3 Easy Steps to Build Your Brand Promise [+ Examples]

A couple of months after beginning a former job, I attended a workshop through which we mentioned our model promise.

It was a clarifying second for me — regardless of having a strong mission and imaginative and prescient assertion, it was the model promise that actually outlined the guts of the corporate and what my function was.

A model promise isn‘t only a tagline — it’s a method to present clients what your model can provide that nobody else can.

Like other forms of guarantees, model guarantees can get difficult. They set excessive expectations, provide bold commitments, and affect relationships.

Let’s speak about what a model promise is, how one can create a model promise, and see examples from common B2B and B2C manufacturers. We’ll additionally share a model promise template that can assist you draft your personal.

Hold studying or soar forward to the part you are on the lookout for:

Your model promise must be central to your organization, one thing that continues to be fixed at the same time as the corporate grows and evolves.

Not each model promise is specific — it may be extra of an inside mantra that is shared with staff, buyers, and companions.

However when you’ve constructed a robust model identification and clear messaging, your model promise might be evident to your target market. (And when you’re nonetheless working in your model identification and messaging, we have a free guide to assist.)

Model Promise vs. Tagline

There‘s usually some confusion between a model promise and a tagline, so let’s break it down.

Whereas it may be simply as quick as a tagline, a model promise establishes and nurtures a relationship with shoppers by telling them, “Hey, that is what you’ll be able to anticipate each single time you work together with our model.”

A model promise isn’t lofty — it’s grounded within the realities of what you are promoting. It could:

• Assist inside and exterior stakeholders know what to anticipate from you.
• Acquire shopper belief.
• Be the inspiration in your firm’s shopper interactions.

A Fast Model Promise Definition

Model guarantees are quick statements. They make a dedication to your buyer about what your model will ship.

It’s a promise, in any case. So when you break it, it might have an effect on your popularity and your income.

As an example, let‘s say your model promise is “Innovation at each flip,” however your organization hasn’t launched a brand new product in 5 years. That may deter potential shoppers who’ve been promised progress however as a substitute get stagnation.

Listed here are the most typical forms of model guarantees:

• Emotional: A promise interesting to emotion.
• Motion-based: A promise tied to a particular motion.
• Social: A promise primarily based on moral or social accountability.

Why Your Model Promise Is Vital

This message can have a big effect on customer sentiment, brand reputation, and extra. A model promise is a social contract between your organization and the shopper or shopper.

It’s possible you’ll not have a legally binding doc swearing that your organization will innovate at each flip, nevertheless it’s understood that buyers are providing you with one thing (like their hard-earned cash) in alternate for a services or products.

It’s the scaled, industrial model of a pinky promise, together with your model holding up one finger and your target market holding up the opposite.

And when you’re not taking your model promise as severely as a legally binding doc, you’re susceptible to dropping not simply your clients, however your market valuation, staff, and different stakeholders.

Delivering in your model promise will help what you are promoting develop by constructing belief together with your goal audiences and boosting gross sales.

However how are you going to pack all that energy right into a single message? Let’s speak about how one can create your model promise.

How you can Write a Model Promise

1. Focus in your viewers.

Your model promise outlines your dedication to your viewers. So, to determine what your promise must be, your first step is figuring out what your viewers desires from you.

It goes past a particular services or products, it‘s extra particular to the expertise you’re offering.

As an example, Planet Fitness’s brand promise is predicated on folks’s reluctance to hitch the health club for concern of judgment and embarrassment. The Planet Health model guarantees to create an atmosphere that encourages folks in any respect health ranges to go to the health club and really feel snug understanding.

One other objective of your model promise is to set you aside out of your rivals. What makes you distinctive — your customer support, your product, your mission, your values? Construct on that to make a promise that is distinctive.

In Planet Health’ case, the model did one thing nobody else had performed: Handle the issue with the health club atmosphere, not its customers.

As you find out about what your viewers desires, preserve asking questions. How a lot do they find out about your {industry}? What data do they want earlier than making a purchase order?

It‘s vital to keep in mind that your model promise isn’t merely a slogan or dedication. It is step one in constructing a group with shared values. The higher you perceive your viewers, the extra seemingly you might be to have interaction them.

If you have not already, develop buyer personas and workshop messages that might resonate with every persona.

Featured Useful resource: Make My Persona

2. Take into consideration your buyer contact factors.

Your model promise is your assure to clients.

