The days when being good at your core business was enough to satisfy your customers are long gone. Now, to ensure deep and lasting customer engagement and to inspire the holy grail – brand loyalty – your customers need to know what your brand stands for – and believe it.
Most brands know this and have brand purpose, brand values and mission statement documents. But if the most you do with these documents is dust them off and refresh them every few years, then you’re not doing enough. How do you expect your customers to know about your brand’s values if you don’t tell them?
One way to do this is to embed your brand values at every touch point along the content journey, to ensure your customers know you’re walking the talk when it comes to what you stand for.
Demonstrating brand values on your website
The first and most obvious place for your business to demonstrate its brand values is on the ‘about us’ page of your website. This needs to say more than just what you do – it needs to detail how you do it and why you do it.
Don’t be afraid to mention causes or charities your company supports that align with your brand values here – more and more socially conscious consumers (and employees) want this information – they want the brands they deal with (and work for) to align with own their views and values.
Ice cream maker Ben and Jerry’s is an example of a brand that does this well.
3 more ways to make your content reflect your brand
Beyond your website, you can use content to demonstrate your brand values, constantly reminding your customers and potential customer of what you stand for.
3 ways to do this are to:
1. Use content to explain your process
You can build customer trust if you provide transparency into how you operate, regardless of the sector you work in. If you’re an insurer, this could be a step-by-step explanation of how you assess claims, while a retailer could provide an explanation of how and where they source their products.
2. Use content to showcase your staff
People like to know that behind the brand sits real people, just like them. This is especially the case for larger brands, which can be perceived as faceless. Profiles which introduce and humanise key staff, while also demystifying part of your process by explaining what they do for the business and how are more powerful than you think.
3. Use content to shine a light on your culture
Do you give staff time off work to volunteer for causes that align with your brand values? Or have staffing ratios in place to ensure gender equality and racial diversity? Your customers won't know this if you don't tell them.
The value of soft content
This type of content is often viewed as a lesser cousin within companies as the link to sales is less obvious if the content doesn’t talk about your product or service, or include a sales message. But if you ascribe to the rule of seven – that it takes seven touchpoints to convert a prospect to a customer – building customer trust and providing a wholistic view of your brand are key steps in this journey.
In fact, this type of content has only increased in importance following COVID-19. With more and more business transactions moving online, the relationship building that may have once occurred face-to-face, in a branch, a store or a client meeting, is increasingly happening in a way that makes it more difficult for a customer to make a judgement about the values of your brand and its people.
Final thoughts
If you’d like help in demonstrating how your brand walks its talk, either through content articles or a website re-write, I’m here to help. You can contact me for a free, no-obligation, 30 minute discussion of your needs.