Some of the biggest issues I have with clients is helping them to understand what it takes to build a robust growth marketing funnel in order to see growth in their business. There are so many factors that play into building a successful business. Here are a few that are paramount for being successful in a marketing growth strategy:

• Brand Identity / Connection with Users

• Drive Value through Product Affinity

• Cross Channel Syndication and Strategy

How to Create a Brand Identity

Many of my clients will come to me with quite a few growth goals. They want to grow the brand by 50% - 200% that year, or they want their startup to reach 100 sales a month in the first quarter, etc.

These are great goals, but first we need to understand why…

• “Why will someone buy from you vs your competitor?”

• “Why should they care about your products?”

• “What difference will your brand make in their lives?”

• “Why should they even care about going to your site and reviewing your content?”

Many of my clients will build a product and know the specific needs they are trying to fix in the market place, but very few tell a compelling brand story that will get their potential community to listen to them. The questions above should be asked before any type of marketing is taken into consideration. You need to understand why your users will care about your products and you need to focus on telling that story in all of your creative.

Creating your own personal brand identity

The same questions above go for how you should go about creating your own personal identity. As you begin to see your professional life florish you’ll have many different ways of creating yourself. Answer these questions in your head to help you understand what you can do in order to create your own personal brand:

• “What are people asking me to do or my superiors to do that seems to be really hard?”

• “What do I need to do in order to make my boss or their boss look good?”

• “What are my deadlines? What are my boundaries?”

• “What questions about my practice or profession can I not answer right now?”

If you can answer these questions, and then start to fill in the gaps you’ll be on a great start to building your brand identity in your profession. My biggest successes have come from answering questions where others were too lazy to apply themselves in order to find the answers. Here are some rules of thumb as you strive to set yourself apart from others:

• People are inherently lazy. If they don’t know the answer to something they’ll usually not look it up even if it only takes an hour or two to find the answer.

• Define yourself as a hard worker, but make sure you set yourself up for success. 80 hour work weeks are dumb. You should be able to optimize your life in order to get more done than other people and still not work as much as other people. I’ve seen too many people waste hours on projects that don’t matter while they don’t actually answer the real questions that need to be taken care of.

• Don’t assume you’re the smartest person in the room, and don’t try to be. If someone asks you a question you don’t know the answer to, tell them you’re not sure, and then do the research. No one, NO ONE wants a bullshit answer, and everyone can smell bullshit.

Focusing on the above will help to drive value in your business or personal growth. This is just the first step in the process though. Once you define what you want your business to be, and how it’s going to connect with your potential customers, then you need to have a specific action plan in place in order for it to be successful.

Creativity can only go so far, you must reach your audience when they are ready to purchase, and you must be able to emotionaly connect with them in a 1 - 2 second window.

Similarly, in your life you’ll run into opportunities that will leave you behind if you’re not ready. Be ready by focusing on building your own personal identity and brand. You must be able to answer the problem these opportunities give you, otherwise they’ll move on to another person for their answer.