Brand Value and Brand Values

What Is Your Brand Value Anyway?

What’s your brand value? For that matter what’s your brand? 

Every company has a brand. They might not all be as instantly recognizable as McDonald’s Golden Arches logo or Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan but the brand of a company is evident in its actions, products, and communication.

What’s your brand?

If you don’t know it, it doesn’t mean you don’t have one. It just means you need to take a little time to figure it out.

Why bother? Well, one thing that I always like to say is that if you’re not telling your story, than someone else is.

So, let’s begin. Let’s tell your story. And let’s do it intentionally.

Brand Value and Brand Values

To begin with, a great place to start is “what do you care about?” and “why do your customers care about you?” I call these your values and your value.

Your values are all about what you want to put into the world.

Why was your company started? Some might say it was started to make money but there are easier ways to do that.

For example, I started POP because I valued working from home and being with my wife and dogs. One of my values is family.

I also value right use of power and honesty. I incorporate that into the way I do business with my clients but also in the way I express their messages in their marketing. I am not going to say something deceptive just to get someone in the door.

I value creativity. I like telling stories. That’s what got me into this work.

If all I valued was making a living, I could be doing anything.

Knowing my values helps me decide who it is I want to work with and what work I want to do.

As for my value…

Hopefully, my customers value my values. It’s part of what make a good client/company relationship and that helps create repeat customers.

Someone who would do anything to make a buck is not a good client for me. Some of the clients I’ve worked with the most have value-driven missions to improve the world, the community, or the lives of people in it.

But my values aren’t enough for my clients to want to do business with me.

I also must bring value to my clients.

So, what is my value? What do I bring to my clients that make me a good choice for them?

Your value can be price but doesn’t have to be. Price is one way customers see value. Think Dollar Tree or Walmart.

Another way customers see value is quality. If you can remember the old Maytag commercials, they always feature a bored repairment. The idea was the Maytag repairment never had anything to do because Maytag appliances were always working!

That’s a great example of using humor in storytelling to express a value in a meaningful way.

In this case the value Maytag brought to customers was quality.

In the case of POP, the value I bring to my customers is quality storytelling done dependably using my 2QC formula – Quality, Quantity and Consistency.

Value and Values often intertwine

How do brand values inform brand?

So how do you use brand values to create your brand?

For me, creativity, honesty and dependability came together to create a comic book hero character.

Along with the word “POP” the brand really fell into place.

I then based my website around this aesthetic.

Again though, branding doesn’t need to be so in your face.  In fact, it’s often subtle.

Finding Your Brand

If you don’t yet know what your brand is, start with questions about when and why the company was founded.

Think about what your happiest customers have to say about you.

Think about why longtime employees have stuck with the company.

All these factors can come together to help you to define your brand if you’ve not already done so.

You don’t need to create a specific icon to represent it. If you can, that’s great!

What you do need to do is make sure that all of your messaging aligns with your brand values. Your website should state your brand values with your mission but that’s not enough. All of your website content and the rest of your marketing need to reflect it.

And all your employees should know about your brand to make sure that they consistently represent it.

If your brand is about friendliness, your employees can’t act the same as a company whose value is snarkiness. If a brand value is about inclusivity, you should make sure that you are including all kinds of people in your employees and your marketing. If your brand is about creativity, your marketing can’t be boring!

Knowing your brand values will help you to develop your brand and develop relationships with the right partners and customers to help you grow.

Once you do that people start to recognize you for that. And then, you have brand value. 

Need a little help?

Contact me for a free branding worksheet. My branding worksheet is a series of questions I ask all my new customers when we get started.

I use it to make sure I am representing clients as they’d like to be represented and speaking in the voice they would speak themselves.

I can do the same for you or you can use my branding worksheet to jumpstart your own DIY journey!