How To Define Your Brand Values (and why you should)
In the simplest terms, your brand values are simply the things that you, as a business, care about. They are literally what you value – but defining and using them can be tricky. As a small business you might not be sure if you need to define yours, or what effect they might have on your business. Let’s dig into it and you’ll soon find out why it’s so important.
What are brand values?
As we mentioned, brand values are simply what you, as a business, care about. The spectrum here is broad. Big. Overwhelming. And knowing how to define them can feel strange because you’re not really sure what you’re going to do with them once you’ve defined what they are. So let’s talk about how brand values coming into play in the day-to-day operations of a small business.
We’ve seen small businesses create the most impact with their brand values when they are tied directly to their offering. Whether you are a product or service based business, chances are your values are closely linked to the way in which you operate, or the products you sell.
Here’s some examples of brand values from a client of ours:
WOASH Wellness offers herbal teas with a purpose. Each of their tea blends has a direct benefit for someone, and each are named for that purpose. The intent behind the business is to make choosing a herbal tea simple; whatever you are feeling there is a tea that will help with it, and WOASH offers 2 simple sizes to choose from, and nothing more.
For WOASH, simplicity is a brand value. They value the simplicity in fewer choices, the way they can reduce overwhelm for their customers and the simple benefits they can provide in creating their teas this way.
Simplicity might seem like a very basic adjective, hardly worthy of being a brand value - but once you see how it’s brought into their business, and applied to every aspect of the customer experience, you can start to understand how useful it is. Now, whenever their founder Cassy is making a decision about her business, she can refer back to this value and ask herself “Does this decision help to make things simpler, or at least, easy, for my customers”? If the answer is no, it’s probably not the right option for her to move forward with.
Curious to see the brand we made for WOASH? Take a look at it here and keep an eye out around the lower mainland for the packaging we designed for their tea too!
What about our brand values?
For ourselves, we know radical honesty is one of our brand values. For us we think of this in a similar fashion to good customer service, but we bring it into our internal operations as much as anything else, and use it as a standard with which we can guide our conversations and interactions as a team, as well as with our clients.
Radical honesty, is essentially kind honesty. It’s being honest and open as much as possible, not skirting around issues, creating constructive and supportive situations in which to have honest conversations, and being clear with our intentions at all times.
We use this in our conversations with clients - letting them know that they can ask questions, disagree with us, or that we might push them to consider new ideas. With our team it means being honest when we’re not happy, when something isn’t working, or when we want to share feedback. With our online audience it means we’re being honest about the realities of business ownership and aren’t creating a facade that stops connection from happening.
This value is also brought into our anti-racism commitment, something we crafted in 2020 to kindly and honestly show people where we stand when it comes to justice and equity for everyone.
With these examples you can, hopefully, see a few ways in which a brand value can be put to use. It’s about so much more than saying that you will offer “good customer service” but really considering how and what you’re going to do with your values, and finding the specific language that suits that best.
Even with good customer service, which every business should have as a standard really, you can see how a company like Whole Foods takes it to the next level. For themselves they have defined good customer service as “satisfying and delighting our customers”. This takes it way beyond plain old customer service, and ensures that every interaction satisfies and delights customers. Pretty cool right!?
So how to start defining and creating your own values?
Start with the things that really matter to your products or services. What makes them unique, different, or something someone would want to give you money for?
What matters to you and your team personally? Are you feminists? Do you care about the environment? What do you care about that can be brought into the day-to-day of your business?
What about your customers - what do they care about? Is there a value you share, or a problem you can solve for them?
Finally look at how you want to show up in the world as a business, the things that create integrity for you and would help you be proud of your business if you followed through on it.
If those questions don’t spark any ideas for you, browse through a list of adjectives and see if something comes to mind for your business and the way you operate.
Want to work with us on your brand identity and define your own brand values?
We ask our clients to define their brand values before we embark on a brand identity design project together. Sometimes we help our clients figure out what their values are, and sometimes the process itself helps our clients to get clear on things. However you go about it, we’re here to help! Shoot us an email at hello@saltdesignco.studio or comment below once you’ve got your brand values defined. We’d love to hear what they are, or work with you to develop your branding.
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