Audience, positioning, and strategy
The Brand tabs decide how work sounds. These three decide what it argues, who it is aimed at, and what it is in service of.
Audience
Section titled “Audience”Who the work is for, and just as usefully, who it is not for.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Target customer summary | The sentence an agent writes to. Alpenglow’s is “Weekend hikers who plan their own routes, and the trip leaders who plan for a group of four to twelve.” |
| Customer types | Consumer, business, or both |
| Primary users, Buyers, Influencers | The distinct people in a decision. The user and the buyer are frequently not the same person, and content aimed at the wrong one reads oddly |
| Geographic focus | Where you sell, which changes seasons, units, and examples |
| Excluded audiences | Who to leave out. Alpenglow excludes guided tour operators and motorized trail users, so no agent writes copy courting them |
Excluded audiences do more work than they look like they should. Without them, an agent expanding your market is being helpful in a direction you have already ruled out.
Positioning
Section titled “Positioning”Why you rather than the alternative.
- Core value proposition and One-sentence value statement: the long form and the short form. The short one is what ends up on a deck cover.
- Key differentiators: what you do that others do not. Concrete beats sweeping. “Routes snap to real trail segments instead of straight lines” is usable; “best in class routing” is not.
- Competitors and Substitutes. Substitutes are usually the honest answer: Alpenglow’s are a paper map and a printout, and a spreadsheet plus a general mapping app.
- Category definition: the shelf you are on.
- Market problem and Why now: what is broken, and why this is the moment.
- Proof points: the specific things you can stand behind. These are what an agent quotes when it needs evidence, so keep them true and keep them current.
Strategy
Section titled “Strategy”What the company is trying to do, which is how an agent knows whether a piece of work is worth proposing.
- Mission and Vision.
- Company goals and Current strategic priorities. The priorities are the ones that matter day to day: Alpenglow’s are opening the beta to the first hundred hikers, making offline the default rather than a setting, and keeping trail conditions honest about staleness.
- Growth focus areas, Target markets, Partnership strategy.
- Key metrics of success: how you will know.
Strategy is the section most worth revisiting. Identity rarely changes; priorities change every quarter, and a stale priority list sends agents at last quarter’s problem.
How much to fill in
Section titled “How much to fill in”Enough that an agent stops guessing. If you are unsure whether a field is pulling its weight, leave it out and look at Preview: the panels there are generated from these fields, and a generic-sounding blurb tells you which one is missing.
Next steps
Section titled “Next steps”- Constraints and agent guidance: the limits around all of this.
- Review agent proposals: agents keep these fields current by proposing changes.
- Identity and voice: how the work sounds.