When someone asks you what your business does, how quickly can you answer?
And more importantly, how specific is your answer?
All these answers are technically correct, but none of them tells us very much.
At Tiger, we believe the most powerful marketing comes from digging deeper into the things you probably take for granted about your own business.
That’s why we use the Tiger Framework: The 6 Ws™ .
And there’s one question we ask throughout all of them:
Why does this matter?
Before you start thinking about advertising, SEO, email marketing or social media, you need to understand what you’re actually trying to communicate. Because if you can’t clearly articulate what makes your business different, how can you expect your customers to understand it?
And increasingly, there is another audience you need to consider: AI. More and more people are using AI tools to discover, research, compare and recommend businesses. A report by Forrester and 6sense on B2B behaviours reported that 94% of buyers use AI during their buying process.
That means platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode need enough information about your business to understand not only what you do, but who you do it for, where you do it, how you do it, and what makes you different.
Vague information creates a vague understanding of your business. So you need to start digging.
Who are you?
It sounds obvious, but don’t stop at your company name and job title. Think about who is behind the business, and who your customers are. Who do you look after particularly well? Who do you actually want more of?
And, just as importantly, who isn’t the right customer for you? This is something we’ve done with the Tiger branding: we’ve deliberately chosen a bold, jungle-themed brand because we know you’ll either love it or hate it. And that’s fine – we want to work with people who love it.
Next, ask yourself why? Why have you chosen those customers? Why are you particularly good at helping them? Why should they choose you?
Understanding the ‘who’ and the reasons behind it gives you the foundations for your customer personas, messaging (what you’re saying) and targeting (who you’re saying it to).
What do you do?
Again, don’t settle for the obvious answer. At Tiger, we could say: ‘We do marketing’. But hundreds of agencies say exactly the same thing. So instead, we talk about helping businesses ROAR louder.
‘Go beyond the service and consider the outcome’, as our MD Louise Stevenson says.
What problem do you solve? Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt put it another way back in the 1960s: ‘People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!’
So, what changes for the customer because you exist? What do you do particularly well? What makes your service different? And, of course: why does it matter?
This is the ‘W’ businesses often overlook. What are you actually trying to achieve?
‘Grow the business’ isn’t enough. Do you want more customers? Different customers? Larger projects? More repeat business? Greater awareness? A new geographical market? Better-quality enquiries? More profitable work? Put some numbers and timescales against it where you can: a 50% increase in enquiries in the next six months is better than ‘we want more customers’.
A core part of our approach is ‘the science behind the marketing’, where we base our strategies on numbers and hard data. If particular pages on your website get much more traffic than the rest, we’ll look at how those pages can work even harder for you. If your audience are mainly on LinkedIn, not Instagram, you know where you need to be posting. If you’re not aligning your objectives with data, you’re just making a wish list.
Once you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve, you can build marketing around a specific commercial objective rather than simply doing marketing because you think you should be doing marketing.
As always, when considering your objectives, ask why: Why is this target important? What happens if you achieve it? What happens if you don’t?
When do you do what you do? Think about your opening hours, availability and how customers actually interact with your business.
And then go further than this: When do customers typically need you? When do they buy? Are there seasonal peaks? When are you busiest? When are you quietest? Is your service immediate, booked in advance or ongoing?
This information can have a significant impact on everything from advertising campaigns to content planning.
And ask: why do you operate this way?
There might be another differentiator hiding in the answer.
Where are you? Where are you based? Where are your customers? Which towns, cities or regions do you serve? Do people come to you? Do you go to them?
If your business serves a specific geographical area, this is vital. But even if you’re online only and can serve the whole of the UK (for example), you still need to think about how you can actually cover that area. And could you work internationally?
And of course, when you’re thinking of where, you need to think digitally too: Where do customers discover you? Google, ChatGPT, LinkedIn, Instagram? Word-of-mouth recommendations? Industry directories?
Understanding ‘where’ helps shape your local SEO, AI visibility, advertising, website structure and wider marketing strategy.
OK, so this one doesn’t start with a W, but it ends with one, so it deserves its place in the framework.
How you do something can be one of your biggest differentiators.
Businesses often assume their processes aren’t interesting because they work with them every day. But something you consider completely normal could be precisely what makes a prospective customer choose you over a competitor.
Ask yourself: Why do we do it this way?
That’s often where things get interesting.
Finally, the big one – our favourite.
Why does your business exist?
Yes, businesses need to make money. But that’s not the only reason you do what you do. Why did you start it? Why do you care about what you do? Why does your team care? Why does it matter to your customers?
And most importantly: Why should somebody choose you rather than the alternative?
Don’t settle for the first answer. Ask why. Then ask why again. This is where the Tiger Framework really starts to show its value. Imagine we’re talking with an estate agent:
What do you do?
They say: ‘We’re an estate agent.’
Why does that matter?
They say: ‘We help people move home.’
Why does that matter?
They say: ‘Because moving home can be stressful and people need someone they can trust.’
Why are you different?
They say: ‘Because we’re family-run, local and personally involved throughout the move.’
We’ve gone from: ‘We’re an estate agent’ to a story about family, local expertise, personal service and trust.
That’s marketing. (And it’s also valuable information for AI.)
As AI becomes increasingly embedded in the buying journey, businesses need to think about what these platforms can actually understand about them. Because if your website is communicating the basics about what you do, you’re only giving AI the basics to work with.
Your Who, What, When, Where, How and Why provide richer context around your expertise, audience, services, location, processes, personality and differentiators.
And these aren’t things you have to manufacture for AI; they’re already part of your business. You just need to uncover them and communicate them consistently.
So, before you create another social post, rewrite another webpage or ask AI to produce another piece of content, ask yourself:
Who? What? Where? When? How? Why? And what do we want to achieve?
Then ask why again, to bring out the things that make you unique. That’s where you’ll find the details that make your business worth talking about.
Why pay for one marketer when you can have a full team?
Get in touch if you want to be heard