Benefits of Incorporating Brand Values in Business Strategy
approx 9 minute read
Our previous brand values blog showed us how to integrate your values into your business strategy. This month, we’ll take a look at how brand values can benefit your business. These benefits include everything from strengthening your marketing and sales activities. To improving your customer loyalty and retention. And looking after your employees. So let’s jump right into it.
Benefits of brand values
There are a number of benefits to integrating brand values within your business & marketing plan. 89% of consumers state that they remain loyal to a brand if they share the same values as them. Looking at this statistic alone, you can understand how influential brand values are. Your values help to guide and focus all of your activities.
The benefit of this is that you get an idea of what you want your business to stand for. This will help you to effectively target the right customers and the right staff. And to undergo the right marketing and sales strategies. Without brand values to guide these activities, you will spend a lot of time targeting the wrong customers, hiring the wrong people and marketing in the wrong place.
Brand values ensure both customer and employee loyalty, employee satisfaction, brand awareness, and growth and business stability. A survey conducted by LinkedIn found that 58% of businesses who had articulated brand values within their business plan experienced an annual growth of +10% in comparison to those businesses that did not.
Brand values will benefit your marketing activities:
Branding and marketing activities are how you speak to your customers without directly talking to them. The powerful and influential effect that these can have on your target audience are of paramount importance to the success of your business. Incorporate brand values within your branding and marketing communications to strengthen your message and fortify your relationships with your audience.
Brand values strengthen your business through value based marketing;
Marketers often rely on the information that they know about their audience to engage them. Through this knowledge, businesses create reliable and loyal customers who advocate for their brand. Utilising this tactic and relying on your brand values can strengthen your marketing practices.
Take advantage of values-based marketing. This occurs when a brand connects with an audience based on the fact that they have shared values, i.e. Sustainability, Efficiency, Integrity. It is an attentive strategy that is charged by authenticity and transparency. The aim of values-based marketing is to resonate with its ideal customer through closely held social, ethical and consumer-based issues.
This strategy can afford your brand the opportunity to establish a greater level of trust with your customers. Consumers are passionate about their personal and consumer values. Aligning and living up to these values will benefit your business as you begin to strengthen your brand and customer base. Deliver upon the promises and the values that you uphold through your marketing and show your audience that you are reliable and trustworthy.
This will work in your brand’s favour because, if you deliver upon your key values, the likelihood that your audience will engage and advocate for your brand increases tenfold. This is vital for referral and word of mouth marketing. A value-based strategy can help you to resonate with your target audience and ensure that they remain engaged and loyal down the line.
What not to do – Don’t annoy your customers!
The market is becoming increasingly saturated with businesses that you are in competition with. Consumers can sniff out the false claims and empty promises from a mile away.
If your brand values are orientated around customer service and satisfaction, make sure you live up to those values. If you don’t, you can seriously damage your brand’s reputation, leaving your customers dissatisfied and uninterested in engaging with you and recommending to other likely consumers.
Brand values will help you identify and align with your target audience:
Brand values are highly relevant and essential to marketing. Marketing is all about influencing and driving behaviours. Without values, how can you sway your customers behaviours if you have not defined your own?
Values encourage you to use your time and resources effectively so you can market to the right people in the right way. Without brand values, businesses often spend a lot of time and money on marketing activities, yet they do not always see the return on their investment. This is because they are marketing to the wrong people in the wrong spaces.
Get your marketing team to outline a successful marketing strategy based on these values and leverage them in order to target the correct audience. If you live and breathe your brand values you can create a successful marketing campaign which will help you to monetise these relationships.
Brand values can focus your marketing efforts:
Identify where your audience is and who they are by utilising your brand values. The benefit of this is that it can help you to focus your marketing effort to create the perfect marketing plan.
Knowing who your customers are is half the battle. Knowing this will help you to structure your marketing activities accordingly, ensuring that you are not wasting valuable resources on ineffective marketing practices. If your audience is technically savvy and between the ages of 21 and 35, it wouldn’t be as beneficial to focus your marketing in the local newspaper.