Whether or not your buyer is in-store, on social media, or shopping for on-line, place your self of their footwear and envision the way you need these interactions to go. Is there a particular feeling concerned? What have they got to achieve?

For instance, say a buyer spends a number of time in your web site however hasn‘t made a purchase order. Are you aware why they’re hesitating? When you have been chatting with this buyer in individual, what would you say to assist them transfer to the subsequent step?

As soon as you place these emotions into phrases, you’ll craft a model promise that displays the expertise you need to promote.

As an train, you could discover it helpful to draft three or extra secondary guarantees for every contact level. They will help you residence in in your foremost model promise and slim your focus to how completely different contact factors affect buyer expertise.

Your final model promise must be constant throughout each contact level. So, the extra time you spend taking a look at it from each angle, the extra seemingly you might be to create a robust model promise.

Featured Useful resource: Customer Journey Map Template

3. Hold it easy, distinctive, and galvanizing.

Your model promise must be clear and to the purpose — one thing you’ll be able to say in a single sentence. It will not essentially be as enjoyable as a tagline, nevertheless it ought to undoubtedly encourage belief and confidence.

Be considerate about which phrases you select and who your viewers is.

Does your model promise want industry-specific phrases? Is your model promise about promoting a proposal or explaining your product? Answering these questions will help you discover the best vocabulary in your promise.

Subsequent, introduce some play into your writing. Take into consideration your company culture, awakening the senses, and the main points that may paint an image in your viewers.

This course of will in all probability offer you extra copy than you want, however it might aid you discover an genuine and empathetic voice.

Then you’ll be able to edit your model promise right into a single succinct assertion that’s helpful, constructive, and hopeful.

When you can‘t articulate your promise on this manner, maybe you haven’t absolutely fleshed out your brand’s purpose.

If that is the case, begin by asking your self these questions:

• What ought to my clients anticipate from me?
• What does my firm stand for?
• What makes us completely different from our rivals?

What makes a model promise profitable?

“A model promise,” model guide Cornelis Jacobs tells me, “is principally your identification. In case your model didn’t exist, what would the world miss?”

That world doesn’t need to be at a world scale — the goal marketplace for a nook bakery may be a single neighborhood. Whether or not you’re promoting cupcakes or iPads, your model promise has to create and nurture a relationship.

“It’s creating belief,” says Jacobs. “I give cash in alternate for a services or products. There’s belief that the model will ship on that promise.” Jacobs sees two parts to that belief: reliability and delight.

An incapacity to ship in your model promise — “that’s sport over,” says Jacobs.

The long-term results on brand perception may be devastating when you lose credibility by breaking a promise.

Listed here are 4 key components to contemplate as you craft your model promise:

Credibility

Your model promise must be one thing that what you are promoting or product is certified to supply, and it must be one thing that you’ll be able to ship on with excellence, reliability, and delight.

Volvo’s model promise, for instance, hinges on security. If it was unable to constantly engineer vehicles with excessive security requirements, it could lose all credibility.

This assertion may present your dedication to fixing a particular drawback in your clients.

Actionable

A model promise is a proposal {that a} enterprise must preserve. Which means the promise should be one thing your organization can act on.

As you overview your model promise, ask your self:

• Is your model promise additionally a call-to-action?
• What do your clients get in return in the event that they decide to your model?
• How can your viewers interact or become involved together with your model promise?
• What different questions would possibly somebody ask after seeing your model promise?

To be efficient, your model promise must be one thing your stakeholders can act on or see you taking motion on, plus why that motion is efficacious. In case your promise is imprecise or static, you could must preserve working.

Memorable and Emotional

A model promise “is emotive,” says Jacobs. “It’s not the thoughts; it’s the guts.”

To evoke robust feelings, ask your self what feelings you need your clients or viewers to really feel once they resolve an issue utilizing your services or products.

This act of seeing out of your buyer’s perspective will help you create a “sticky” model promise.

Enterprise Impression

“Model technique is in the end enterprise technique,” Jacobs tells me. “In financial phrases, your model might be the one most vital asset of any firm.”

Your model promise doesn’t simply help what issues most to what you are promoting, it is the enterprise.

That signifies that your model promise must be evident in each single contact level: what distributors you select, what your web site seems like, and even the way you reply the cellphone. Jacobs says your model promise is to “all stakeholders, not simply your shopper.”

And there’s actually solely two choices: “You both ship on the promise, otherwise you don’t.”

