Harcourt Lane

Content consultancy.

Corporate identity

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Your website – why you need a content strategy

Your website can make or break your business.

In a previous post, we discussed why, as a business owner, you absolutely need to have a website. It is truly vital in this day and age.

So you’re running a business, and you’ve set up a website to promote your products and services.

Here’s a question: exactly what content should you put on your website?

Of course, there are the obvious things: the name of your company, the products and services you offer, contact information, etc. Yes, these things are vital, but that’s far from the whole story.

You need a proper content strategy.

A solid and well-defined content strategy will make your website work for you. It will create the desired connection with your website visitors, and this leads to trust.

Trust is vital for successful marketing.

Your content strategy should address the following question:

What is the main purpose of my website, and what sort of content do I need to support that purpose?

In this blog post, I will explain why you need a content strategy, and also show you the key elements of a successful content strategy.

At the end of this post, I have included a free resource for you that will help you create your very own content strategy, one that is tailored to your own business. My free Content Strategy Blueprint gives you an easy step-by-step way to create a successful content strategy for your business. Don’t forget to claim your free copy after reading this blog post. You’ll find the link at the end of the post.

what is content

First, what is content?

There are different business reasons for having a website. For example, if the main purpose of your website is to raise awareness of your expertise, you will want to ensure that you include a lot of content that supports this purpose. A good way to do this would be to include a blog, where you write articles to showcase your expertise and credibility. On the other hand, if you want your website simply as a place to display your products and services, you might not see the need for a blog. You might focus instead on content that explains in detail what you are offering to your visitors.

But it’s not one or the other. A website can serve many purposes. Even so, it is always prudent to prioritise one purpose above all the others, and to gear your content towards that. Even if your website serves more than just that one purpose.

Before I say more on ‘content strategy’, it is important first to answer the question: what is content?

Content is everything that appears on your website. Primarily it is the written text. For sure, when many people talk about website content, they refer mainly to the written text. But content goes beyond that. It includes multimedia, such as videos and podcasts. It includes images, links, widgets, forms, and buttons.

Generally, content covers everything on your website that conveys a message to your readers.

In thinking about website content, we should focus not only on what we write or include on a web page, but also on matters such as, where (on the website) we place the content, how we style it, and how often (if at all) we update it. All of these should be borne in mind, as part of good content strategy.

First and foremost, we should consider the user experience. We write primarily for the user, and not for ourselves. So the writing style and vocabulary must match that of your target readership. For example, don’t use technical jargon if your target reader would likely not understand those terms.

When preparing content for your website, it is not a good idea to dive straight in. It is important to take a step back, and address the question I posed above:

What is the main purpose of your website, and what sort of content do you need to support that purpose?

In answering this question, you will need to consider the following:

(1) What does my customer really want, and how can I provide it through my website?

what the customer wants

Even if you are not selling directly through your website, this question is still important. In such a case, you should provide information that should show your customer how he can make the purchase offline.

This question also requires that you scrutinize your content plan carefully to ensure you include only content that is useful for your reader. Many websites include information that is of interest only within the company itself (for example, messages from the CEO that have no direct relevance for the customer). I generally advise against this, but if you absolutely must include such content, don’t put it on the front page. Put it on another page (which should be clearly labelled for what it is), and make sure it does not interrupt the visitor’s experience.

(2) How can I establish credibility through my content?

website credibility

This is wide-ranging, and covers matters such as whether or not you should have a blog, how to write your company’s profile, and even the language with which you address your customer.

This also covers matters such as whether your website is seen as out of date. For example, I’ve lost count of the number of websites I’ve seen with a ‘Latest News’ section, where the latest news item was something that happened several years before! This sort of thing creates doubt in the mind of your visitor.

Similarly, if you have a blog, make sure it is updated regularly. It doesn’t have to be updated daily, or even weekly, but make sure that there are signs of life in your blog. Choose a schedule that works for you. Create an editorial calendar, and stick to it.

(Even the technology of your website can speak volumes here. In this day and age, it does not play well for your credibility if you have a website that does not optimize itself properly for smartphone screens.)

As part of your content strategy, you should create a plan for regular maintenance and updating of your website, whether or not you have a blog.

(3) What form should my content take?

content format

This depends on the market you’re in. Of course, if you’re a photographer and you run a blog, it makes the most sense that your content would consist mainly of images – very likely pictures you have taken, as this would enhance your credibility. It would make more sense to do this than to have a website filled with words, with only the occasional picture. On the other hand, some businesses will be more suited to a website dominated by text. This is certainly the case here at Harcourt Lane. We are a marketing and communications consultancy, and a lot of our work involves writing content for our clients. So we showcase our writing skills throughout our website. This makes more sense for us than having a website filled with images or video.

