
Photo Credit: iStock - relif
Let's first take a look at how your core values can positively impact your brand.
Why Do Your Brand Values Matter?
Brand values, when taken seriously by executives, are important because they influence how consumers and employees view and engage with your brand. Here are 12 ways that brand values can positively impact your brand:
Lets Your Audience Know What To Expect From Your Brand
Builds A Memorable Brand
Improves Brand Consistency
Drives Brand Authenticity & Uniqueness
Builds A Connection With Your Customers
Helps Attract Customers Who Share The Same Values
Encourages Customer Retention - ensuring you will continue to get their sales for years to come
Leads To Higher ROI & Customer Loyalty
Increases Sales & Awareness
Sets Your Business Apart From The Competition
Attracts & Retains Top Talent - 47% of active job seekers cite company culture as their driving reason for looking for work
Boosts Employee Motivation & Engagement - 76% of employees believe that well-defined business goals help cultivate a positive work culture
How To Develop Your Brand Values
The goal is to have your brand values reflect the reality of who you are as a business. It's easy to use brand values like "customer service," "quality," "integrity," and "teamwork," but keep in mind these are overused values. You want to stand out from the crowd and differentiate yourself.
While figuring out your unique core values can be challenging and time-consuming, it's critical to do the work upfront to reap the benefits on the back end. Here is my 4-step method for developing your core brand values.
Brands As Inspiration
Look at brands you love (and hate! I'll get to that later...) for inspiration. Draw from your personal experiences to list what made them so special. The goal is to capture the following...
Think about what resonates with you and this brand.
How do you feel when interacting with this brand?
Have you purchased from this brand before? If so, what was the experience like?
For any brand where you have had a negative experience, it's important to capture that and identify how that altered your perception of the brand and your future purchases with that brand.
With all of this information, see if you can identify any consistent themes, qualities, experiences, and/or values that emerge that can help guide the development of your brand values.
Research
Gather all past consumer research and customer feedback that the company has had in the last two to three years. Pull together and analyze the following:
Customer reviews/feedback
Social media comments
Live chat sessions/support
Recorded sales calls
Online community forum conversations
Customer service call feedback
Polls and surveys
Focus groups
Quantitative research/testing
Once this data has been analyzed, look for consistent themes, qualities, experiences, and/or values that emerge that can help guide the development of your brand values.
Brainstorm
Gather a team of senior leaders, key stakeholders (i.e., founders, board members, investors, suppliers, customers), and/or employees. You should only include those individuals who truly understand why you are in business, not what your business is. There's a difference.
Get a moderator to run this brainstorm. The moderator...
Facilitates the discussion
Remains neutral during discussions
Has the ability to control group politics
Is the administrator: welcomes/intros, keeps time, delegates duties, keeps everyone on task, etc.
Establishes a trusting relationship with participants
Encourages all members to participate
Is a good decision-maker
As a group, start brainstorming your brand values. List them up around the room for everyone to see. Here are a few ideas to get your brainstorming started:
List of 600 core values to get you started
Questions to ask the team:
What do you value most about your brand?
What do you think your brand stands for?
What values do you appreciate that are exhibited among your current employees?
What's important about the way you run your business?
Once you have your exhaustive list developed, you're ready to start narrowing it down to the top three to five. Give people colored stickered dots that represent their top 1 through 5 choices. Have everyone go around the room and put their colored dots next to their top five brand value choices (i.e., first choice represents red, second choice represents green, etc.).
Once you have your top three to five brand values, compile them, share them with the team, and sit with them for a while. It's important to see if the company is living these brand values. You may need to go back and make some adjustments as a team.
Make Unique
If you want your brand to stand out from the competition, it's essential to develop unique brand values. Utilize the tips above to draw on your brand's DNA as you begin to develop your core values. Here are four additional tips to ensure your brand values have the intended effect:
Be specific: Be sure your core values are clear and specific.
Prompt action: Use verbs to prompt action.
Short phrases: Easier to recall and more likely to trigger a response.
Multisensory branding: Leverage as many of the senses as possible to communicate your brand values (i.e., music, video, sound, visuals, etc.). Raja Rajamannar has a great book on Quantum Marketing that talks about this.
In today's marketplace, it's not enough to be good at what you do—you have to be exceptional! There are a ton of competitors out there who are great, and they are chopping at your heels. To be exceptional, you need to spend the time and effort developing your brand values. Show your audience exactly who you are, what you stand for, and why you are unique.
Start building your brand leadership today. For a step-by-step guide on how to develop a brand strategy, check out my book, How to Develop A Brand Strategy. You’ve got this.
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