Marketing 101: How to define your brand’s mission, vision, and values.

Your brand identity is what sets you apart from your competitors. It defines who you are, why you are in business, and even how you make an impact on the world. It has three components —  mission, vision, and values — that you must first determine and then communicate to the world.

Your mission statement.

In just a few simple sentences, this document communicates your brand’s purpose, its objectives, and how it serves its audience. At the same time the statement is action-oriented, it also seeks to forge an emotional connection with customers.

To define your mission statement, start by looking at those of some of the leaders in your industry. Then create a list of your company’s long-term goals and objectives. Finally, collaborate with your team to come up with a few succinct sentences that encapsulate your goals and values. And perhaps most important of all, be sure that your mission matches with your actions in every way.

Defining your brand’s vision.

While your mission statement expresses what your brand wants to achieve and how you plan to make it happen, your vision encompasses the bigger picture. In some way, even if it is small, this one- or two-sentence declaration speaks to everyone about how your brand is going to change the world.

To come up with your brand’s vision, refer to your mission statement and other documents to remind yourself of who your company is, why it exists, and what sets it apart from the rest. Ask yourself why you are passionate about your products and services and what unique benefits they offer. Then come up with a brief, impactful sentence that sums everything up.

Defining your brand’s values

These days, customers prefer to do business with brands that reflect their own views and values. No longer are sales merely transactional when you are working so hard to cultivate rich, individualized relationships with your valued customers. That’s why it is more important than ever to identify and communicate the beliefs that you hold that guide your decisions, brand story, behaviors, and product choices.

In order to discover the values that drive your brand, brainstorm with your team to learn what values they believe exemplify your company. Get feedback from customers to learn why they choose you over your rivals, and ask yourself what is important to you when you are purchasing products and services.

Once you come up with your company’s core values, they need to go into a statement. More than just a collection of pretty words such as “inclusion,” “innovation,” and “commitment,” your statement should contain action verbs that show how you live out your values. Remember, you’re looking for clarity, specificity, authenticity, and uniqueness.

Today’s successful companies do much more than market products and accept credit card payments. Their mission, vision, and values are the cornerstones that work together to build an enduring foundation for their brand. Together they define a business’s reason for existence, its aspirations for the future, and the standards it plans to follow to make it happen. Don’t wait another day to begin exploring your own business’s brand mission, vision, and values.