(4) Will my content always work for me?

content support

Creating your website content is just the first step. You should also have a plan to ensure your content is supported. This means that it should be reviewed periodically to ensure it is still serving the needs of your user, and, as a consequence, the needs of your business.

Also, as discussed above, your content must be kept up to date, whether or not you blog. Out-of-date content will surely undermine customer confidence.

It is good practice to appoint someone who will have responsibility for maintaining your content. This would involve responsibility for ensuring that your content remains centred on the needs of your user, that it serves your business purpose, and that it establishes your credibility. This person would also be responsible for setting up and maintaining the editorial calendar, as well as your blog (if you have one). He may not write all the content himself, but will have a solid plan to procure the right content for you. Some companies hire an employee to do this work, while others choose an external agency. At Harcourt Lane, we have several clients for whom we perform this service.

Conclusion

In today’s business environment, having a website is vital to your success. However, you also need a sound content strategy, so that your website can work for you. Your content strategy should make sure that your website supports the needs of your customer, and also establishes your credibility. Setting up a website is great for your business. Having a sound content strategy will bring you success.

 

Start now to create a successful content strategy. My free Content Strategy Blueprint will guide you step-by-step to create your own content strategy – one that is right for your own business. Click HERE to receive your copy.

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Why small businesses shy away from marketing

This is the third and final blog post in our series, Marketing is Storytelling.

In this post, we will discuss why small businesses shy away from marketing.

Many small businesses spend very little time and resources in creating a marketing plan. This is definitely not good for growth, and it’s worth spending some time to discuss this here.

So why does this happen?

The most common reason for this is that many simply don’t believe that marketing works.

The thing is, there is this perception of marketing as a vague, out-there concept, with no tangible link between the activity itself and any income rolling in. Thus someone might ask: ‘how do I know that this particular marketing campaign brought in those particular customers?’ If there is no clear answer to this question, it will be hard to convince the business owner to invest more in marketing.

Quite reasonably, people wish to be sure that there will be a return on investment (ROI) before they lay out money for a particular activity. So if someone is not convinced of the benefits of marketing, he is not going to pay for it.

I’ve also seen businesses waste good money on marketing campaigns that were not right for them.

For your business to succeed, you absolutely must invest in marketing. But what you invest in must be the right marketing strategy for your business.

Many small business owners get overwhelmed by all this, and just opt out of marketing altogether. Although I do not advise this, I do understand the concerns they have.

The one way to address this is to set out clearly the benefits of marketing – what it actually does for your business, and how you can measure whether it’s working or not. I shall do so in this blog post.

1. What can marketing do for me?

First, a look at the scope of marketing.

Marketing covers everything that creates and maintains an authentic connection between you and your prospects and customers. Folded into this are advertising, sales, and public relations.

There are three important things that marketing does for you:

(a) Marketing lets people know about you and your business.


A great product or service will not, on its own, lead to sales. People have to know that you exist, and also that you are offering this amazing product or service. Through marketing and advertising campaigns, they will get to know about you and your business.

In the world of online marketing, there are many effective strategies to build up your online presence, and to get people to know about you. We will discuss these in a future blog post.

(b) Marketing persuades people to buy your product or service.


Creating awareness of your product or service is not enough. People have to be persuaded that what you are offering is precisely what they need. A great product with lousy marketing will not sell. On the other hand, I have seen lousy products succeed through great marketing. (Which is a pity, but that’s how it goes.)

As mentioned in (a) above, there are many effective strategies to help you build up your online presence. These could help to build up traffic to your website. However, having a lot of visitors to your website is not enough. First, they must be the ‘right’ visitors. Second, if your visitors find that the content is poorly laid out, and does not present an attractive offer, they will not buy. Your content must be persuasive, and must create a connection between you and your visitors.

This is why it is vital to have a solid content strategy, covering both online and offline content.

A solid content strategy is a powerful marketing weapon. It addresses matters such as:

  • what goes into your website (home page and landing pages, product and services descriptions, blog, contact page);
  • your social media strategy (eg Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. Which are you using, and why? What do you plan to get out of this strategy, and how do you measure your progress);
  • your marketing material (eg brochures, flyers, emails; even invoices and email signatures)
  • the writing and editorial workflow for executing the content strategy;
  • the style guidelines, including rules on tone of voice.

