What Are Brand Values and Why Are They Important in Personal Branding

BrandingMarketing Tips

Jun 17

Written By brandmerry

What Are Brand Values and Why Are They Important in Personal Branding

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

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Last week, I shared a podcast episode and blog on what I believe is one of the most important parts of creating your brand and business - the mission statement.

You can listen to that episode of The Brandmerry Podcast here.

In continuation of that episode, it’s important to also share more about Brand Values. You'll find that mission and values go hand in hand and are some of the things that I think a lot of solopreneurs, myself included in the beginning, miss out on and don't take the time to establish.

But, like your mission statement, they can help you in your decision-making process in the brands that you work with and the clients that you take. So they're important to establish early on.

THE ROLE OF YOUR MISSION STATEMENT AND VALUES

As I’ve mentioned before, your mission statement is used as a compass in your business.

You’ll use it as a guide for making important decisions like hiring a team, accepting clients, taking on brand collaborations, and more. Just like the mission statement your values are beneficial for you to come back to and make sure you’re making decisions in alignment with your vision and values.

They can also serve as a kind of sounding board in the choices that you're ultimately going to make for your brand and your business moving forward.

But, your brand values also impact the buying decision process from a customer standpoint.

We know that 77% of consumers make purchase decisions based on shared brand values.

So, if a company has a set of brand values that aren't in alignment with that individual, they might move on to another company.

And that's totally fine - remember we want our brand to both to attract our dream clients and repel the wrong ones.

And while your brand values might turn off some people (i.e. not your ideal customer), what typically happens is your ideal customer is magnetized by your stance, opinion and a shared value.

It’s about not only sharing your brand values but more importantly living up to them.

You can absolutely post your brand values on your website for all to see, but if you're not living up to those statements, they mean nothing.

It’s in the art of honoring these values and creating a brand in alignment with them that makes the biggest difference.

HOW TO USE YOUR BRAND VALUES

As I've mentioned before, you absolutely can add your brand values to your website, but that’s not the real reason we take the time to establish them.

There are three main reasons to establish your brand values:

Use them as a guiding light for all elements of your business (including who you work with)
Make better decisions in alignment with your values and ultimate visions for your company
Provides content for your business

As a Personal Branding Consultant and Marketing Strategist, I love to empower my clients to share stories online. One of my favorite types of stories to teach are those that showcase the brand’s values.

For example, let’s say one of your values is authenticity, as it is one of mine, you can share a story about why authenticity matters to you.

You can showcase a time in your life where you had to make a decision with the transparent authentic approach, as opposed to the, "Oh, I've got my shit together approach."

You can share stories. You can share content. You can show up and paint a picture of how you’re honoring your values without just saying, "These are my five brand values."

While listing them out is where it starts, it really comes down to how you use them when building your brand.

WRITING YOUR BRAND VALUES

When it comes to listing out your brand values, my suggestion is to keep them very simple.

You don't need 15 of these bad boys because you're not going to remember them. And as you expand and grow your team, they're not going to remember them either.

You also don't want to make them overly complicated.

I've seen amazing companies share their brand values as single words, two to three-word statements. I've also watched brands do full sentences. Just a full sentence of this is what we believe.

Your brand values are the core principles behind the work that you do, what your company believes in and honors and commits to as a collective, so it’s important that they can easily be remembered and communicated.

This simple communication is what will support your ability to build brand affinity.

Brand affinity is so much deeper than brand awareness, brand attraction and brand connection.

Brand affinity is when you see clients come back over and over and over again. When you see clients who no longer can benefit from your services because they've kind of tapped out of what you provide, but continue to refer people to you and are affiliates for your brand.

They shout your brand and your mission and the things that you're doing from the rooftop.

Brand Affinity comes from a connection of shared values and a shared commitment. It’s incredibly powerful and something I believe every brand should be aspiring to have and a great place to start is with your brand values.

BRAND VALUES EXAMPLE

I know it can be tempting to try and locate a Brand Value Cheat Sheet, I’m sure it exists on the internet, but I encourage you to tap into your story, do the mission work that we talked about in this blog post, and think about the commitment that you're making to your clients, to yourself and to your mission.

