Just a few months after beginning a former job, I attended a workshop wherein we mentioned our model promise.
It was a clarifying second for me — regardless of having a stable mission and imaginative and prescient assertion, it was the model promise that actually outlined the center of the corporate and what my position was.
![Free Kit: How to Build a Brand [Download Now]](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/53/814dd420-0d49-40e0-b59c-f01066e186c1.png)
A model promise isn‘t only a tagline — it’s a option to present prospects what your model can provide that nobody else can.
Like other forms of guarantees, model guarantees can get difficult. They set excessive expectations, provide bold commitments, and influence relationships.
Let’s speak about what a model promise is, easy methods to create a model promise, and see examples from standard B2B and B2C manufacturers. We’ll additionally share a model promise template that can assist you draft your individual.
Maintain studying or leap forward to the part you are in search of:
What’s a model promise?
A model promise reveals what customers can count on from a model throughout all contact factors. It serves as an organization’s foundational worth and informs each side of the corporate, from its messaging to its customer support.
Your model promise needs to be central to your organization, one thing that continues to be fixed whilst the corporate grows and evolves.
Not each model promise is express — it is also extra of an inner mantra that is shared with workers, traders, and companions.
However in case you’ve constructed a robust model id and clear messaging, your model promise shall be evident to your audience. (And in case you’re nonetheless working in your model id and messaging, we have got a free guide to assist.)
Model Promise vs. Tagline
There‘s usually some confusion between a model promise and a tagline, so let’s break it down.
Whereas it may be simply as quick as a tagline, a model promise establishes and nurtures a relationship with customers by telling them, “Hey, that is what you may count on each single time you work together with our model.”
A model promise isn’t lofty — it’s grounded within the realities of your enterprise. It may:
- Assist inner and exterior stakeholders know what to anticipate from you.
- Achieve client belief.
- Be the inspiration to your firm’s client interactions.
A Fast Model Promise Definition
Model guarantees are quick statements. They make a dedication to your buyer about what your model will ship.
It’s a promise, in any case. So in case you break it, it could possibly have an effect on your repute and your income.
As an example, let‘s say your model promise is “Innovation at each flip,” however your organization hasn’t launched a brand new product in 5 years. That may deter potential customers who’ve been promised progress however as a substitute get stagnation.
Listed below are the commonest sorts of model guarantees:
- Emotional: A promise interesting to emotion.
- Motion-based: A promise tied to a selected motion.
- Social: A promise based mostly on moral or social accountability.
Why Your Model Promise Is Necessary
This message can have a big effect on customer sentiment, brand reputation, and extra. A model promise is a social contract between your organization and the shopper or client.
Chances are you’ll not have a legally binding doc swearing that your organization will innovate at each flip, but it surely’s understood that buyers are supplying you with one thing (like their hard-earned cash) in trade for a services or products.
It’s the scaled, industrial model of a pinky promise, along with your model holding up one finger and your audience holding up the opposite.
And in case you’re not taking your model promise as severely as a legally binding doc, you’re liable to shedding not simply your prospects, however your market valuation, workers, and different stakeholders.
Delivering in your model promise will help your enterprise develop by constructing belief along with your goal audiences and boosting gross sales.
However how will you pack all that energy right into a single message? Let’s speak about easy methods to create your model promise.
The right way to Write a Model Promise
1. Focus in your viewers.
Your model promise outlines your dedication to your viewers. So, to determine what your promise needs to be, your first step is figuring out what your viewers needs from you.
It goes past a selected services or products, it‘s extra particular to the expertise you’re offering.
As an example, Planet Fitness’s brand promise is predicated on individuals’s reluctance to hitch the fitness center for concern of judgment and embarrassment. The Planet Health model guarantees to create an surroundings that encourages individuals in any respect health ranges to go to the fitness center and really feel snug understanding.
One other purpose of your model promise is to set you aside out of your opponents. What makes you distinctive — your customer support, your product, your mission, your values? Construct on that to make a promise that is distinctive.
In Planet Health’ case, the model did one thing nobody else had executed: Handle the issue with the fitness center surroundings, not its customers.
As you find out about what your viewers needs, preserve asking questions. How a lot do they find out about your {industry}? What info do they want earlier than making a purchase order?
It‘s vital to keep in mind that your model promise isn’t merely a slogan or dedication. It is step one in constructing a neighborhood with shared values. The higher you perceive your viewers, the extra doubtless you might be to interact them.
If you have not already, develop buyer personas and workshop messages that would resonate with every persona.
