How Your Brand Mission Enables You To Achieve Your Commercial Objectives
Every successful business is guided by its purpose, vision and brand mission. Boiled down to its essentials, the principles of running a profitable business are straightforward. You create clear objectives (driven from your business strategy, purpose and vision) and achieve them through your brand mission(s).
All great brands, large and small, are guided by these principles. Brand mission is a simple but very powerful business and brand building enabler. You have one purpose but many missions because brand mission is the initiatives, go-to-market, the ‘how’ of what you do to achieve your purpose and vision.
In times of increased adversity clarity around your mission becomes an even more essential anchor in a storm for both the people in your organisation and your customers. So ensuring that your business has a clear, powerful, defined brand mission or missions (you can have more than one) helps you stay focussed in achieving your objectives. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be an overly complex or time-consuming process to articulate your brand mission.
Related: Brand Profiling, How Brand Performance and Purpose Are Inextricably Linked
In a well developed brand strategy, the purpose of an organisation remains intrinsically the same over time. The vision of an organisation is also a long term asset because it describes your aspirations and future state so it gradually evolves over time as that strategic vision is achieved. Brand missions consequently change more frequently and are a critical factor in keeping everyone focussed on achieving organisational objectives.
Related: 6 Ways to Develop and Nurture a Successful Brand Culture With a Limited Budget
Leverage The 5 Ways Brand Mission Helps You Grow Your Sales
1. Brand Mission: A Critical Tool for Every Business’s Commercial Success
As with other elements of brand strategy, brand mission needn’t be daunting. It isn’t a complicated concept. Brand mission is exactly as it sounds: it sets out the specific mission the brand is on. Just as with a person, the clearer a brand is about its mission, the easier it is to focus resources in the right direction. So, being clear about your brand mission is a simple tool to keep you on track.
Often in life, when a successful person achieves a mission that’s been a primary focus, they then refocus on the next mission in hand. In the same way, brand missions change over time as objectives are achieved. They’re not and should not be set in stone the way purpose is. That makes it a flexible, dynamic concept which can evolve to meet the moment. So it’s not like a static paper map you look at once before you leave your house on a journey, more like a GPS that goes with you on the journey and sometimes adapts to changed circumstances.
Image via © Temple Street Children’s Foundation
An example of an organisation using its brand mission as a tool to guide its work is the charity the Temple Street Children’s Foundation [1]. Their mission is “to provide every sick child in Ireland with the highest standard of medical care by ensuring they and their families have immediate access to the best facilities, the finest research and the most compassionate and loving support.”
That is a demanding but inspiring mission which is clear and actionable.
Related: Social Responsibility, How to Build a Socially Conscious Brand
We know that sometimes it’s a struggle to build a brand strategy that really engages your ideal customers effectively so we’ve developed three different ways of working with us to help you build your brand, depending on your preferences, so if you’d like us to:
- Build your brand for you – find out more here or get in touch [email protected] or ring +353 1 8322724
- Empower you to build your brand – check out the Persona 7-Figure Business Building & Brand Strategy Mastermind here. This is a 12 week face-to-face, fully interactive, live online programme for non-competing peer groups. You work on your brand with us codifying and mapping out your brand strategy for business growth. Within 12 weeks your brand strategy is fully developed, with implementation already making a difference in your business. Alternatively, join our half-day Branding Accelerator Masterclass for a fast-injection of brand building essentials. Ask about our Personal and Corporate Leadership Brand Alignment Masterclass
- Want a DIY solution? check out our how to build a brand eprogramme here and our how to audit your brand yourself eprogramme here
“For anyone who has a well established business I would totally recommend working with Persona Design because it will provide them with a new perspective on how to think of their brand. You see in different markets and industries that are overly competitive what makes the difference is knowing what exactly your business is all about and why people would choose you instead of any other competitor.
What makes you different from all the other service or product providers in the market because that’s what’s going to make your business be the No.1 choice in the range of those specific products or services that you’re providing. Also that’s what’s going to make your brand stand out and have a long lasting life and thrive in the context of where you’re operating and delivering value. So totally go for it!
This framework provides you with a lot of insight and more than that, with a systematic process that’s easy for you to understand, easy for you to grasp, easy for you to work with so you finally nail what makes you different in your business, and what you are about and what those key points are that resonate with your audience.”
Camelia Păduraru
Founder
2. Why Brand Mission Matters
A brand strategy involves 12 interconnected elements so it’s helpful to understand how brand mission fits in with these.