It’d convey product excellence, drive gross sales, or increase model affect. And as folks in your group make selections, they need to accomplish that as champions of the model.

Model Promise Template

There isn‘t an actual formulation to create your model promise. However we’ve talked about that it’s a mix of some issues that make up your organization. So right here’s a formulation you should use to create your promise:

Positioning + Vision + Value Proposition = Your Model Promise

Write your solutions down and begin mixing these ideas collectively into one succinct thought.

Crafting your model promise must be a prime precedence when developing your identity. With out this core message, you’ll seemingly battle to develop your model identification and robust messaging to attach together with your target market.

A professional tip from Jacobs: “A model isn’t what you, the corporate, says it’s. It’s what your clients say it’s.”

Your model promise must be so robust that “there must be no divergence” — that’s, your clients ought to have the ability to describe your model promise precisely as you do.

It could take a number of classes to flesh it out — and that is okay. As a result of after you have it, it can change into ingrained each internally and externally as your organization grows.

Model Promise Examples

Remember that a few of these examples of brand name guarantees are assumed and a few have been shared by the businesses (and a pair are fully fictional). Use them as inspiration when crafting your personal.

That will help you take into consideration your personal model promise from a number of angles, I’ve additionally included hypothetical conditions of what it’d appear like if a few of these manufacturers did not ship on their model guarantees.

Construct one of the best merchandise on the earth and enrich folks’s lives. (Apple)

In a 2022 interview with Popular Mechanics, Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner stated that he tries to “keep it up the mission that [Steve Jobs] set in place, to construct one of the best merchandise on the earth that enrich folks‘s lives. And that hasn’t modified. Plenty of issues change with time. However the cause for our being is identical.”

Nicely established as a design and product innovator, Apple’s model promise is centered round innovation, high quality, reliability, and user-friendly design.

If it couldn’t ship on its model promise, we would see Apple transport shoddily designed merchandise that don’t resolve any issues for its shoppers, one thing that might do swift and irreparable injury to its model.

To encourage and nurture the human spirit — one individual, one cup, one neighborhood at a time. (Starbucks)

Starbucks would possibly even add “one avenue at time,” so ubiquitous are its shops throughout America and most corners of the globe.

Starbucks’ core model promise is customer-focused, establishing its popularity as a customer support firm that occurs to promote espresso.

Really feel empowered and emboldened. (Anima Iris)

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Tennis equipment model Anima Iris seeks an emotional reference to its target market by promising that they’ll really feel empowered and emboldened.

These phrases additionally set it other than rivals and set up a few of the expectations its clients ought to have.

Redefine luxurious as accessible and inclusive. (Telfar)

Telfar’s vegan leather-based procuring baggage grew to become vital accent during the last decade or so, because of its positioning as an reasonably priced luxurious. That’s a difficult candy spot to keep up, nevertheless it’s central to the model promise.

If it did not ship on its model promise, it could possibly be mirrored in costs capturing up past what its goal shoppers might afford, and/or a steep decline in high quality.

Inclusion since inception. (Tru Colour)

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Rooted firmly in variety and inclusion, Tru Color “believes in the great thing about the person and exists to offer skin-tone shade bandages and kinesiology tape for everybody.”

Its model promise signifies that inclusion is a foundational precept, one that can proceed to drive the model because it grows.

Create a secure area for POC to journey and uncover new adventures. (Noirbnb)

The stakes are excessive for Noirbnb, which guarantees “a secure area for folks of coloration to journey and uncover new adventures.”

As such, it’s additionally a memorable model promise, significantly for its target market of individuals of coloration who could have felt unsafe on earlier journey adventures. That is additionally a extremely actionable model promise.

Security for all. (Volvo)

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Volvo’s EVA initiative prioritizes Equal Automobiles for All, “no matter gender, age, top, weight, or form.”

When you’ve ever buckled up in a automobile to search out the seat belt at throat top, Volvo’s promise will pique your curiosity.

That is one other extremely actionable model promise, for the reason that burden of proof — and literal life-or-death stakes — rests on Volvo.

Unparalleled luxurious and customized service. (Four Seasons)

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When your identify is synonymous with luxurious, you’d finest have the ability to ship in your model promise.

Prospects of 4 Seasons properties anticipate a degree of customized service that units the model aside not solely from different accommodations and resorts, however from different luxurious lodge manufacturers. This model promise is memorable and emotional, interesting to shoppers’ need to be handled like royalty.