A solid content strategy is a powerful marketing weapon.

If you would like a review of your content strategy, you can contact me here.

(c) Marketing builds your brand. 


Marketing creates familiarity for your business and its products and services (so-called product recognition). This enhances trust.

It’s also worth noting that people often don’t buy the first time they come across a particular marketing campaign. However, repeated contact with your marketing message will build a connection.

If you would like help with building your brand, you can contact me here.

2. How can I measure the results of my marketing? (Or, how can I measure my return on investment?)


This is a very common question.

Actually, it is standard practice to measure return on investment (ROI) in marketing. It can be challenging at times, but it is possible. We won’t go into too much detail here, but I’ll give you one pertinent example.

As a small business with an online presence, you will most likely want to increase the number of relevant visitors to your website. You will want these people to know that you exist, and then you will want them to come on over to your website to check out your products or services.

So how do you get them over to your website?

You invest in digital marketing strategies that target exactly the kind of customer you’re looking for. These strategies could include advertising through social media (eg Facebook and Twitter), or the use of certain search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. I will share more about these strategies in an upcoming post.

The two things you generally wish to achieve are:

  • You want potential customers to visit your website; and
  • You want to secure more conversions (eg sales, completion of an enquiry form, sign-ups, etc) from those visitors.

Without going into too much detail here, there are all sorts of tools today that will help you measure the success of your digital marketing efforts in these and other areas.

One thing you want to see (and measure) is ‘positive ROI’ for your business (i.e. that the amount generated in sales is more than what you spent in marketing). You want to be convinced that the money you spend on marketing is actually generating sales for you. It is possible (and, in fact advisable) to track your progress in this area.

It is advisable to measure ROI, so that you can know what marketing strategy works well for your business. If something is working well, you will know to keep doing it. On the other hand, if the results show that the marketing approach can be improved, you will know to make changes.

Conclusion

In this post, I’ve shared with you why it is absolutely vital to have a marketing strategy. Marketing is the lifeblood of your business. You need to market your business in order for it to grow.

I have also reassured you that you can measure the success of your marketing efforts. So you will not just be throwing money after uncertain results. You can measure your results. While this is not an exact science, the results will certainly give you clarity on the success of your efforts.

Here are the previous posts in this series:

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How to tell your story

This is the second post in our series, Marketing is Storytelling.

In the first part of this series, I introduced you to the idea of marketing as storytelling. If you can discover the authentic story of your business, and tell it with empathy and truth, your marketing efforts will be highly successful.

I also highlighted the three elements in every marketing story:

  1. The person telling the story.
  2. The person to whom the story is told.
  3. The story itself.

In order to have a successful marketing campaign, be very clear about what each of these elements means for your business. If you do not define these elements, someone else will define them for you, and not always to your advantage. Stay in charge of your own story.

In this post, I will show you how to refine each of these elements so that they do the best marketing work for you.

1) The person telling the story. 

This is, of course, you. When you bring your product or service into the marketplace, you should have a very clear identity, so that your customers know exactly what your business stands for, and what is on offer.

Here are a few pointers to help you.

Recognize the need for a ‘business identity’, a mark of distinction. 

A mark of distinction is something that a customer can highlight when talking about your business. This is not about you creating logos or slogans or anything like that, at least not yet. It’s more about your assuming a mindset that recognizes the need to be different from others. You don’t achieve business success by running a business that is just like the hundreds out there. Recognize the need for distinction.

Clarify your business identity.

This needs some quiet time contemplating your business, and asking some very important questions.

If you want to define your business identity, don’t look at your products or services. Look instead at your potential target market.

So, don’t ask, ‘what do I sell?’

Instead ask, ‘what problem am I trying to solve?’.

Then work backwards from there.

The customer is vital. Without customers, you have no business. So your business identity must be defined around what problem you wish to solve for your customer.

Let’s assume your business is the sale of luxury watches. Our question is: what problem are you trying to solve for your customer?

A person who wants to buy a luxury watch might want to do so because he wants to look good, successful, and stylish. So that’s the ‘problem’ you want to solve for a potential customer. You want to help him look good, successful, and stylish. How? By selling him a Harry Winston Opus 14, for example.

So then you’re not just a seller of luxury watches. You are something else. Something more personal. A trusted guide for the man of taste, something like that.

This sort of description has more meaning, more relationship potential. And ultimately, it tells a better story.