Featured Useful resource: Make My Persona
2. Take into consideration your buyer contact factors.
Your model promise is your assure to prospects.
Whether or not your buyer is in-store, on social media, or shopping for on-line, place your self of their footwear and envision the way you need these interactions to go. Is there a selected feeling concerned? What have they got to achieve?
For instance, say a buyer spends a whole lot of time in your web site however hasn‘t made a purchase order. Have you learnt why they’re hesitating? In case you have been talking to this buyer in particular person, what would you say to assist them transfer to the following step?
As soon as you set these emotions into phrases, you’ll craft a model promise that displays the expertise you wish to promote.
As an train, you could discover it helpful to draft three or extra secondary guarantees for every contact level. They will help you residence in in your major model promise and slim your focus to how totally different contact factors influence buyer expertise.
Your final model promise needs to be constant throughout each contact level. So, the extra time you spend taking a look at it from each angle, the extra doubtless you might be to create a robust model promise.
Featured Useful resource: Customer Journey Map Template
3. Maintain it easy, distinctive, and provoking.
Your model promise needs to be clear and to the purpose — one thing you may say in a single sentence. It will not essentially be as enjoyable as a tagline, but it surely ought to undoubtedly encourage belief and confidence.
Be considerate about which phrases you select and who your viewers is.
Does your model promise want industry-specific phrases? Is your model promise about promoting a suggestion or explaining your product? Answering these questions will help you discover the best vocabulary to your promise.
Subsequent, introduce some play into your writing. Take into consideration your company culture, awakening the senses, and the main points that may paint an image to your viewers.
This course of will in all probability provide you with extra copy than you want, however it could possibly provide help to discover an genuine and empathetic voice.
Then you may edit your model promise right into a single succinct assertion that’s helpful, constructive, and hopeful.
In case you can‘t articulate your promise on this method, maybe you haven’t totally fleshed out your brand’s purpose.
If that is the case, begin by asking your self these questions:
- What ought to my prospects count on from me?
- What does my firm stand for?
- What makes us totally different from our opponents?
What makes a model promise profitable?
“A model promise,” model advisor Cornelis Jacobs tells me, “is mainly your id. In case your model didn’t exist, what would the world miss?”
That world doesn’t must be at a world scale — the goal marketplace for a nook bakery may be a single neighborhood. Whether or not you’re promoting cupcakes or iPads, your model promise has to create and nurture a relationship.
“It’s creating belief,” says Jacobs. “I give cash in trade for a services or products. There’s belief that the model will ship on that promise.” Jacobs sees two elements to that belief: reliability and delight.
An lack of ability to ship in your model promise — “that’s recreation over,” says Jacobs.
The long-term results on brand perception will be devastating in case you lose credibility by breaking a promise.
Listed below are 4 key parts to think about as you craft your model promise:
Credibility
Your model promise needs to be one thing that your enterprise or product is certified to supply, and it needs to be one thing that you’ll be able to ship on with excellence, reliability, and delight.
Volvo’s model promise, for instance, hinges on security. If it was unable to persistently engineer vehicles with excessive security requirements, it will lose all credibility.
This assertion may present your dedication to fixing a selected downside to your prospects.
Actionable
A model promise is a suggestion {that a} enterprise must preserve. Because of this the promise should be one thing your organization can act on.
As you evaluate your model promise, ask your self:
- Is your model promise additionally a call-to-action?
- What do your prospects get in return in the event that they decide to your model?
- How can your viewers interact or become involved along with your model promise?
- What different questions would possibly somebody ask after seeing your model promise?
To be efficient, your model promise must be one thing your stakeholders can act on or see you taking motion on, plus why that motion is efficacious. In case your promise is obscure or static, you could must preserve working.
Memorable and Emotional
A model promise “is emotive,” says Jacobs. “It’s not the thoughts; it’s the center.”
To evoke robust feelings, ask your self what feelings you need your prospects or viewers to really feel after they remedy an issue utilizing your services or products.
This act of seeing out of your buyer’s perspective will help you create a “sticky” model promise.
Enterprise Affect
“Model technique is in the end enterprise technique,” Jacobs tells me. “In financial phrases, your model might be the only most vital asset of any firm.”
Your model promise doesn’t simply help what issues most to your enterprise, it is the enterprise.
That implies that your model promise needs to be evident in each single contact level: what distributors you select, what your web site seems to be like, and even the way you reply the cellphone. Jacobs says your model promise is to “all stakeholders, not simply your client.”
