What is a promise?
Taken at face value, Oxford defines a promise as “assuring someone that one will definitely do something or that something will happen.”
But in marketing, simply assuring your customers doesn’t cut it. A brand promise must be memorable, easy to understand, valuable and deliverable for long term as well. In other words, the foundation of the brand existence.
When it comes to looking at your brand promise, here are some mottos and promises from industry leaders to take into account:
- Siemens: Ingenuity for life.
- NVIDIA: The way it’s meant to be played.
- Intel: We believe in doing something wonderful.
Generating emotions
Promises are all about generating emotions in the people’s mind. Somewhere to belong, getting help and support from a valuable partner are essential feelings when it comes to big and complex projects.
Promises and emotions are the key to generating long-term memories. Everyone remembers that NVIDIA started in gaming – and look at where they are now. Thousands of users world-wide in their communities are keen to get to know their latest developments. Work hard and play/process harder could be their motto as well.
What is your brand purpose?
The next step in generating a strong brand is to figure out how the initial promise generates purpose. Why does the brand exist and what is the general impact on the customers’ life?
Successful brands aren’t only value-driven, but purpose-driven too. It doesn’t cut it to simply promise having faster processes, save your audience time and money. Companies messaging needs to have a ‘deep why’ to them – something that’s easy to understand and scalable.
Think about your message
Once the brand purpose is settled, your team should start to generate overarching message. In other words, the message is how the brand communicates its target audience to convince them to do business together. It must be influential to raise awareness and then generate long term loyalty.
According to Hubspot, 59% of shoppers prefer to buy from brands they trust and 21% say they purchased a new product because it was from a brand they like.
It means that not only sharing the latest product features and updates are important but also to communicate the brand values and build up the brand identity. Figuring out the key differentiators and highlighting them. Think about why you’re the best, what makes you an expert and what your purpose is.
In B2B technology marketing, companies’ main purpose is to do digital transformation. For generating such a compelling message, the “heroes journey” concept can be helpful – A hero who goes on an adventure, has victory on a great challenge and comes home changed and transformed.
Use this model in marketing to generate your story – the hero is your brand with all of your assets and teams.