Position yourself by looking at your customer and what you are doing for him. Don’t look at your products or services. Focus on the problem you are solving for your customer.

2) The person to whom the story is told.

This is, of course, your potential customer.

In defining yourself (under point 1) above), you will invariably end up defining your customer as well. This is because, in order to define what problem you are actually solving for a customer, you have to do a pretty good job of defining the customer.

As I mentioned in the first post of this series, don’t cast your net too wide here. Not everyone out there will be interested in your product or service. Don’t be tempted to go for a wide-ranging, catch-all marketing approach. It won’t work.

What works is a focused marketing approach, targeting those customers that are a proper fit for you. There are customers out there who are looking for a business exactly like yours. Your goal is to find those people, and focus your time on them. Be as precise as you can be in trying to identify and target these people.

So how do you know which customers to target?

Take a look at your business. Your main quirks and characteristics will make you attractive to a particular type of customer. These characteristics include things such as the size of the business, and any particular specialisms. For example, dealing in Rolex watches only, as opposed to watches and jewellery in general. Or dealing in antique furniture, as opposed to running a furniture store.

Such quirks and characteristics should help to give you a general picture of the customer you should be targeting. Once you have that general picture, you can begin to fill in more details.

Getting more detailed – what does your ideal customer look like? 

Create a ‘customer avatar’, basically, a picture of your typical customer, with all the details filled in. Who is he? Where does he work? What is his income level? What are his hopes, dreams, fears, and insecurities? Go as detailed as you can, to draw this picture. The more precise you get, the sharper your targeting. And the better your results!

Staying with our example of the seller of luxury watches. He would need to create a customer avatar for the sort of person he would target. It might look like this, in part:

Howard, a 42 year old stockbroker. Howard is not married. He earns between $500,000 and $800,000 per year. He takes two holidays a year, subscribes to racing magazines, and wears only bespoke suits …

A clearly defined customer profile will help you successfully target your market.

3) The story itself. 


If you know the problem you wish to solve for your customers, then you will have a fairly good idea exactly who your potential customers must be.

If you take it a step further with a very sharp customer avatar, you will have a very good picture of your target customer.

So how can you tell a story that will create a powerful connection between you and your target customer?

Your story should connect with your customer at the point of his deep need, desire or longing.

In the earlier example of the seller of luxury watches, we identified the need of the customer to look good, successful, and stylish. This is a deep human need, and, by tapping into that need, the seller can create a direct connection with the prospective customer. If the seller can get across that he empathises with the customer’s particular need, he will create the necessary connection.

Your story must create an emotional connection, first and foremost. Connect with your customer’s emotions – his need for love, respect, affirmation; his hopes or fears; his insecurities and doubts. Meet your customer at the place of his deep feeling, and connect with him there. Only from this place can the story emerge.

But the story cannot emerge without empathy. And it must be true empathy. You cannot fake that. Nor should you try.

Using Howard the stockbroker, your story will be one that taps into Howard’s love of fine things, and his desire to look the part of a successful stockbroker. The story should identify with these feelings in an authentic way. The story should speak Howard’s language; it should also communicate to Howard that the storyteller understands him deeply.

Conclusion

So these are the three elements you need for a successful marketing story. Define these properly, and your business will stand out clearly in the marketplace.

Next up in this series, we will discuss why small business shy away from marketing.

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Marketing is storytelling

Many business owners shy away from marketing. There are various reasons for this. A common reason is that many feel overwhelmed by all the things they feel they must learn, for example, about different marketing techniques. As a result, many stay away altogether from marketing.

This is a mistake you cannot afford to make. Marketing is the lifeblood of any business. A great product or service, on its own, cannot make sales. There has to be an intelligent and concerted marketing effort behind it.

In this post, I would like to share with you the big idea behind marketing. I will also give you some key insights to keep in mind as you shape your marketing plans.

Here is the big idea.

Marketing is storytelling.

This is the beginning, middle, and end, of marketing.

After all is said and done, when all the fancy technical words are broken down into simple, easy to grasp concepts, this is the one thing that shines through.

This is the first post in a series on marketing as storytelling. This series will help you refine your core marketing message, so that you target precisely those prospects that are right for your business, leading to significant increase in customers, and solid business growth.

…

So, marketing is storytelling.

Marketing is the story you tell about yourself to the world.

