It all starts with “why?”. Why your company exists. What its purpose is. What real-world problem it solves.

Everything flows from this one simple thing.

You should be able to answer this question in a couple of sentences. If you can’t articulate it quickly and succinctly, then you have a problem (as in, go away and think about it right now!). It probably also means you don’t have much of an elevator pitch either (your ‘what’ message).

Obviously, it goes without saying that if you can’t explain your purpose to yourself and your team, then you’ve got no chance of communicating what you do, and what problem you solve, to your customers.

Meaningful messages

OK, so you’ve articulated the ‘why’. Is it still fresh? Has it evolved since the heady days of starting your company? You may be in new markets. Your product may have moved on. Your positioning against your competitors may be completely different. You may have moved up the value chain.

Once you’ve written that Statement, and are happy it’s still relevant and current, you can use it to craft Meaningful Messages about you and your widget that your customers will understand. Meaningful messages that let them know what problem you’re solving. Or why your widget is superior. Or why they won’t be able to live without your shiny new thing.

Value and benefits

An important thing about your ‘why’ statement is that you also need a version that communicates your vision in terms of the benefits and value it brings to your customers.

This version isn’t internal, as in “we exist to make a nicer paperclip that has no rough edges”, but is something customer-orientated like “The Acme paperclip holds sheets of paper together without damaging them.”

“Smoothly joining sheets of paper together. No holes, tears or scratches”

The Orange Mesh version

The reason Orange Mesh came into being was to address this problem statement: “90% of tech companies have marketing materials that nobody reads” (1). This is why we exist – to solve this specific problem. The statement at the top of our web page reads:

“Marketing content your customers will actually want to read. It’s about what they want to hear, not what you want to tell them”.

Imagine your statement in the banner of your website. Is it stating that you solve the problem your customers have? When they read it, will they say “Aha, they’re talking about me!”?

Result.

[1] Completely made-up statistic that’s probably true.

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