Without a People Strategy, There is No Brand Strategy
The Eight Questions You Should Ask to Define Your People Strategy
The focus on brand strategy is almost always on the market situation, unique business model, competitive strategy, and product focus, or the company. The core message, the differentiation from competitors, is what makes this brand unique and building that into a marketing campaign is ultimately about reaching customers. But what’s the people strategy?
Ultimately all buyers of products and brands are people, individuals who make choices based on their culture, class, and affiliations. It’s essential to understand that brands are defined by the people who buy them and represent them. From the customers to potential customers, the employees, and even competitors. This is why it’s about more than the brand alone. It’s about the connections that cultivate the relationship and trust of the company and culture they create to empower the brand story.
The essential essence of brand is the people strategy.
As you focus on the key elements of a company’s mission, vision, and execution, the goal is to create a connection to the people who align with your brand the most. Understanding their values and their problems really helps build an approach that defines the demographics of your customers. Your company’s vision should include a lot about that relationship and how you best reach customers.
Defining customers in detail, their motivations, their problems, and what matters to them is central to creating brands that get noticed and stand out in their culture, their world. Whether this is about a company buying and implementing technology to improve efficiency or consumers shopping for the right car or beer, describing the people who are your customers with detail and understanding their story gives you insights into how to reach them where they live and around what they focus on.
Sierra Nevada beer lives in the crowded market of craft brewing and has made their brand about the outdoor experience. They know that their name, their location, and their history aligns with folks who love camping, the outdoors and RV life. Their focus on trail restoration in the Sierra and building resiliency into their message has really extended their relationship to customers. Why not be part of the life of your customers?
Knowing this and keeping it your marketing focus is essential.
It’s really important to actually define your customers demographically and build a relationship on why they would buy from you. What can you confidently say about the types of customers you have? Their ages? Their gender? Does their education or profession make a difference in how you position your products? How about your own customer relationship teams? Do they clearly reflect the type of company you are and the customers who connect with it?
Trader Joe’s is exceptional in shaping a brand that’s all about a narrow but very focused customer base. They have a select range of unique products. Even their own private label brands are a mix of imported, natural, organic and even gluten-free products that you see nowhere else. The focus on the customers shows the company really cares about what they eat. And, they hire people who reflect the connection they want to make with customers.
Defining your relationship and connection to the brand.
Having a checklist that focuses on customer profiles and core motivations will inform your brand, how you position and shape your core company mission and values. This focus can create a clear brand image that helps the company in understanding and choosing products as well as building a trusted long term relationship with customers and your brand.
Here are some key defining structures that will allow you to build the people strategy that includes and defines the characteristics of customers that you know matter to you. Understanding this and growing from this will keep your company’s brand strategy in front of the right audience.
Defining Your People Strategy
1. What problems do your customers need to solve?
It’s essential that you know what matters to them and that you can deliver solutions that make you a part of their world. It could be home and security, like Nest, or Salesforce solving specific problems for sales and marketing.
2. What do they love to do when they are not working?
Remember, people strategy is about their lives, what they do, and how their world works for them. From a consumer-facing brand to B2B, real people have lives and defining this allows you to know where to show up for them.
3. Where do your customers live?
Demographics and geography tell you a lot about the focus of customers, their culture and how to connect to them. Keeping this in mind as you define your brand strategy can give you insights into what’s relevant to them.
4. What ages of your customers and how would you describe them?
When you begin to understand the culture of customers it’s about knowing their generational connections. Whether a Baby Boomer or GenX generation, you might find what matters to them the most.
5. What motivates your customers?
Sometimes it’s simple, but values that connect them to what matters let you know who they are for your brand and your products.
6. Why would your customers care about you as a brand?
Think hard about this, argue about it. You need to be real from the customer’s perspective. The value you can bring is very important to define. This keeps you connected with customers over time.
7. What’s your mission and how does this relate to your customers’ needs?
Many companies define their mission without really thinking through what matters to customers. Lofty ideals and visions are meaningless if people don’t care.
8. If your brand is remembered for one thing by customers, what would that be?
This is often the hardest but really most important question to ask. Companies are constantly trying to figure this out with exit surveys and mapping customer buying preferences. It’s really essential to know this and revisit this question to stay present to what matters to the most important brand element – the people who buy from you.