Brand is a top priority for many businesses, but it often lacks a clear definition, owner, or action plan. People frequently conflate the term “brand” with related concepts like vision, awareness, positioning, and design, and so it never really gets articulated, and therefore never really gels. I’ve been doing brand work for a long time, across a wide range of clients—from massive global conglomerates to edgy startups to small local businesses, and everything in between. Personally I’ve found that the most effective way to think about brand is to replace it with the word “relationships.” Not relationships in some abstract…
Who is your customer?
Every business at every stage must be able to answer two questions: What do you want?Who is your customer? I’ve written about vision recently. Vision is essential because it focuses your attention. Where you focus your attention creates your world. Knowing your customer is also essential. But surprisingly, in all their day-to-day busyness, companies can easily forget exactly who they are trying to serve. The art and science of customer segmentation can get a bit complicated, but there’s a simple framework I’ve been using with enterprise, SMB, nonprofit, and startup clients for the past few years that seems to work…