Like business plans, marketing strategies provide a pathway to selling the product or service you have dedicated so much time and effort into developing. Getting your product to those audiences that fit the best profile for your product is the reason why you started the business in the first place. The question is how effectively you are delivering that message to the public?

Faced with numerous product and services similar to yours, how you differentiate your business from hundreds of others remains vitally important. But it is more than branding or telling your unique story, although those components are well understood marketing essentials. The reason why asks you to dig deeper and bring forward the creative story of why your business should be heard, seen and taken seriously.

Recent media advertising brings this point to life — we have heard the background stories: I needed to solve this issue to help others; this is important to people across the globe.

While you may not think of your product in those global terms, there is a reason why you decided to do what you do. You developed your business to meet a need, serve a purpose or define an idea. Now is the time to communicate that to your customers and potential customers.

Your profile, across many platforms, probably gives some essential background such as when the business was formed, what audience you are trying to reach, product benefits and your mission, but everyone else is doing that as well. What is it about your community or a group of consumers that prompted you to move forward with your idea? You wanted to sell fresh and wholesome products to your neighbors, but was it fulfilling a generational and family commitment, or did you come to the business with a unique idea that moved you to start something on your own?

Consumers faced with many choices seek the underlying reason why a product comes to market, how it is being marketed and why that is important to them. Buying today is obviously about more than shopping comparatively either in person or online, it is satisfying the experience of a product or service.   The more information you can share with the consumer helps them understand the reason why your product stands above the rest both in quality and experience.

Putting a product out on the market, through distribution or at your own farm stand, exhibits your ability to produce something of worth. The consumer must then choose to purchase it or not. They can compare apples with many other apples, or they can be guided to see why your apple comes to the market with a strong background story of creativity, development, pursuit of quality and the desire to offer something special.

While that may seem like an awful lot of trouble to engage in just to sell a product or service, what you are instilling is the reason why your apple is on the market at all — that behind your business is something more than “if you build it, they will come.”

If you are willing to spend the time, money and energy to bring a product to market, then the reason you are doing so also becomes an important marketing tool. Take some time soon to think about the reasons behind your venture and seek ways to communicate those messages to your customers. The experience of who you are and “why you are” will differentiate your business from the many others on the shelf.

The above information is for educational purposes and should not be substituted for professional business or legal counseling.