October, 2011

Attracting Customers / Authentic Marketing / Authentic Message Creation / Authentic Values / Branding / Developing Resourceful People — No Comments
17
Oct 11

How to create a “YOU” position statement

My last blog discussed how to stay true to “the essence of you” in your off and online communications and provided four useful tips. In a nut shell, it was being clear about:

  1. Your values;
  2. The benefits you offer to your ideal customer;
  3. The benefits for yourself and;
  4.  Having an authentic marketing message.

Adding another layer of detail, I will now focus on how to create a “you” position statement that defines (or redefines) “the essence of you” and allows you to see exactly where your current positioning is either succeeding or falling short; and the gap you may need to bridge to achieve greater communication reach.

The six “you” positioning questions are:

  1. Ideal customer target: Who specifically are you trying to influence with your message?
  2. Ideal customer need: What are the needs of your ideal customer and how can you alone fill those needs?
  3. Competitor comparison: Who else might your ideal customer consider to meet their needs? How are you different?
  4. Unique strengths: What are the unique strengths you offer your ideal customer to respond to their needs?
  5. Give reasons why: What proof can you provide to your ideal customer that you can actually deliver your unique strengths?
  6. Describe the traits of “the essence of you”: What are the values, personality and distinctiveness of your individual essence or brand?

These six questions help you define a clear picture of where you are with your current essence or branding, and where you want to be.  The “you” position statement can be used to effectively communicate the essence of you to others, in order to become known for what you alone do to satisfy your ideal customer needs.

If you are operating without either a clear essence or values branding, how will you know whether you are reaching the best possible market place positioning? Defining the essence of you is the best way to grow your business and is just too important to hand over to a third party.

In today’s business world, with its emphasis on fans, followers and friends, we all need to have access to good marketing, but trust, genuine credibility and values outweighs inauthentic marketing.  People don’t always care how much you know, they want to know how much you care!

Have you got a red hot YOU position statement, I’d be pleased to hear about it?

About the author: Teresa Bassham is the Coach & Boss Lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, who is passionate about educating and inspiring small business professionals to create their authentic marketing message and attract their ideal customers.  She runs local workshops in Northern NSW and coach customers online and by phone – if you would like to attend the next scheduled workshop or request distance coaching online – please email me or call 02 6686 8413.

For more regular Authentic Marketing updates visit and like my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/Zenworkz.Authentic.Marketing

All or parts of this blog are able to be published with permission from the author – provided that the author is acknowledged and a link is given to the original source blog.

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Attracting Customers / Authentic Marketing / Authentic Message Creation / Authentic Values / Branding / Trust — No Comments
6
Oct 11

How to avoid losing the essence of “You”

As always, it is a discussion with a passionate small business person that seeds the idea for this blog topic about how easy it is to lose the “essence of yourself” in your branding and what you can do to stop it from happening.  The delightful person in question was talking about a time when she had a professional rewrite her website content and subsequently lost the essence of herself and immediately lost fans.

When I talk about the “essence of you” what I am talking about is personal branding, your service uniqueness, your offer or who you are, particularly if you are the sole provider of your business service.

So, how do you maintain “the essence of you” in your off and online communications?  Here are my top four tips:

Be clear about your values, because communicating your values shows that you believe in yourself and that belief is the key to “selling” yourself and your services or products. Everyone you meet or connect with off and online, forms an impression of who you are and what your business can do. When your values are on show, they will know very quickly if they trust you and want to do business with you. The more you give of the essence of yourself to your customers, the more value you create.  The more value you create, the more others will want to give value back to you.

Be clear about the benefits that you offer to your ideal customers.  When you do this well, your essence or branding expresses who you are when you are delivering your very best.

Be clear about the benefits for yourself.  While meeting the needs of your customers is essential, you need to be the best representation of the essence of you to attract those customers who will be good for you, the ones who encourage you to perform at your best.

Be clear about communicating your authentic marketing message to focus on your essence; that you are passionate about delivering and the benefits that adds the most value to your ideal customer.

This clarity of communication should be your words and your ideas; and if you engage a professional to help you write it, don’t publish until it is the best representation of essence of you.

Communicating authenticity means having the courage to express your individuality and your vulnerability.  It’s about developing and unashamedly accepting your unique strengths and the drive that you have to reach your highest potential to benefit your customer and yourself.

When you make the commitment to define and communicate the essence of you in your work, you begin to focus on your strengths and diminish your weaknesses. You think specifically about how you can differentiate yourself from others providing the same services or products.  In turn you become more aware of how you are perceived by others and make adjustments to be the best you can be.

As this is such a important topic, I will provide a follow on post next week outlining the six key questions you can use to create an “essence of you” positioning statement, which you can use to keep your communications focused on that important brand – “you”.

Finally, I would love to hear what you have to say and whether you have had to fight to maintain the essence of you?

About the Author:  Teresa Bassham is the Chief Coach & Boss Lady of Zenworkz Authentic Marketing, and is passionate about helping small business professionals to create their authentic marketing message and attract their ideal customers.  She conducts workshops in Northern NSW and coach’s customers online and by phone – if you would like to attend the next scheduled workshop or request distance coaching online – you can email me or call 02 66868413.  Please join me on Facebook and like for regular authentic marketing updates.

All or parts of this blog are able to be published with permission from the author – provided that the author is acknowledged and a link is given to the original source blog.

This blog is original content influenced by years of experience within the Australian small business culture and may not be applicable to other countries small business cultures.

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