Brand vision and purpose, for example, are very important — evidenced by proven results from many successful businesses — as commercial drivers both in terms of people and organisations. But they can also perhaps seem lofty or daunting for some smaller businesses. Even the smartest businesses sometimes struggle to know how to bring them to life, or operationalize them. Brand mission acts as a bridge between the more conceptual elements of brand structure and the practicalities of a brand marketing plan which sets out what will help the brand achieve its objectives.
© Persona Design
Related: Top 5 Reasons Why Brand Purpose is The Essential Growth Driver in a Fast Changing World
A brand mission is a simple, unambiguous framework to help ensure you achieve your Purpose and Vision — that everyone is singing from the same song sheet, which will make execution more effective and powerful. Your brand should only have one Purpose and one singular Vision but you can have many missions.
Image via © Axa PPP Healthcare
As a case study, consider Axa Health. They had a clearly articulated brand mission and used this to define the direction they wanted a B2B brand campaign to take. This is an example of an organisation using brand mission as a business tool in a practical way to help them optimise their brand communications.
Related: Companies on a Mission, Discover How These Powerhouse Brands Bring Their Brand Mission to Life
Are you a business leader, manager or entrepreneur who wants to re-evaluate or build your brand strategy so you can use the right brand missions to increase your sales? Are you curious about how to build or scale a highly successful standout brand? Join one of our branding masterclasses because they empower you to build your brand, enhance customer experience, expand your market impact and create higher perceived value so you can command a premium.
In fact, the Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ Mastermind is all about fast-tracking you, your brand and your business through the brand building, agile branding strategy process using professional big-brand know-how with proven systems that get results so you can grow your business faster and more effectively.
The programme enables you to make your brand highly visible, different, credible, trustworthy, memorable and much loved amongst your ideal customers so you can become more profitable and leave your competitors way behind. Be The One — your ideal customers’ favourite brand of preferred choice commanding a premium.
If you want a tailor-made solution specifically for your brand then we also provide inhouse bespoke Persona Brand Building Blueprint™ Intensives working with you and your team so you can grow your business faster and more profitably. Contact us to discover more [email protected] or +353 1 8322724
3. Brand Mission Demonstrably Impacts Business Results
A brand mission isn’t just a fancy set of words. The words are simply an articulation of the mission, which comes from within the business strategy. In effect they summarise the actions you’ll take to achieve your vision and purpose — ultimately your commercial objectives.
You can have more than one brand mission because it is a way of helping you achieve your commercial outcomes and typically you will have multiple desired commercial outcomes at any one point.
A brand mission isn’t necessarily intuitive, so don’t worry if you don’t come up with it quickly. A brand mission is a bit like a roadmap, and just when you’re out hiking or driving in a group, there are sometimes competing perceptions about the best way to get from one place to another. The key thing is that the mission needs to get buy-in internally, be actionable, and be a concrete way of helping put your brand purpose into action.
Related: Brand Building, 15 Short Term Ways to Build Your Brand for the Long Term
There’s an easy way to judge whether it really is a brand mission: will people who look at it feel more or less clarity about the direction of travel for the brand? If it doesn’t make it clearer for them to understand how your brand aims to achieve its desired commercial outcomes then it isn’t an effective brand mission.
An example of how a good brand mission will help you make decisions is provided by Gut Instinct, a vegan food SME based in Wales which focuses on digestive health. Its mission is “to develop high-quality, gut-friendly products in an accessible way.” It is easy to see how that would provide clear guidance and prioritisation in assessing opportunities for the brand.
Image via © The Food Warehouse
Another case study is food retailer Food Warehouse. Its brand mission is to offer shoppers all the great value of a wholesale store without the need for membership, in an open plan, easy-to-shop environment [2]. Again, you can see how this would help prioritise some business options over others in a practical way, as part of helping to deliver on the brand’s vision and purpose.
Related: 4 Reasons Why Your Business Profit Starts With Your Brand Mission
4. How Brand Mission Connects to Brand Vision and Brand Purpose to Drive Sales
Brand vision and brand purpose address the longer-term questions for a brand such as “Why” and “What”. Brand mission operates at the level of “How”. So it is different, but intricately connected.
Brand missions are the discrete, actionable, clear articulations of how to act. If the brand follows them, it will get closer to achieving its brand vision, which in turn will ultimately deliver your brand purpose. It’s a bit like a composer writing a symphony if the purpose and vision for it remain in his head, it will never work. Individual players in the orchestra need sheet music to play, and when they all perform in the right way, the collection of individual musical missions combines to produce a bigger, cohesive impact.
