How Defining a Brand Purpose Can Accelerate Business Results

If you don’t have a brand purpose that drives your business forward, you could be leaving serious money on the table.

In fact, in a brand loyalty study conducted by Razorfish, 41% of participants said that brand purpose influences their purchase decisions more than innovation — or even discounts do.

Nicolas Chidiac, the brand strategy lead at Razorfish, said:

“We’re at the peak of purpose washing, and it’s imperative that brands not only clearly communicate their purpose but authentically put it into practice in everything they do. Brands are beyond the ‘why’ and are struggling with the ‘how’ to follow through and tie purpose to performance.”

If you’ve been looking to dig deep to discover how defining a brand purpose can accelerate business results, we’ve got the deets ready for you.

In today’s article, we’re taking a look at four key reasons having a brand purpose can help you make significant strides in your business.

Ready to learn what they are?

Let’s take a look.

1. Promotes brand loyalty and purchase decisions

Did you know that 82% of buyers make purchase decisions with purpose in mind?

That’s right.

When someone aligns with your brand’s purpose and values, they’re one step closer to saying yes to becoming a customer.

The key? Showing your purpose in everything you do and inviting your audience to become a part of it.

Julie Arbit, the Global SVP for Insights at VICE Media Group says:

“Brands need to demonstrate their purpose in everything they do and invite consumers to join them. Acting on purpose is what builds authenticity and trust and gets today's consumers to buy in — both figuratively and literally.”

In other words, demonstrating purpose and including your customer also promotes higher brand loyalty — a driving factor for return customers. And with 30% of buyers stating they’re more likely to return to a site they’ve shopped at before, brand purpose and brand loyalty are two factors you can’t ignore.

So, how can you demonstrate your purpose in everything you do?

Make a plan.

First, get laser-clear on your “why”.

Then, consider how you can implement it into your business processes, marketing, sales outreach, and company culture.

For instance, if you’re a career coach and your purpose is to help professionals learn how to accelerate their career growth, then you’d probably:

• Integrate career development tips and tricks into your blog and social media content

• Always consider your client’s end goal when strategizing a personalized coaching plan with your team
• Highlight your passion for helping professionals advance their careers into your marketing copy
• Ask questions that help professionals gauge what specific career goals they have during sales calls
• Keep your purpose at the center of every team meeting

2. Helps businesses solve problems for the right target audience

Having a clear purpose helps you create a solid foundation and a consistent brand.

With a defined purpose at the core of your business, you can pinpoint the right target audience and create offers and solutions with them in mind.

In other words, your purpose determines who you serve and the problems you solve for them.

That’s why it’s crucial to integrate your purpose into your:

• Campaigns
• Written and visual messages
• Sales copy
• Product offers
• Service offers
• And the custom solutions you create for your clients

Take Tailor Brands for example.

Tailor Brands’ mission is simple:

“Make business creation fun, easy, and accessible to everyone.”

Knowing this is Tailor Brands’ mission, what target audience do you think Tailor Brands is serving?

If you answered business owners or soon-to-be business owners, then you answered correctly.

Tailor Brands serves newbie business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Given its target audience and purpose, what kinds of offers do you think Tailor Brands has implemented for its customers?

If you answered help with establishing an LLC, creating a website, or designing a logo, then you guessed correctly.

Tailor Brands knows that registering and setting up a new business can be stressful and even discourage people from starting one to begin with. That’s why its easy-to-use formation service and branding tools are so valuable to its target consumer.

And it all started by knowing, understanding, and implementing its brand purpose into every aspect of the business.

Let’s dissect another example.

Let’s take a look at Luxury Presence.

Luxury Presence’s mission is:

“To help real estate professionals thrive in the digital age.”

Given its mission statement, what audience does Luxury Presence serve?

Yep, it’s right in the statement itself — real estate professionals.

Given its target audience and purpose, what offers do you think Luxury Presence has implemented for its customers?

While “thrive in the digital age” could mean a myriad of things, for Luxury Presence it means solidifying a strong online presence … hence the brand name.

Now that we’ve given you a hint, what kinds of offers do you think Luxury Presence has? If you answered SEO services for real estate businesses, you answered correctly.

Luxury Presence helps real estate agents and teams thrive online by helping them set up SEO strategies, stunning websites, and marketing plans.

Keeping its purpose at the forefront of the business has helped Luxury Presence grow to work with more than 5,000 real estate agents, teams, and brokerages since 2015.

And that brings us to …

3. Solidifies brand image

We’ve mentioned the importance of integrating your purpose into everything you do — and that also includes your brand image.

Your brand image encompasses several pillars, a few of which include:

• Visual symbols: Your customers’ ability to recognize your company’s symbols, such as your packaging, colors, logo, or product design.
• Concept: Your customers' ability to remember a certain concept about your brand, such as your slogan or a value you align with.
• Culture: The customer’s ability to remember the culture that emerges around your brand, such as norms, behaviors, and expectations.
• Brand awareness: The customers’ ability to remember basic attributes about your brand, such as what you do or where you operate.

In other words, it's a unique bundle of associations within the minds of your target audience — it's how customers view your brand.

That’s why it’s pivotal to create a consistent brand image.

Here are some ways to create a consistent brand image informed by your purpose:

• Choose colors that align with your brand’s purpose and the feelings you’d like to evoke in your target audience. In other words, how do you want your customers to feel when they see your brand colors?

• When planning out the images that’ll represent your brand, keep a consistent feel across the board by using a background remover tool.

• Create a tagline that acts as an external expression of your brand's purpose.
• Integrate attributes of your company culture in your marketing copy.

• Design product packaging that compliments both your brand purpose and your product-led growth strategy.Integrating a clear purpose into your innovation strategy ensures that every aspect of your product development and marketing is aligned with the values your brand represents, fostering stronger connections with your target audience.

4. Helps establish brand reputation and brand advocates

And speaking of how your audience remembers you, defining and implementing a brand purpose can help establish your reputation and promote brand advocacy.

And the reason for that is simple: Communicating your purpose helps you engage emotionally with your audience.

By being clear on your values, your mission, who you serve, and how you can solve their pain points, you inevitably form lasting impressions. As long as you follow through on your promises, of course.

In other words, it’s the emotional component that can truly transform a passive recipient into a loyal customer — and brand advocate.

Your brand purpose is also your ultimate competitive advantage. It’s what sets you apart from the noise and makes you special.

In the end, nobody can copy your company’s purpose, even if they try.

The way you communicate, market yourself, and tug on your customers’ heartstrings are all individual to you and your mission.

In other words, only you can do what you do, how you do it. That’s a powerful cocktail for business acceleration.

Wrap up

As Nicolas from Razorfish said, we’re at the peak of learning how to communicate and integrate brand purpose into every aspect of our businesses.

And the rewards are so juicy.

From driving brand loyalty and purchase decisions to solving problems for the right audience to solidifying a strong brand image, keeping purpose at the forefront accelerates business results.

As you’ve learned in today’s article, if you don’t have a brand purpose, you could be leaving serious money on the table.

We hope the insights and examples we’ve shared have helped crystalize the importance of defining and implementing your brand image into every cog and wheel that runs your business.

Curious? Learn more about Pics.io or book a demo with us and we'll answer all of your questions!

Author

Ioana is a freelance content writer and SEO strategist for B2B and B2C brands specializing in Business, Digital Marketing, SaaS, Tech, and Mental Health. Born in Transylvania, raised in Texas, and transplanted to Barcelona, Ioana’s most recent move has taken her to sunny Mexico.