Let those be the guiding light for your values.

Because there's no one size fits all approach for this. When we try to find a one size fits all approach, then we sound like everybody else, and that is not a great branding strategy. It's actually the worst branding strategy. And I do not recommend it.

This is something that you can’t copy and paste or you’re missing the entire point of creating brand values.

In the next section of this post, I’m going to share my six brand values as a source of inspiration for you. I’ll also be sharing why I hold those values within my company. Remember, you can structure your values as single words or sentences - I’ve shown you both options below.

Let’s get into it.

BRANDMERRY BRAND VALUES

Transparency and Authenticity

At Brandmerry, we believe that transparency and authenticity are the keys to true impact and connection. One of our goals at Brandmerry is to support our clients and in building true communities.

And my mission statement is to have women specifically build impact, build movements, and build communities.

So, one of the things that we believe is that the way to do that and the way to have a real impact is to be authentic, to be yourself, to not put on some weird front on social media that's going to blow up in your face one day. To have your clients and customers saying, "You are just like I imagined you were. You are just like you are on your Insta stories."

These are things that my clients have said to me, my customers have said to me over the years.

We honor this by showing up authentically, being transparent about things that are happening in business, as well as teaching my clients how to do the same thing.

Hard Work

At Brandmerry, we believe in hard work. We believe that it is necessary. And while we do believe in balance, we also believe in getting shit done in order to move forward towards our goals.

That is one that I've honestly gone back and forth with for a few years. It's not one that I originally had because there's a hustle mentality that I think is dangerous online.

But I have separated hustle and hard work and have owned that working hard for something that you want and you believe in is okay.

And I want to work with entrepreneurs who work hard.

I want to work with entrepreneurs who are in it, who aren't afraid to get scrappy, who aren't afraid to DM some people who have checked in with them and then ghosted and follow up with them and be like, "Where are you at? What's going on? I want to check in with you."

I want to work with people at Brandmerry, not only my clients but also my team members who will put in the time and energy to reach our goals.

So, in the seasons of life that require hard work, hard work is important.

Commitment

At Brandmerry, we know that commitment builds habits and achieves goals. It is not just a commitment to your mission. It's a commitment to yourself and we're here for it.

So we are fully committed to the work that we do and committed to the mission statement behind the brand. As I bring on employees, I want them to be committed as well.

That's why I show up the way that I show up because I want people to know what they're getting themselves into when working with my business. But I also know that my commitment is important and I want to work with other entrepreneurs and small business owners who are also committed.

You’ll notice I also say, it’s a commitment to yourself because one of the things that I believe in and I stand for is a commitment to putting yourself first and honoring the things that you want. If that means setting boundaries that you need to set with your loved ones in order to honor that commitment, then we do it.

Responsibility

At Brandmerry, we believe in taking responsibility not only for your goals and your actions but also being brave to apologize and own your shit.

Responsibility is important to me. It is just something that I have always carried. It's something my husband and I have in our vows to one another. And responsibility as a business owner, I think is just so important because there are going to be times when you mess up and you need to be brave enough to accept responsibility for that.

You also need to take responsibility for the actions that you're taking. Like, "This is the goal. We're committing to the goal. Now, be responsible and get work done." You'll see how a lot of these fit hand in hand. Hard work, commitment, responsibility, they're all one strong core value that I've broken up.

So, taking responsibility not only for your goals and the things that you want, the actions that you're taking but also a responsibility if you mess up!

I want to work with entrepreneurs that are responsible and I want people on my team that exhibit the same characteristics. And I will honor this as well. It's a driving force for me.

Freedom

If you've been following me for a long time, you know that I actually used to call myself a freedom coach before I understood SEO and any of those important characteristics with marketing.

Freedom has always been kind of an underlying theme of my brand. “Create a life of freedom,” was the very first tagline that I created. And even today, I talk about time, financial, and location freedom as the trifecta that I wanted to achieve and that I have now achieved in my business.

