You Don’t Know Your Customers If You Can’t Answer These Questions

At Snipply, we recently started evaluating what our brand should be, and how it should appear to everyone who has a touchpoint with our brand.

Everything we do as a company influences our brand, intended or not. While we may have a mission or vision statement, our actions may not always align in the eyes of our users. Perception is reality — which is why it is important to make brand evaluation an ongoing exercise as your company grows.

It’s important to make brand evaluation an ongoing exercise. These exercises will help you make decisions in terms of acquisition channels, marketing language, design and more.

You don’t understand your brand, and how it is viewed in the eye of your customers if you don’t understand the answers to the following questions. Use this as an exercise you can revisit periodically.

Purchase Behavior

1. What is the average frequency of purchase in this segment?
2. How long do service relationships last?
3. What is the decision process that a customer follows?
4. Who influences the decision to buy the product?
5. How important is our customer’s user in influencing our customer’s decision to buy from us?
6. How is the purchase decision made?
7. Why does the customer buy?
8. When does the customer buy?

Brand Drivers

1. When someone decides to work with you, what factors do they consider?
2. What are the key attributes and values that paying customers look from businesses like yours?
3. What are the key needs and expectations of your customers?
4. How is your business delivering on the needs of your current customers?
5. How do your current client engagements affect your brand?
6. Which information sources do your users look at during their decision making processes?
7. What do you think customers think of your brand?
8. What do you think are the most important reasons a customer chooses to buy from your business?
9. What are the reasons a user does NOT choose to buy from your business?
10. On a scale of 1 to 10 rate how strong you think your brand is amongst your customers. 1 is weak and 10 is strong.

Business Proposition

1. How do you define the core offering of your business?
2. Is your business currently credibly delivering on this promise?
3. How strong is this promise versus your competitors?
4. Where would you ideally like to see the company in the next 5 to 10 years
5. What are the steps that should be taken to achieve this vision?
6. Where do you think the organization’s growth will come from? (What do you see as future revenue streams?)
7. Do you have any brand partnerships / cross-promotions / joint ventures
8. What new brand partnerships would you like to see?

Brand Proposition

1. What do you think your brand says to customers?
2. What are your brand values?
3. What do you think customers think of your brand?
4. What emotions do you want the brand identity to evoke?What do you want the tone of voice to convey?
5. How could the brand identity be improved?
6. If you could describe your brand as a person what would they be like?
7. What excites you most about your brand?
8. Is your business currently credibly delivering on your brand’s promise?
9. If not, what must your business do to fulfill the brand promise? What steps have been taken/plans are in place?
10. Where is the potential for the positioning of your brand?
11. What could your brand be like? Think of other brands that it could be associated with in the future.
12. How far is the stretch that you feel the brand can make?
13. From where it is now, where can it go? Do you think your customers would support your brand if it changed radically?

Brand Competition

1. Who are your business’s key competitors?
2. Has this competitive set changed in the last three years?
3. Who do you consider a benchmark organization?
4. What are the market dynamics in your region? (what keeps you awake at night)
5. What are the key social trends currently affecting the market?
6. What are the attitudes to foreign products and services?
7. How do these factors impact consumer buying habits?

Answering these questions is a great way to start understanding your brand as a startup, or realigning it as you grow. Just remember your brand will evolve over time, so make this an exercise you go through periodically to stay on the right path.

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