How To Define Your Core Brand Values

How To Prepare for My Brand Workshop

When I start working with clients, one of the first things that I do is a Brand Workshop, where I help to define some key aspects of their brand. A brand consists of three elements, internal core brand values, external visual elements and external messaging. Before you define your external elements of visual and messaging, you need to define your core brand values. Core brand values define what your visual elements and messaging should say.  Without taking the time to define it, you will find it much harder to communicate with your visuals and message. When you brand is clear, who who are, your brand personality, deciding brand colors, visuals and messaging becomes easier, takes less time and is more effective.

Your Brand Values

Brand Values are sort of your brand personality traits that help you to decide what  your brand really means and stands for. Your core brand values are promises. Promises that you communicate to your (potential) customers about who you are and what you stand for. These promises create expectations and can build trust, especially once delivered. Try to choose brand values that distinguish you from the competition and that your customers are genuinely looking for in the market. A brand value however is a promise. It has to be something that you can truly deliver.

Your core brand values are promises.

Brand Values are still incredibly important, even in the digital world, and especially if you want to build a relationship with your audience on social media. Your audience is getting to know who you are based on your website, your blogs, your videos and your interactions on social media. Each of these elements must work together to deliver a consistent experience and convey authenticity and authority in your field or market. If your audience doesn’t trust your digital assets, they won’t contact you, follow-up with you or move your relationship with them to the next level. Building relationships through marketing is very similar to the steps you need to take in building human relationships.

It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are. – Roy Disney

Being consistent in your advertising and messaging is also critical to creating a genuine connection with your audience that builds trust. People interact with your brand an average of 7 times before making a purchase. If your brand looks and talks differently with each interaction, the customer becomes confused about who you are and what you offer. Once you clearly decide who you are, you can clearly communicate that consistently. This delivers results. This genuine connection builds trust and your audience slowly starts to listen to your message through the noise of the thousands of other messages that they are exposed to every day.

Brands are built with consistency.

A consistent presence and brand will also help you to connect to the right audience. Nothing is more frustrating than spending lots of time and money building relationships with an audience that will never really convert to your customers. You need to find the right audience, and communicating your brand values through your visuals and your messaging can help to filter your audience and build connections to the right people.

Once you have chosen your brand values, you can start to build a visual brand identity or even your company name around that. Names, colors and visuals that seemed so empty before now actively communicate your brand after this exercise.

To start defining your brand values, review the list below and select words that best describe your brand to your audience. You can find words outside of this list, these are just some suggestions to get you started. Select the words you feel best fit your brand and try find values that are unique in the your market and that you know your customers are looking for. Write down as many as you feel are important or relevant, we will narrow this list in the workshop.

In the brand workshop, we will discuss these values and start the process of narrowing these values down to the essential values that can be considered your core values. You core values will help to you to differentiate your brand from your competition and provide a value to that you audience or customers are looking for in the market.

Here are some other articles if you want to read more about Core Brand Values:

• How to Define Your Core Brand Values
• The Search for Value: How to Define Clear Brand Values for Your Company