What Is Your Brand Purpose?

Effectively communicating your brand purpose, that is “What your business stands for,” is paramount to your success,

The way customers make decisions is changing rapidly with word of mouth marketing in the form of “social proof,” your environmental credentials and CSR (how you give back to society) playing an increasingly important role.

Compelling Statistics

Evidently, the impact of a brand’s perceived beliefs can be very detrimental indeed. In a recent Media Com research article, 40% of consumers said they had either abandoned or rejected a brand because of poor corporate values. Almost half (49%) of the 2000 respondents stated that they are willing to pay more for a brand that supports a cause that is important to them.

These statistics clearly demonstrate how vital it is to communicate your brand purpose and how what you stand for, will directly impact your revenue.

What about the Millennials?

Interestingly, evidence suggests that the millennials are even more likely to change their purchasing patterns in line with brands who demonstrate a synergy with their values and have a social conscience.  We are nurturing more purpose led generations and, as their earnings increase, the impact on your bottom line will become more and more significant.

Clearly this presents a significant marketing opportunity. From its core, a business needs to ensure it has clarity of purpose. Whether you are a start-up or heritage brand investing in a brand discovery session to evaluate your brand essence and agree your values, will pay dividends.

Once you have fine-tuned your purpose the bigger marketing challenge is to consistently showcase this at every brand touch point.

To achieve this, your brand’s purpose needs to sit at the core of your business plan, feature in all your internal comms and play a pivotal part in your recruitment strategy. Your marketing plans should contain consistent messaging that reminds employees what the brand stands for and encourage your team to exude these values in their behaviours throughout the year.

Brand Consistency

Externally with the maze of marketing channels available your marketing team need to create a robust content marketing plan that features campaigns with a consistent tone of voice and visuals that are true to your beliefs. Auditing your comms to ensure no team is going ‘off message’ will help to keep you on track.

Importantly you need to be true to your word or brand promise so any objectives, to be carbon neutral for example, must be realistic. Do not over promise and under-deliver. This will negatively impact your brand equity, customers will see right through it.

When it comes to marketing, you need to truly live and breathe this purpose and this can create a challenge for in-house marketing teams.  Having a fresh perspective from a creative agency can really help bring “What You Stand For” to life.