Related: How Leaders Drive Profitability With a Strong Brand Vision Statement
Image via © Dettol
The well-known brand Dettol provides a good example. To help achieve its brand vision (keeping people healthy), Dettol’s brand mission is to protect families as part of their every-day lives in the home [3]. That’s a practical building block towards achieving the higher level brand vision.
If you’d like to discover more about building and maintaining a thriving, high performing, highly profitable standout brand, then get in touch because we’d love to help you make your brand into a profit powerhouse.
- Schedule a chat — we can meet in person online
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Lorraine Carter is a branding expert and international speaker delivering talks that inspire and motivate along with masterclasses and workshops that inform and support transformational outcomes fast, and consultancy expertise that solves problems — using agile branding strategy underpinned by professional big-brand know-how — so you can outshine, outperform and leave your competitors way behind.
She enables you to Be The One — your ideal customers’ favourite brand — commanding a premium with 7-figure growth.
Ask about the Persona 7-Figure Business Building and Brand Strategy Mastermind.
“Lorraine Carter has been the catalyst and an inspiration for MGI Learning to clearly define our brand.
Working with Lorraine has been both enlightening and enjoyable. Her blueprint for defining a brand is extremely comprehensive and challenged us to think very deeply about what we offer to our customers and really understand what underpins our success.
Lorraine is extremely knowledgeable, very focused and supportive and leads you through the process and ensured we got maximum benefits from the investment we made.”
Shona Cooper
CEO
5. How Brand Mission Helps you Achieve Brand Vision and Brand Purpose so You Increase Your Profits
By bringing the brand purpose and brand vision to life, brand mission helps provide a sense of direction for activities such as brand communication. It also helps people feel a sense of progress in working towards delivering the brand purpose and brand vision. That improves morale and productivity, inside the company but sometimes also outside too. For example, brand missions when used in the right way can also engage customers with your brand.
Related: How to Build a Powerful Employer Branding Strategy so You Attract and Retain Top Talent to Grow Your Business
Brand mission is a practical, actionable business tool and can be used to assess relevance of activity both in the planning stage and also in review. Assessing whether a given action will (or did) help to deliver against your mission and commercial objectives helps you assess the optimal mix of activities to achieve your brand purpose and brand vision
Talking about and using brand mission in itself also helps you over time further sharpen brand vision and brand purpose. Some missions, you will realise, seem to help while other brand missions even if they seem promising turn out not to work in the way you expect. In this way, you can see brand missions as part of an iterative process of delivering and improving on your brand purpose and brand vision — your commercial imperative.
Image via CNBC
A case study is the tech company Cisco’s mission of transforming the way people work. This clearly informed their B2B campaign “There’s Never Been a Better Time”.
Related: Brand Strategy, 6 Tips for Building Your Profit Growth Plan
Final Thoughts
Brand missions perform a critical role in helping to bring to life your brand purpose and brand vision so your business grows and you achieve your commercial objectives. They bridge the gap between those higher-level strategic concepts and the day to day reality of directing business activity.
Brand mission is a practical way to help deliver improved business results, by providing focus, achieving consensus, motivating colleagues and engaging customers. In doing so, they also help you over time to bring your brand purpose and brand vision to life.
Questions to Consider
- How clear are you about your brand missions today?
- Do you need to re-evaluate the relevance, clarity and impact of your brand mission using a brand audit health check so you can increase its effectiveness to drive sales?
- Does your brand mission or missions need a refresh or revitalisation?
- In what ways could a brand mission practically help your business?
- Have you translated your brand purpose and brand vision into a series of brand missions to help you achieve your commercial objectives?
- What practical difference do your brand missions make on your lead generation and sales?
- How will your brand missions help you improve your profits?
Your Persona Client Satisfaction Guarantee
- When you work with us we’ll create a customised brand building plan and strategy with clear investment for you tailored to your specific requirements and preferences
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- Because we know the unexpected sometimes happens we can make adjustments along the way if you need it and if something extra is requested we’ll ensure you’re fully appraised about what that entails before committing
- As we achieve pre-agreed objectives you’ll be able to evaluate your brand building work and strategy in progress, coupled with the outcomes to ensure return on investment
Get in touch today because we’d love to enable you to re-evaluate and build your standout, powerhouse brand so you can Be The One — increase your profits and leave your competitors way behind.
Email us [email protected] or ring us +35318322724 (GMT 9:00-17:30) and ask about our VIP Brand Strategy Re-Evaluation.
