Ginger Zumaeta is CEO of Motive3. Motive3 helps companies build messaging playbooks for communications that resonate and motivate.
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According to a Qualtrics survey, 80% of customers lose faith in a company after a single bad experience that clashes with its promises. Yet, many businesses still treat a brand promise as mere marketing fluff. That's a critical mistake, especially in today's landscape.
A brand promise goes beyond a tagline. It embodies the fundamental concept guiding your mission, products, services, customer interactions and even your recruitment process. When done right, it sets a clear expectation in the minds of everyone who interacts with your company. Think of it as your internal compass, guiding judgment calls at every level.
Consider Patagonia. Their promise that Patagonia is "in business to save our home planet," informs material choices, supply chain decisions and even employee volunteer programs. It's a commitment with a strong point of view. This deep alignment is why Patagonia enjoys fierce customer loyalty, enabling it to command premium prices in a competitive market.
Patagonia's brand promise isn't just a slogan—it shapes every element of their business.
• Material Innovation: Patagonia relentlessly pursues sustainable materials, investing heavily in research and development. For instance, they pioneered the use of recycled polyester in their fleece garments, significantly reducing their environmental footprint.
• The Worn Wear Philosophy: To combat fast-fashion waste, Patagonia launched its "Worn Wear" program. This emphasizes repair, offering tutorials and affordable repair services to extend the life of garments. They also have a vibrant marketplace for used Patagonia gear, encouraging customers to buy pre-owned.
• Activism As Brand Identity: Patagonia doesn't shy away from taking bold stances on environmental causes. They've sued the U.S. government over land protection (paywall), donated millions to grassroots environmental groups and even temporarily shut down their website to urge customers to vote responsibly.
This unflinching commitment to their promise resonates deeply with their target audience. It allows Patagonia to command premium prices in a competitive market because customers are buying into a set of values, not just a product.
Logic, Emotion And Credibility: The Building Blocks Of Belief
So, how do you craft a brand promise powerful enough to guide your business and win lasting customer loyalty? It starts with understanding what drives belief—an idea Aristotle laid out centuries ago that's still relevant today.
• Logic: Root your promise in real customer pain points you solve.
• Emotion: Deliver value in a way no competitor does, forging an emotional connection with your audience.
• Credibility: Your actions must support the promise. What makes you the authority to deserve your customers' business and trust?
How To Develop And Act On A Powerful Brand Promise
Crafting a powerful brand promise requires deep introspection and reflection. Start by understanding your customers' pain points, desires and emotions and analyze where your competitors fall short. Then, bring together key stakeholders to distill your company's core values and the ultimate impact you want to have on your audience.
1. Deep Customer Understanding: Begin with in-depth customer research. Surveys are great, but go beyond those to conduct interviews, analyze social media conversations and truly understand the emotions they experience when interacting with similar brands. A few tips: When we work with clients, we love to do 8-10 customer interviews that help us understand what the arc was that led them to our client. For example:
• What was the trigger that sent you looking for a solution?
• What did you find during your search?
• What caused you to select us?
Gather a handful of these and then do your own secret shopping to develop a customer experience map that shows you points of pleasure and pain in the process.
2. Competitive Analysis: Analyze how your direct (and even indirect) competitors position themselves. Check out the metadata you find in search results. Click through to their sights and note what they're saying (and to whom) on their landing pages. Identify gaps–what are the unmet needs, or where are competitors failing to deliver, leading to customer disappointment?
3. The Promise Workshop: Facilitate a workshop with key stakeholders from across the organization (not just marketing!). Use brainstorming techniques focused on distilling your core values, your unique attributes that lead to unique strengths and benefits and what ultimate emotional impact you want to have on your customers.
4. Drafting And Testing Your Promise: Now it's time for message testing. Shape some potential brand promises rooted in the insights from your workshop. Test different variations with mini social campaigns to gauge which resonate best with your target audience. Note: We prefer real tests like mini campaigns over focus groups and surveys because real mini campaigns are more predictive of future results. Plus, in many ways, they are less effort-intensive.
5. Internalize And Operationalize: Once finalized, your promise can't just live on the website. Develop internal guidelines, training sessions and communication plans to ensure every employee understands how the promise should shape their work. Set KPIs connected to it and revisit performance metrics regularly. We love to roll out a new brand promise along with a messaging playbook to the entire staff at once and then do fun exercises to hear stories from the team that affirm the promise.
From Promise To Purpose-Driven Performance
A well-defined brand promise not only differentiates you in the market but also becomes a powerful magnet for talent. Today's employees, especially younger generations, seek more than a paycheck; they want to work for companies aligned with their values. A compelling brand promise helps you attract and retain top employees who care deeply about your mission.
In Summary
In a world of broken promises and confusing brand messages, a clear brand promise is more than a marketing catchphrase—it's a guiding force for your entire business. When rooted in customer needs and backed by genuine action, a strong promise builds trust, differentiates you in the market and attracts passionate employees.
What's your company's true promise? Start by asking yourself: What customer pain point do we uniquely solve, what strong emotion do we want to evoke and what makes us worthy of trust?
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