Brand values will also help you to understand what your customers look for when they interact with a brand. Take advantage of this and alter your marketing activities to engage with them.
If one of your brand values is “appreciation,” show your customers that you are grateful for their business and offer them a discount for their birthday or even just put a chocolate in with their delivery. Memorable tactics like this will leave a positive and lasting impression on your customer which can significantly benefit your business.
Brand values affect employee motivation and engagement;
Many people fail to remember the impact brand values have on your employees. One major benefit to key values is that individuals who wish to work for you strongly align themselves with these core beliefs and values. This does wonders for your businesses success as your employees then eat, sleep and breathe these beliefs. This means that they will do everything they can to help your business succeed.
Shaping company culture;
Your values can help you to shape your company culture and how your business is perceived. You should use your brand values to hold yourself accountable to a particular standard when hiring and operating your day to day business activities. This sets the tone for your working environment. It also allows you to perform at a higher level of business when circumstances arise, leadership change and new recruits join your team.
88% of employees believe that a businesses brand values impact the businesses overall culture and in turn this is a key contributor to employee satisfaction and the businesses success. Similarly, more than 50% of CEOs and CFOs believe that company culture influences productivity, creativity, profitability, firm value and growth rates.
Just like customers tend to purchase from businesses that they feel positively about, employees are the exact same in terms of who they want to work for. Your brand values show your employees what your business stands for. This is beneficial as they are more likely to make informed decisions based on these values. In turn this helps the business to achieve its goals and vision.
According to the Association of Talent Development 94% of employees are 2-4 times more likely to work harder for an organisation if they love their workplace. In conjunction to this, brand values help to provide moral direction and guide employees during difficult situations. These beliefs create a strong company culture which influences your employees to work to the best of their ability.
Brand values also improves your employee communication;
Communication is vital to implementing a positive company culture. Improving your business culture, employee satisfaction and increasing employee morale are all a by-product of integrating clear brand values into your business. Incorporate these values into your business to help you achieve this throughout your business.
Recruiting and retention;
It has been found that more than 80% of new hires who are recruited based on technical skills will fail as an employee as a result of their inability to connect and appreciate the company culture and values. Promote your brand values when you are looking to hire new recruits to join your team. When businesses clearly outline their values and beliefs they tend to attract like-minded individuals who would integrate well into the company culture. This leads to greater productivity and engagement among employees.
When employers live by and uphold their core values, even during the trickiest of times, employees remain engaged and encouraged to work hard.
Brand values and Sales activities:
Your company values have a significant impact on your sales performance and you may not even be aware of it. Just like your marketing strategies, your sales activities can directly benefit from your businesses core values. A study conducted by Korn Ferry indicates that a business can increase its bottom lines sales by up to 30% when they live by their core values.
Increase the number of customers entering your sales funnel.
Use your company values to get customers into your sales funnel. Market upon them. Your core values allow you the opportunity to target customers and market directly to them.
The benefit of integrating core values into your sales activities is that you can leverage these values in order to attract customers into your sales funnel. If you offer next day delivery, this unique selling point will lure customers who appreciate efficiency and quick turnaround to your business.
Productivity:
Your core values have invaluable value. They can help to keep your staff motivated and engaged. The benefit of this is that it can assist in raising productivity and performance levels. When your employees respect and align with your core values they often obtain a greater understanding of their job role. This often drives productivity levels and ensures that your employees strive to achieve your business goals. This can significantly benefit your sales as your employees are motivated to actively seek out potential sales and entice customers into your sales funnel.
Conclusion
Your values are much more than just some words that you associate with your business. There are so many underlying benefits that you may not necessarily be aware of when you chose them. Allow them to improve your business strategies and how you operate. The rewards can only strengthen your business. If you are in need of aligning your brand values with your branding and marketing activities, get in touch with your local Nettl Studio and let us help you to get the most out of your brand values.