And there’s actually solely two choices: “You both ship on the promise, otherwise you don’t.”
It would convey product excellence, drive gross sales, or increase model affect. And as individuals in your group make choices, they need to achieve this as champions of the model.
Model Promise Template
There isn‘t an actual components to create your model promise. However we’ve talked about that it’s a mix of some issues that make up your organization. So right here’s a components you should utilize to create your promise:
Positioning + Vision + Value Proposition = Your Model Promise
Write your solutions down and begin mixing these ideas collectively into one succinct concept.
Crafting your model promise needs to be a prime precedence when developing your identity. With out this core message, you’ll doubtless battle to develop your model id and robust messaging to attach along with your audience.
A professional tip from Jacobs: “A model isn’t what you, the corporate, says it’s. It’s what your prospects say it’s.”
Your model promise needs to be so robust that “there needs to be no divergence” — that’s, your prospects ought to be capable of describe your model promise precisely as you do.
It might take just a few classes to flesh it out — and that is okay. As a result of after you have it, it would turn into ingrained each internally and externally as your organization grows.
Model Promise Examples
Understand that a few of these examples of brand name guarantees are assumed and a few have been shared by the businesses (and a pair are utterly fictional). Use them as inspiration when crafting your individual.
That will help you take into consideration your individual model promise from a number of angles, I’ve additionally included hypothetical conditions of what it’d appear to be if a few of these manufacturers did not ship on their model guarantees.
Construct one of the best merchandise on the earth and enrich individuals’s lives. (Apple)
In a 2022 interview with Popular Mechanics, Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner mentioned that he tries to “stick with it the mission that [Steve Jobs] set in place, to construct one of the best merchandise on the earth that enrich individuals‘s lives. And that hasn’t modified. A number of issues change with time. However the purpose for our being is similar.”
Properly established as a design and product innovator, Apple’s model promise is centered round innovation, high quality, reliability, and user-friendly design.
If it couldn’t ship on its model promise, we’d see Apple delivery shoddily designed merchandise that don’t remedy any issues for its customers, one thing that may do swift and irreparable injury to its model.
To encourage and nurture the human spirit — one particular person, one cup, one neighborhood at a time. (Starbucks)
Starbucks would possibly even add “one avenue at time,” so ubiquitous are its shops throughout America and most corners of the globe.
Starbucks’ core model promise is customer-focused, establishing its repute as a customer support firm that occurs to promote espresso.
Really feel empowered and emboldened. (Anima Iris)
Tennis equipment model Anima Iris seeks an emotional reference to its audience by promising that they’ll really feel empowered and emboldened.
These phrases additionally set it aside from opponents and set up among the expectations its prospects ought to have.
Redefine luxurious as accessible and inclusive. (Telfar)
Telfar’s vegan leather-based purchasing baggage grew to become vital accent over the past decade or so, because of its positioning as an inexpensive luxurious. That’s a difficult candy spot to take care of, but it surely’s central to the model promise.
If it did not ship on its model promise, it may very well be mirrored in costs capturing up past what its goal customers may afford, and/or a steep decline in high quality.
Inclusion since inception. (Tru Colour)
Rooted firmly in variety and inclusion, Tru Color “believes in the fantastic thing about the person and exists to offer skin-tone shade bandages and kinesiology tape for everybody.”
Its model promise signifies that inclusion is a foundational precept, one that can proceed to drive the model because it grows.
Create a protected house for POC to journey and uncover new adventures. (Noirbnb)
The stakes are excessive for Noirbnb, which guarantees “a protected house for individuals of colour to journey and uncover new adventures.”
As such, it’s additionally a memorable model promise, significantly for its audience of individuals of colour who could have felt unsafe on earlier journey adventures. That is additionally a extremely actionable model promise.
Security for all. (Volvo)
Volvo’s EVA initiative prioritizes Equal Autos for All, “no matter gender, age, peak, weight, or form.”
In case you’ve ever buckled up in a automobile to search out the seat belt at throat peak, Volvo’s promise will pique your curiosity.
That is one other extremely actionable model promise, for the reason that burden of proof — and literal life-or-death stakes — rests on Volvo.
Unparalleled luxurious and personalised service. (Four Seasons)
When your title is synonymous with luxurious, you’d greatest be capable of ship in your model promise.
Prospects of 4 Seasons properties count on a stage of personalised service that units the model aside not solely from different motels and resorts, however from different luxurious lodge manufacturers. This model promise is memorable and emotional, interesting to customers’ want to be handled like royalty.
