who consume what you offer and ultimately therefore deliver business success?

This post isn’t about all brands needing to have a social purpose or being there for the greater good. Because that’s just not reality, is it? Is a fizzy drink brand or a chocolate snack brand really there to help make the world a better place? Is that their brand purpose? Brands need to be responsible of course, and should play their part in ways such as bringing people together, but purpose doesn’t always need to equate to social good.

Your brand purpose is determined by what you offer and the enjoyment / education / assistance / quality / pleasure / satisfaction people derive from interacting with your brand. Identify what this is and you’ll be able to understand where you fit in, not just in your competitive market but in the lives of people. And then you’ll be able to build your marketing strategy and communications plan.

From knowing what you offer and how you fit in you can more clearly define your personality. One that embodies your brand purpose and values. You can develop your tone of voice to effectively speak as your brand. You can create the look and feel that visually manifests your brand.

Know who you are.

Know who you are, know how you need to bring that to life, and your marketing strategy and communications plan will have a chance of succeeding. You’ll have a set of ‘pillars’ to refer back to and make sure everything you do is right for your brand. If you don’t know who you are you could be wasting big chunks of your marketing budget (a budget you probably fought hard to justify) – failing to make connections, failing to resonate with real people. Why? Because your brand purpose, your tone of voice and your message won’t add up. They’ll lack consistency and as a result they’ll lack authenticity.

People need to believe you can deliver on what you’re saying. People need to believe how you act in the channels you use is a true reflection of what you are and what you offer them.

The message in these channels and the way the message is delivered can build trust. When your brand says ‘I understand what you’re looking for from me’ and that’s consistently delivered, people build an understanding of what they’ll get from interacting with you. They begin to build up trust.

With the dominance of digital channels and the ever greater demand for ever greater measurement of ROI leading to more and more marketing budget being spent on responsive and tactical activity, delivered at speed, it’s never been more important for marketing activity to be underpinned by businesses knowing what their brand purpose is.

Without clear purpose and personality, the activity is in danger of becoming stand alone and disjointed and inconsistent. All of which allows confusion and doubt to creep into people’s minds. And those relationships built on trust, because your message resonates, just aren’t there.

First things first.

So before you spend all of your marketing budget, make sure you can say you know who you are, this is your personality, and this is how you meet people’s needs.

If you think you need to uncover who you are, let’s have a chat.