But not to the whole world – not really. Only to those whom you have carefully selected. Marketing is not about adopting a scattergun approach, blaring out a message to all and sundry. Sure, it might look like that when we  see the adverts etc all around us, but that really isn’t how it works. A good marketer will have carefully defined the intended recipient of her message, and is actually targeting that person with her marketing efforts.

There are three elements in every marketing story. Every time you market your business, these elements are there, whether you realise it or not. Therefore if you do not deliberately define what you want them to mean for you, they will define themselves, or someone else (heaven forbid, the competition) will define them for you. So it is important to know that these elements exist, and then set about defining them clearly.

Here are the three elements in every marketing story:

(1) The person telling the story;

(2) The person to whom the story is told; and

(3) The story itself.

1. The person telling the story


This is, of course, you. You are bringing your product or service out into the marketplace, and you are telling a story about what it is that you are offering.

You (as the storyteller) have an important role to play here. It is not just about your product or service. Crucially, it is about you.

So, who are you?

Or, to be more exact, who do your customers think you are?

The truth is, no matter how a business may define itself, what truly matters is how it is defined by its customers. If, for example, you see yourself as a dealer in antique furniture, while everyone sees you instead as a general furniture shop owner, it doesn’t then matter how much money you throw at your marketing. Unless and until you correct that misalignment, nothing will work.

But of course, we should not rely on our customers to tell us who we are. We should be intentional about creating our business identity, and in communicating this identity very clearly to the world. This way, we define ourselves in the way we want our customers to see us, and then they take the lead from us.

So, in putting together your marketing story, be very clear about who you are.

2. The person to whom the story is told


This is, of course, your potential customer. We have to be very clear about the identity of this person. If we are not clear about who we are targeting, we will end up targeting everyone and no-one.

So who is your potential customer?

Many business owners fall into the temptation of casting their nets very wide. They want to target as many potential customers as possible, in order to increase the chances of sales and business growth. While this might seem to make sense, it actually does not work. If you are not precise in targeting your message to a clearly defined recipient, you will achieve very little.

Here is a truth. There are people out there right now, looking to buy from a business exactly like yours. They are primed and ready to spend their money on what you have to offer.

However, if you are not able to identify them, you will walk past them. If you are not focused on finding them, you will saunter past, looking into the distance, while ignoring the ideal customer walking right next to you.

The message here is this: don’t pitch very wide. Instead, look for your ideal customer, and then pitch to him.

If you pitch too wide, you will have to cater also for people who don’t know about your business, don’t care about your business, and will never buy from you, no matter what. Instead, you need to turn your gaze away from them, and instead zero in on those people (wherever they may be) who are ready to spend money on what you have to offer.

So how do you find these people?

First, you have to know who they are.

To do this, take a look at yourself as the story teller (see point 1 above). Who are you? What makes you different from your competition? What sort of prospect is likely to be attracted to you? Those are unique signals that should point you towards the customers with whom you would have the most empathy.

The next step is to begin to narrow down your range of potential customers. This depends on the particular business you are in, but the general principle applies across all fields. The more focused you are in defining your target market, the more successful your marketing efforts will be.

3. The story itself. 

When you are clear about your business identity (point 1), and you have pinpointed your target market (point 2), the story you need to tell will start to become clear.

So you know exactly what your business is about, and you know exactly the type of customers you are targeting.

The next step is to build your story.

The story you tell should connect to your customer’s need or desire. It is not about pointing to your product and service, and singing its praises. In fact, it is not at all about your product or service. It is, first and foremost, about your customer. What is his deep need, desire, or longing? Can you fulfill it? If you can connect fully with that place, your story will be both amazing and effective.

Conclusion

The vital point once again – marketing is storytelling.

Marketing is the story you tell about yourself to the world. There are always three elements to this story, and you must define them, or risk having someone else (unhelpfully) define them for you.

Define who you are, as the storyteller.

Define the person to whom you are telling your story.

Define the story you are telling.

Next in this series, we will discuss how to define and create these elements. That is, how to tell your story.

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Corporate identity – who do your customers think you are?

One of the challenges facing a growing company is the creation of a sound corporate identity.

Picture the scenario: a company starts off very small, with a clearly defined product or service, and with a well targeted customer base. Years go by, and the company becomes very successful. It expands into new products and services.

The company’s success has led it away from its initial strategy. That’s no bad thing, necessarily. However, in order to position itself properly in the marketplace, it is necessary for the company to revisit its strategy.

Crucial to any discussion of corporate strategy is the question of identity. A company must be able to state its identity in clear and unequivocal language. The message must be the same, whether delivered by employees, management, or by customers.

