In order for our marketing to be more than just words, images and sounds–for our marketing to be persuasive–it needs to speak to a customer’s concerns/goals/motivations at a specific moment in time and make them feel comfortable choosing our solution to their problem.

Thankfully, there’s a formula for this.

And it lines right up with finding your business’ “why.”

That formula is: Get Who To By.

(I want to give full credit to the agency BBDO for developing this formula, at least to the best of my knowledge.)

First, let’s talk about what each of those four things–Get, Who, To and By–means. Then let’s fill in the blanks, borrowing from BBDO’s example. Last, let’s talk about how this model, which is very audience-centric, can help you kickstart your why.

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Let’s unpack Get Who To By. There are blanks in this formula we need to fill in, so it looks more like this: Get ______ who ______ to ______ by ______.

Get: We complete this by describing our ideal customer in pretty good detail. Not excruciating detail, but certainly not too vague. We probably have multiple target audiences, multiple personas, so describe this one person who belongs in this one segment who might want the one thing you’re offering.

Who: We complete this by describing that person’s moment in time, their lifestage, their moment of truth or consideration. How are Get and Who different? We’ll see in the next section.

To: We complete this with the action we want them to take.

By: As you can see, the first three factors in this formula are very audience-centric: They describe the person, the mindset and the action. This is the variable that describes what we’re going to do or say to convince them to take that action.

Working backward, this formula outlines the persuasive message we create to drive action at a moment in time by our customer.

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BBDO’s SlideShare upload provides a really helpful, really smart Get Who To By formula for Pizza Hut. (Mmmmm…) Frankly, the formula is so self-explanatory, I don’t really need to tee it up anymore, just share it with you. See, Pizza Hut wanted to:

Get: young adults, 20-34 years old from ABC economic classes

Who: rely on food delivery service whenever they’re pressed for time

To: make Pizza Hut Delivery their top-of-mind delivery option

By: [communicating that] Pizza Hut lets you enjoy your pizza at the time you expect it to be there.

Put all together, that’s a powerful sentence. We know who the person is, what their problem is, what we want them to do, and what things we can say to address their concerns. (I love the use of the phrase “expect it to be there,” because if you fall short of your promise, you’ll lose your customer.)

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You may be asking, “How does this help me figure out my why?”

Remember, your “why” is a combination of your mission and values, and the values of your customer. After all, you can’t “make the world a better place” without a “world,” right?

When you can successfully complete a Get Who To By, you’re in a position to understand your audience, their needs at a moment in time, and the things that will motivate them to take your desired action.

And you can rewrite that internally as a “why” statement for your company. Let me try it with the Pizza Hut example:

“We please and satisfy hungry, time-strapped customers. We do that by providing consistency: quality and delivery that people can count on; and we do that by providing variety: literally thousands of possible combinations of food, but quickly and efficiently. (At this point, they could be talking about anything. Burritos. Burgers. Sandwiches.) It just so happens that we sell pizza.”

Why? To satisfy.

When you can satisfy a customer–and meet their high expectations with consistency–you can keep a customer. That’s why knowing your why is so important, and this is how a Get Who To By can help you kickstart your why.