What's your point of view and why do you need one?

One of the most challenging parts of marketing is creating content that speaks to the people who need your products and services. It requires putting yourself in their shoes and thinking like they think. Customer-centric content that goes beyond the facts of your offer is critical to getting customers to buy into what you’re selling. But you also need to have a point of view!

Your point of view is how you see the world. Your point of view is an expression of the problem you solve, your approach to solving it, and why people should work with you. Having a documented point of view will give you a tool to center these ideas in content so you can help your customers understand the big picture of what they get when they choose you in every piece of content you share. It makes your content consistent in sharing your point of view, regardless of the topic you’re taking on.

Let’s go through a basic template that will help you craft your point of view, and after we walk through the template, I’ll share an example POV I’ve put together for you based on my own business.

Explain the problem, what’s happening, and what’s changing

The world is changing fast and nothing has illustrated that better than the time we’ve lived in since March 2020. One day, we were going to work and running errands with the normal cares of the world. The next, we were wearing masks, staying home as much as possible, and had the added concern of living through a pandemic. It’s been weird hard times for sure.

Your industry has its own challenges. Perhaps they aren’t pandemic level (maybe they are). The point of view you have about the work you do and the impact you have needs to start by explaining the problem. Leave out all mentions of you and your solution. This is ALL about your customer and what they experience before they find you.

Spell out why they should care

Why does this particular problem even matter? There could be widespread changes happening that are bound to create problems for your customers. This is where you want to help them see how the problem applies to them. Maybe there’s an inevitable shift happening.

Whatever the problem happens to be, your customers need to know they should take notice. Speak to this in a way that makes them want to care.

Point out what’s at stake

Your customers always have a choice—to act or not to act. But what happens if they do nothing? These are the potential consequences of not taking action. It needs to be based in something real that can happen, not on imaginary scenarios. One way to ensure your point of view is factual and relatable is to do some research and use relevant statistics to back up your assertions. This is particularly important for laying out the stakes.

Things like loss of revenue, staff turnover, or customer churn may be the ultimate consequence, but something happens before you get to that point. That’s what’s at stake. That’s the step you want to avoid.

Describe how to take action

There’s always a first step to get started. So, what is it as it relates to the problem you solve? What will it mean for your customers when they take that step? This is where you get to inspire them to do something that will make their life, business, or work easier! Give them a reason to move forward in your direction.

Demonstrate why they should work with you

Maybe you’ve been in their shoes and you have a deep understanding of the struggle they feel. You came out the other side and have experience with solving the problem. So, you’re passing on the knowledge and helping others with your lessons learned.

You can talk differentiators here, but what’s even better is having some empathy for your buyer in how you share why they should work with you. If you can do that while inserting some of what sets you apart from your competition, go for it.

Here’s that sample point of view I promised:

Building a business that’s sustainable and able to shift into scale mode can be hard, overwhelming work. Many business owners don’t know the depth and breadth of the impact that marketing can have on their business when they’re doing the right things. They fit marketing tasks in when they have time, hoping they’re making the right choices, checking those items off a never-ending to do list.

The fact is, what you do (or don’t do) today in marketing your business has a compounding impact on the future of the business. And that includes everything from product/service development and delivery, to pricing, to the promotional activities, and more. Marketing is one of the most important functions of any business.

Businesses that are clear on who they are, what they do, and who they serve can confidently show up and attract the customers they want through promotional efforts. But the businesses that lack either clarity or the time to prioritize marketing activities will always struggle to achieve sustainable growth.

Take time to think through what you want and build a strategic foundation for marketing based on your business goals and objectives so you can run marketing confidently like a program within your business, knowing you’re doing the right things to support the growth you want!

When marketing isn’t your genius work and you don’t know how to make a plan, it feels hard and overwhelming. It can also feel like you’re not getting anywhere. I know because I’ve had to work this way and it’s not fun. (No wonder some business owners don’t like marketing!) But you know what? I can help guide you to the right activities for the right reasons that will grow your business. You may even learn to like marketing … or even love it.

What to do with your point of view

You could publish it to your website but this isn’t necessarily a piece that’s meant to be openly shared. Whether you do or don’t is really up to your personal preference. But do hang it in your office. Keep it handy to reference so you can inject these ideas into the content you produce.

As your audience becomes more and more familiar with your content, your point of view will be obvious, whether you state it overtly or work it into content and how you serve your customers.

Knowing what your point of view is, having it documented, makes it easier to do that—and you’ll find it effective to provide to others when outsourcing so they can better understand how to support you.