Carry tales to life — safely. (Inkheart)
Fake I’ve been handed the cash and the magic wanted to construct an journey tour firm for fictional locations.
My imaginary firm is impressed by Cornelia Funke’s 2003 YA guide Inkheart, wherein a lady learns that her father can carry characters to life just by studying from them.
Inkheart’s model promise, “Carry tales to life — safely,” assures its imaginary viewers that they’ll get pleasure from immersive experiences of their favourite fictional worlds with out concern of ogres, vampires, or evil masterminds.
We scare as a result of we care. (Monsters Inc.)
An actual model promise from a fictional model, Disney Pixar animated basic Monsters Inc. options an organization by the identical title. Monsters Inc. employs monsters to scare youngsters, whose screams produce clear vitality.
Doing double responsibility as a tagline, “We scare as a result of we care” evokes emotion and establishes the model’s distinctiveness — whereas promising reliable frights.
What‘s frequent throughout all these guarantees is that they by no means check with a selected providing or numerical purpose. As an alternative, they’re statements that embody the model’s broader objective.
Examples of Model Guarantees for B2B
Enterprise-to-business model guarantees will be tough to craft. It’s because these relationships are sometimes extra about efficiency and ROI than assembly emotional wants.
Try these B2B model promise examples to spark your creativeness.
Assist thousands and thousands of firms develop higher. (HubSpot)
Right here at HubSpot, we provide a whole buyer platform that helps companies join and develop higher. (Psst, that buyer platform contains Marketing Hub.)
Our model promise has broad attraction — “thousands and thousands of firms” — and demonstrates our dedication to and deal with progress.
See inside any stack, any app, at any scale, anyplace. (Datadog)
The repeated “any” in Datadog’s model promise signifies the product’s flexibility, an actionable declare that additionally differentiates it from its opponents.
Maintain a great factor rising. (Recurly)
Recurly, a subscription administration service, makes an emotional attraction in its model promise with the phrase “rising.” That sense of nurturing is backed up by the actionable declare that it has “a great factor.”
Simple scheduling forward. (Calendly)
I exploit Calendly repeatedly, and I recognize that it’s easy to make use of. Calendly’s model promise focuses on a constructive person expertise, which immediately influence’s the model’s backside line.
Unlock the ability of gifting at scale. (Reachdesk)
Reachdesk makes use of AI to energy personalised company gifting. Its model promise hints on the “energy” in retailer for firms that wow and delight their prospects.
If it couldn’t ship on its model promise: Glitchy AI may result in items that didn’t really feel considerate or private, or worse, be embarrassing.
Handle tomorrow’s surprises in the present day. (LogicManager)
LogicManager makes use of the phrase “surprises” to point that it understands the realities of danger administration. That establishes an emotional relationship with its prospects — it’s that “hey, you get me” second.
That emotional plea is backed up by a reputable and actionable promise that the enterprise danger administration firm can predict future dangers earlier than they get uncontrolled.
Smarter PR with highly effective, easy-to-use software program. (Muck Rack)
Muck Rack’s model promise begins with a superlative, “smarter,” interesting to prospects’ needs for progress and enchancment. Coupled with “highly effective” and “easy-to-use,” Muck Rack units up an actionable model promise.
Engineering the extraordinary to alleviate ache, restore well being, and lengthen life. (Medtronic)
Medtronic, a healthcare tech firm, has to steer potential prospects that it could possibly enhance (and even lengthen) high quality of life with units like high-tech pacemakers. That’s a excessive bar to clear, so it goes straight for an emotional attraction with a model promise that makes use of robust verbs like “alleviate” and “restore.”
Empowering small companies and entrepreneurs with monetary instruments and providers which might be accessible, revolutionary, and user-friendly. (Square)
In case you’ve interacted with small companies, like your neighborhood bookstore or a vendor on the native farmers’ market, you’ve doubtless used Sq. to make a fee. Sq.’s model promise hinges on accessibility and user-friendliness above all — an lack of ability to ship would make it unusable by the viewers it targets.
Construct Your Model Promise for Lasting Outcomes
Some guarantees final a lifetime. To just be sure you’re making a model promise for the lengthy haul, don’t rush via the method.
Drafting a fast slogan is tempting when your group is up in opposition to a deadline — however this can be a promise to your all your stakeholders, so contemplate it fastidiously.
Check out the guidelines, templates, and examples above, and let your creativity run wild. Your model could have already got a robust id, however how are you committing to your prospects? Inform them in the present day, along with your model promise.