Freedom is what it's about. At Brandmerry, we believe in taking breaks, enjoying vacations and not living on social media. It's not just a marketing practice, it's our everyday mentality.

So you can see how this kind of manifests itself in my business, from the decisions that I make to not live on social media, to taking months off of creating content sometimes to taking month-long, three-months-long breaks with my family to go on vacation.

I have no problem telling my clients, "Hey, I’m going on vacation!" It's a value. It's something that's expected of me. I literally have never had a client go, "What do you mean you're going on vacation?" Because I have this value and I showcase that in everything that I do.

But it's also a guiding principle inside of all of my programs, where I talk about how to market off of social media inside of Brandmerry Academy and the power of repurposing and bulk creating content so that you're not living online all the time.

I believe that we should have a business that complements our life, not the other way around.

And then, as a member of our team, something that I'm looking forward to growing into as we expand is that my employees, employees of Brandmerry, will have days off every week. We'll be able to take week-long vacations every quarter and be able to take a whole day off if they have a doctor’s appointment or something personal.

This idea of freedom in all aspects as a CEO, content creator, educator, boss, woman, etc...is a major value.

Inclusive Community

At Brandmerry, we build, attract, and run communities where voices will be heard. We don't shy away from having hard conversations and we don't tolerate attacks on basic human rights.

So, for me, this is important because I, as someone who has a mission to encourage entrepreneurs to own their stories and share their stories, having these communities and having this brave space to share those stories without judgment and without fear are incredibly important.

In alignment with that, I also take a stand on human rights. I spoke out about the Black Lives Matter campaign and I've continued to do work in my everyday life when things happen politically or socially. If there is something that I feel strongly about, I will talk about it.

I know a lot of people used to say that you shouldn't combine business and politics, and there are still people who believe that businesses should not take stands on political issues. I’m sorry, but that argument is false.

Businesses absolutely should, if they are in alignment with their values.

But, do not do it for show - people can see right through that crap. If this is a value that you have though, if this is important to you, speak up about it and don't be afraid to do that.

That is something that I have honored over the last year by saying, "Yeah, this might piss some people off, but you know what? This is important."

I have a platform and I have a voice, and I'm able to do that.

We're seeing more and more companies rise up to this. I think it's very cool. It just goes back to what we talked about at the beginning around brand affinity. This stuff is important. Choosing your values will help you make decisions that will also help you show up online. And as an added amazing bonus, make more income and impact, which is what we love over here at Brandmerry and the Brandmerry Podcast.

CONCLUSION

So what I encourage you to do is, think of around 5-7 brand values.

You don't want too many where you can't remember your brand values.

You want to first start with your story. So identifying who you are, what's ultimately led you to where you are, and identifying your mission statement. Listen to Episode 1 if you want to dive into that a little bit further.

Then, identify some of these key values. You don't have to list out every single thing that you believe in. These are core values, right? These are core principles - you only need a few.

Once you have those, determine how you ultimately want to get them out into the world. Again, you can absolutely post them on your website. You can create a document. You can have them in your contract. You can do a video about your core values. You can do it in whatever way it feels good for you.

But one of the things that I recommend is starting to use these core values as a way to show up, share content and stories online.

That's a great way to showcase your values in a super organic and natural way that allows your audience to say, "Oh, okay. Yes, this is my person. Oh, okay. Yes, this is what I'm looking for." And it's supported my business and my clients over the years.

If you're ready to take it further to build that brand foundation, don't forget to watch the Build a Better Brand Method.

It's a completely free on-demand class, where I walk you through my six-part branding framework. You'll learn more about the power of storytelling in business with a fun case study all about how my business exploded because of storytelling. I also teach you how to do better ideal client research and how to elevate your messaging. It's completely free and on-demand and you can sign up to watch it here.

And at the training, you'll have an opportunity to learn more about You! Branded, which is my signature course teaching you how to create a strong personal brand. Inside of You! Branded the very first module is all about storytelling. So you know that it's important and it is key in building a strong brand and business.