What’s Your Brand’s Purpose?
You hear what people say ‘times are changing’. When consumers are choosing brands to do business with, today they care more about the kind of impact the brand is making in the world, as opposed to the services or products they might offer. If you want to take your brand to the next level, you need to have a sense of purpose – one that truly connects to your people.
Your brand’s purpose can play a major part on how your brand is viewed in the market and ultimately can be the driving force behind your success. So, what even is brand purpose? Why is it so important? And finally, how can you define, build, and market a brand purpose that feels true to who you are and forges a real connection with your ideal people in the process?
Right – so before we jump into the WHY of brand purpose and it’s importance and how to build your purpose from the ground up; it’s important to understand straight up what brand purpose is.
“Brand purpose represents your reason for being and what you stand for above all else. It’s often referred to as your North Star or your Noble Purpose,” says Raphael Bemporad, founding partner of BBMG, the branding firm behind the report Brand Purpose in Divided Times.
Finding your “North Star” is the core of your brand purpose. However it is also about how you can use that to your advantage to better serve your customers, and the community at large. “At BBMG, we believe brand purpose lives at the intersection of a company’s authentic reason for being and the unmet human needs that it can uniquely fulfil in the marketplace and the world,” says Bemporad.
“We think holistically about brand purpose to represent how you create value for every stakeholder that touches your brand—your customers, employees, community members, partners, shareholders and the planet we share—so that we all can thrive together.”
Knowing your brand purpose is one thing—but getting it out into the world is another. Facebook is a great way to spread the word about your brand purpose.
Why is brand purpose important?
The definition of brand purpose is straight forward and easy in theory, right? So, why is it so important?
“[Brand purpose] makes you irresistible to those you hope to serve,” says Dan Salva, branding expert and the author of Big Audacious Meaning – Unleashing Your Purpose-Driven Story. “Prospects are drawn to the idea that their spending can do more than just help them acquire goods and services—it can help them feel like they are part of a bigger effort. A movement to make a difference.”
You can see that brand purpose is important as it shows your clients that you’re not just about your services or your products or your advertising campaigns. You have a purpose, and it’s not just about seeing coin in the company bank account.
“A rising generation of consumers is looking for brands to stand for something bigger than the products they sell,” says Bemporad. “They want brands to embody an inspiring ethos, bring a strong point of view, and take action to make a positive impact in the world.”
Email newsletters are a great opportunity to showcase your brand purpose to your audience.
Brand purpose vs. Brand vision, mission, and values: What’s the difference?
Ok – We’ve touched on brand purpose and we can see now why it is so important. It’s also equally as important to clarify what brand purpose isn’t.
Your brand’s purpose is NOT your brand vision, values or mission. Of course, they are related; as each builds off one another. But if your vision, mission and values are the building blocks of your brand, then think of the purpose an extension of this, the foundation.
“Your brand vision is where you are going. Your mission is how you will get there. And your values define how you will act along the way. They are all inward focused. They represent you talking about your brand. They are important to define, but none of them are as powerful as your purpose,” says Salva.
“Your purpose—or Big Audacious Meaning—is the larger reason why you do what you do. It should sit above the vision, mission, and values, informing and guiding them. It is invaluable because it is outward focused—defining the difference you will make in a life, a community, or even the world.
By clarifying your purpose, you help people understand how your brand serves them and their world. And it sets the stage for inviting them along to pursue the larger purpose you have clarified for your brand.”
How to define, build, and market your brand purpose
So, now that we’re clear on what brand purpose is (and what it isn’t), let’s get to the good stuff—defining, building, and marketing your brand purpose.
Defining your why
Let’s break it down.
The very first step to discovering your brand purpose is defining your ‘why’, the best way to achieve it. Go deep! Asking yourself the questions.
According to Salva, there are 3 questions that are key to ask yourself when you’re understanding the definition of your purpose:
What are you best at?
Is there anything you’re passionate about?
Are there any differences can you make?
The answers to these will provide you with invaluable insight into what drives you as a brand. It can also assist with identifying the areas that might be out of alignment.
“Make sure the answers align,” says Salva. “In other words, if you are passionate about something and you’ve identified the difference you could make but it’s not what you’re best at, then you need to keep working on your answers until you have alignment.”
Sounds like you have some business soul searching to do in order to figure out how your talent, passion and ability to make an impact and a different align. Here is where you’re going to find your brand purpose. Buried deep within you.
Building your purpose into your brand
Once you have defined your brand’s purpose it’s time to build it into your business. Start from the inside out. Do you have a team? Your team member need to be believers in the brand purpose. Focus on them first. Help them understand the purpose and get excited about it.
There is nothing worse than you being so passionate, and your team just do not care. When your entire team is on board with your brand purpose, they can take that sense of purpose and bring it into their work space each day. The brand purpose will come across in all your communications, your design, your marketing… you’ll see the cohesion. It will be infused into everything you do.
One woman/man show? Make sure you live and breathe your brand’s purpose, you’ll find it spreads.
Marketing your brand purpose and using it to take your brand to the next level
Once you and your team are aligned with the brand’s purpose and it is properly infused in all aspects of your business, it is time to start figuring out how to take that purpose out into he big bad world. In other words, how to market your brand purpose!
There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to marketing your brand purpose; the most effective marketing strategies are going to depend of your business model, the services and products you offer and the customers you serve. There are some things to keep in mind though for best practice.
Use your brand purpose strategically
As we spoke about, you want your purpose to absolutely be infused in everything you do. This doesn’t mean you need to go whacking your customers over the head with it at every chance you get.
In order to market your brand purposefully and effectively you need to think about how to use it strategically and how that changes as your audience makes the transition from prospect to first-time customer, to return customer.
“Our prospects are on a journey to becoming our customers. Purpose plays a big role in that. But it changes as the journey progresses,” says Salva. “When our prospects first encounter our brand, our purpose may be an important part of why they are attracted to us. When they are evaluating their options though, they may be more focused on the functional details of our offering.”
It’s makes sense that your brand purpose is front and centre on your homepage of your website, which is the first place a potential customer is likely to encounter your brand. However, sometimes taking a softer approach may work a little better. For example, on your product pages.
“The purpose never goes away during any stage of the customer journey—it becomes a matter of whether it is taking the lead in our brand story or whether it is playing a supporting role,” says Salva.
Find your purpose and take your brand to the next level
Inevitably things will get hard in your business, but having a clearly defined brand purpose is what keeps you going. It gives a deep essence of meaning to everything that you, and your team do. It makes the day-to-day challenges of running a business totally worth it.
So.. what the heck are you waiting for? Get out there! Find your purpose and use it to make a difference and take your brand to the next level in the process.