It is not uncommon for companies to launch in-house projects aimed at shaping their corporate identity. Such projects would typically include management and key staff members from the relevant departments. These are good exercises, as they bring together the constituent parts of the business, and ensure a unified approach to the identity question. However, one must be careful not to focus too much inward, defining identity mainly from the perspective of the management and staff. Ultimately, what matters more is how the customer views the company. If the management and staff of a company have a different view of their business than the view held by their customers, the corporate strategy will misfire.

So, instead of asking, ‘what does my company do?’, it might be more apt to ask, ‘what do our customers actually see as our core business?’

What do your customers think that you provide? I have come across many cases where the customers’ view of the core business is completely different from that of the management and staff of the company.

Sometime ago, I worked with a company on this aspect of corporate identity. The company’s business was the provision of financial information to the financial services sector. It had launched a whole portfolio of products and services, but their main customers had seemed not to notice. This was worrying.

After some research, we discovered the problem: the customers saw the company as a traditional publisher, and not as an information provider, as it now described itself. This distinction was vital: customers came to the company when they needed to buy good, solid, reference books and journals. However, when it came to other products and services not typical of a traditional publisher, for example, webinars and software solutions, the customers seemed to have a blind spot – they just did not ‘see’ these services, however big the advertisement. They did not ‘see’ these services being offered, because they did not expect to see them being offered. The reason for this was simple: the company had started life as a traditional publisher, and, had, along the way, branched into these other services. However, it had not made a conscious effort to redefine its corporate identity, and to bring its customers along in the process.

The company thus came to realize that there was a misalignment between how it saw itself, and how it was seen by its customers. It then set itself the critical task of repositioning itself in the eyes of its customers. Its efforts have paid off very well. Its enhanced products and services are now very popular, and the company is making a name for itself as a brilliant innovator in its field. However, this could not have happened if it did not act to change the perception of its customers. Now that this company is regarded as a leading information provider, its customers expect precisely the goods and services that such a company is expected to provide. The alignment is total, and success is guaranteed.

What do your customers regard as your business? Is this the same as what you provide? Know what your customers think of your corporate identity. That is a vital task.

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Defining your business strategy – the Identity Question

I was recently involved in a project to define and communicate the strategy of a specialist library. The institution was an established and well respected one. However, it had not kept pace with advances in technology within the last two decades. There were serious challenges regarding the acquisition and provision of digital materials and services, such as e-books and online databases.

The new Manager was keen to bring the library back up to speed. He compiled a list of very impressive project proposals, all of which answered to the need for more digital services from the library.

Yet something was missing. There was no thread running through these projects, no unifying vision beyond the vague (but worthy) need to ‘go digital’. All that the entire strategy appeared to consist was this long (albeit impressive) list of projects.

The Manager asked me what more he could do. I looked at the list. Everything seemed to make sense. I could see that he had made a thorough analysis of the situation, and had identified possible solutions to the main issues. Yet something was lacking.

‘What’s your story?’ I asked him. ‘What is the aim of this library?’

He pondered the question for a short while, and then responded:

‘The library provides materials on life sciences to academic researchers and scientists working in the sector’.

That was indeed the case, but his answer addressed what the library currently does, and not what it aims to be. There is a vital difference between doing and being. A successful strategy is born out of ‘doing what you are’. So it is important first to work out what the business is, or aims to be, before turning to what it does. His answer depicted the library to be nothing too special. Just one of perhaps several such organizations providing these materials to the relevant readership. How then would he be able to define its strategy, much less measure its success?

He understood the distinction, and gave it another go:

‘The library aims to be the number-one information portal in the life sciences field for academic researchers and scientists.’

What he had done now was to give some thought to the identity of the library, and then, having formulated clearly what he wished for the library to become, he was then in a position, together with his team, to draw up a strategy to get them there. For example, by focusing on the words ‘number one’, they could begin to benchmark the library against similar institutions with a view to emerging on top. By focusing on the words ‘information portal’, they could analyze what sort of material they needed to source, and in what format. This could entail, for example, the creation of a comprehensive acquisition policy for relevant materials on life sciences. By focusing on ‘academic researchers and scientists’, they could begin to ask if this actually covered the entire range of clients they wished to reach. All of these questions would lead them towards a proper examination of their identity. And then, having settled this point, they could go forward with implementing a successful strategy.

Know who you are before determining what you will do. A clear sense of identity is essential to business development.

*Some details have been changed.