Why Does Your Brand Exist? The Importance of Communicating your Values

One of the biggest challenges you will face as a company is to stand out next to your competitors. Your goals is not only to gain new customers but also to make them into returning clients that will be your brand’s biggest supporters. Those customers will be so convinced that what you are offering is improving their life one way or another, they will want to talk about your product or service to their friends and people around them and will genuinely recommend your company to others. This is basically free walking advertising.

How to create a strong connection with your customers? Start with your why.

To have a unique brand with a strong identity, the first question you need  to answer is why does your company exist? What do you want to bring into people’s lives to make it better? You are not just selling a product. You are selling a much broader concept!

Step away from your actual product for a second and ask yourself:

What is my contribution to this world? What are my values?

-              Do I want to help women to feel more confident and empowered? 

-              Am I bringing joy and happiness into people’s daily life?

-              Do I want to serve my community and help them be more healthy?

-              Am I acting to reduce plastic waste and make the world greener?

There are many ways to improve one’s life. What is yours?

Write down the reasons why you started your business and embrace your why in all aspects of your brand.

For example, let’s say you want to help your community to be more healthy by opening a raw vegan restaurant. In creating your brand identity and marketing strategy, the health and community aspect is going to be central because this is the essence of your brand, the reason why it exists. The vegan restaurant is your product and this is how you are going to achieve your goal to help your community be healthier-- but your main focus should be your WHY: a healthy community!

Now ask yourself how to achieve that goal. Every couple of weeks you can organize workshops on how to cook healthy at home and how easy it can be, the restaurant can offer yoga classes in the morning every first Sunday of the month and you can host workshops with health specialists to learn more about nutrition. You can also create an engaged community on social media that share healthy recipes. Everything that you do will have your purpose in common: Community & Health.

When every action and your communication strategy is aligned with your purpose then you brand becomes highly recognizable. This is how you become an expert in your niche. When talking about your place, people will know exactly what you offer and the reason why you are doing it. The emotion linked to your place is going to be much stronger. All of a sudden, this is not any regular café. You are the café to go to when we want to be healthy and feel connected to other people. Your clients are not buying a juice anymore, they are buying a lifestyle.

More than a product. Offer an experience.

In order to grow a strong relationship with your customers, you need a solid brand that evokes a lot of feelings and emotions. For a similar quality product, we will choose one brand over another because of the experience this brand is giving us.

Let’s take another example. Without being branded, a pair of sunglasses is just glasses to protect your eyes from the sun. If communicated correctly your brand can make it a whole other experience: These are not any sunglasses, they are THE ones you wear after jumping in the ocean when traveling to Bali, they are made from sustainable wood and they promote a healthy lifestyle. When you purchase a pair of sunglasses, 10% of your purchase will go to ocean conservation project. Are you an active travel or would love to be? Do you want to have a positive impact on this Earth? Then those sunglasses are made for you! You are buying more than sunglasses, you are stepping into a lifestyle.

Communicate your why, your purpose, in everything that you do: from your design, to the activities you are offering, to how you decorate your office and the pictures you share on Instagram. Have your employees embrace that as well – if you are promoting a healthy space make sure to hire people who believe in your values and are healthy themselves – they will feel more engaged and they will be your first brand’s ambassadors.

What is it that you are offering to world? We all have a gift and passion. Make yours a vision and embrace it in your branding. 

Do you want to learn more about this? Click here to schedule a complimentary Brand Consultation.