Carry tales to life — safely. (Inkheart)

Fake I’ve been handed the cash and the magic wanted to construct an journey tour firm for fictional locations.

My imaginary firm is impressed by Cornelia Funke’s 2003 YA e-book Inkheart, through which a lady learns that her father can convey characters to life just by studying from them.

Inkheart’s model promise, “Carry tales to life — safely,” assures its imaginary viewers that they’ll take pleasure in immersive experiences of their favourite fictional worlds with out concern of ogres, vampires, or evil masterminds.

We scare as a result of we care. (Monsters Inc.)

An actual model promise from a fictional model, Disney Pixar animated traditional Monsters Inc. options an organization by the identical identify. Monsters Inc. employs monsters to scare kids, whose screams produce clear vitality.

Doing double responsibility as a tagline, “We scare as a result of we care” evokes emotion and establishes the model’s distinctiveness — whereas promising respectable frights.

What‘s frequent throughout all these guarantees is that they by no means confer with a selected providing or numerical objective. As a substitute, they’re statements that embody the model’s broader goal.

Examples of Model Guarantees for B2B

Enterprise-to-business model guarantees may be troublesome to craft. It is because these relationships are sometimes extra about efficiency and ROI than assembly emotional wants.

Try these B2B model promise examples to spark your creativeness.

Assist thousands and thousands of firms develop higher. (HubSpot)

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Right here at HubSpot, we provide a whole buyer platform that helps companies join and develop higher. (Psst, that buyer platform contains Marketing Hub.)

Our model promise has broad attraction — “thousands and thousands of firms” — and demonstrates our dedication to and concentrate on progress.

See inside any stack, any app, at any scale, wherever. (Datadog)

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The repeated “any” in Datadog’s model promise signifies the product’s flexibility, an actionable declare that additionally differentiates it from its rivals.

Hold a superb factor rising. (Recurly)

Recurly, a subscription administration service, makes an emotional attraction in its model promise with the phrase “rising.” That sense of nurturing is backed up by the actionable declare that it has “a superb factor.”

Straightforward scheduling forward. (Calendly)

I take advantage of Calendly often, and I recognize that it’s easy to make use of. Calendly’s model promise focuses on a constructive consumer expertise, which straight affect’s the model’s backside line.

Unlock the facility of gifting at scale. (Reachdesk)

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Reachdesk makes use of AI to energy customized company gifting. Its model promise hints on the “energy” in retailer for firms that wow and delight their clients.

If it couldn’t ship on its model promise: Glitchy AI might result in presents that didn’t really feel considerate or private, or worse, be embarrassing.

Handle tomorrow’s surprises at this time. (LogicManager)

LogicManager makes use of the phrase “surprises” to point that it understands the realities of threat administration. That establishes an emotional relationship with its clients — it’s that “hey, you get me” second.

That emotional plea is backed up by a reputable and actionable promise that the enterprise threat administration firm can predict future dangers earlier than they get uncontrolled.

Smarter PR with highly effective, easy-to-use software program. (Muck Rack)

Muck Rack’s model promise begins with a superlative, “smarter,” interesting to clients’ needs for progress and enchancment. Coupled with “highly effective” and “easy-to-use,” Muck Rack units up an actionable model promise.

Engineering the extraordinary to alleviate ache, restore well being, and prolong life. (Medtronic)

Medtronic, a healthcare tech firm, has to influence potential clients that it might enhance (and even prolong) high quality of life with gadgets like high-tech pacemakers. That’s a excessive bar to clear, so it goes straight for an emotional attraction with a model promise that makes use of robust verbs like “alleviate” and “restore.”

Empowering small companies and entrepreneurs with monetary instruments and companies which can be accessible, modern, and user-friendly. (Square)

When you’ve interacted with small companies, like your neighborhood bookstore or a vendor on the native farmers’ market, you’ve seemingly used Sq. to make a fee. Sq.’s model promise hinges on accessibility and user-friendliness above all — an incapacity to ship would make it unusable by the viewers it targets.

Construct Your Model Promise for Lasting Outcomes

Some guarantees final a lifetime. To just remember to’re making a model promise for the lengthy haul, don’t rush by way of the method.

Drafting a fast slogan is tempting when your crew is up in opposition to a deadline — however this can be a promise to your all your stakeholders, so think about it fastidiously.

Check out the information, templates, and examples above, and let your creativity run wild. Your model could have already got a robust identification, however how are you committing to your clients? Inform them at this time, together with your model promise.