Harness your brand’s super power. Align with your core. And become magnetic.
In a booming internet marketplace, making the heart-to-heart connection is a big key to the best kind of online success.
While great products and services are paramount, they’re just not enough on their own.
Reaching through the virtual realm and making a genuine connection is the equivalent of crackling energetic currency, and that translates into inspired conversions (the kind that happen with delight and ease).
The key to “inspired” success? It’s all about aligning with your brand’s center (a.k.a. the brand heart), and creating your content and communications (and everything else) straight from your big, genuine heart, to theirs.
No matter the size, type, or reach of your business, clarifying your brand’s heart is huge for long-term success. If you want to be everlasting, first get this right.
The Brand Heart is where your passion and platform meets your clients’ deepest needs and desires. It’s the heart of your “why.” It fills a vital need. It’s what you want to be known for. And it’s what sets you apart.
Of course, this typically also means getting clear on your brand’s higher purpose, the driving motivation or “why,” and the story. And just as importantly, it means defining, and really getting to know your ideal clients and customers, and their greatest needs and desires.
While there is no exact path to excavating your brand heart, there are just 2 requirements; create from the open space of the heart, and always keep your inner-tribe customers in heart while creating and crafting.
I’ll give you a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing:
- Find a peaceful, relaxing time and place to breathe, open your heart, and let yourself have fun diving into this.
- Begin by brainstorming your ideas. Your wheels are probably already turning. Or you may think you have “it.” Even so, come up with a couple more ideas, expand your options; dream bigger, be daring, go for limitless possibility…
- Add passion and higher purpose. You can fire up your passion with a manifesto format: I/We Believe… I/We Love… I/We are known for, or stand for…
- Notice words and phrases that light you up. Sift through them until you find your diamonds in the rough — two or three are great. It never hurts to expand the options as sometimes the first idea isn’t the most expansive, long lasting, and inspiring.
- Take time to distill it. Crystallize it. Craft it into a unifying idea, but not a catchy advertisement. Make it genuine, straightforward and real, and make sure it resonates with your own big heart.
- Write a memo to your customers. As an exercise (you won’t actually send this out – unless you are inspired to do so!) write a note revealing your Brand Heart directly to a loyal group of your best customers. Then write down their responses back to you (say via social media or blog comments). Does it inspire responses? Does it motivate and delight? Any feedback? Any insights into their real needs or desires?
- Let it breathe. It may take different shape as you work with the other brand foundations and core content, or it may take root. Stay open and play with it.
Keep in mind, this is the core you’ll return to for inspiration, direction, and guidance in up and down times. It needs to be ever-expansive and motivational for the long haul.
Also, your Brand Heart can be, but doesn’t have to be shared. It can be internal, or just for you. Later you can develop a shareable tagline or your mission or vision. (I have a brand heart developed, just for me – and a shareable mission. Right now this works for me.)
Examples are worth a thousand words, so here you go (along with other branding components to see how it all fits together).
Warby Parker (Eyewear):
Brand Heart (I made this up from info in their “About” content): A Worldwide Eyewear Revolution.
We believe: Shopping for glasses should be fun, easy, and not ridiculously expensive. Everyone has a right to sight.
Mission: [WP offers] Designer eyewear at a revolutionary price, while leading the way for socially conscious businesses.
Tagline (Again, I made this up from their content): Designer-Quality Eyewear for All.
From the Vitamix Blender site:
Purpose [i.e. Brand Heart]: Liberate and nourish the zest for life.
Mission Statement: We create relationships for life by designing, developing and producing the world’s best performing and most reliable blending solutions.
The Secret (the best-selling law of attraction movie, books, and more…)
Brand Heart: Bringing joy to millions
Industry Coffee (my kick-arse friends’ upscale coffee drive-through experience)
Brand Heart: We don’t sell crap.
Pretty obviously, this is their internal heart (that so fits them). Typically, I tell people to keep it positive, but here’s one of those exceptions. This BH drives them every day to keep it on the gourmet-side, and to keep junkier items off their menu – even when customers demand their Red Bulls. 😉
So… the main idea of the Brand Heart is that it serves to keep you moving forward with heart-centered love, passion and excitement, in your own authentic way. AND it resonates with your ideal customers – the ones who are truly looking for you (even if they don’t know it, they will!).
Once you have a brand heart that’s on target (even if it’s not yet “perfect,”) begin to align everything you do with it, and extend outward from there.
It will motivate and move you and your business forward, in the best, true-to-you (and your customer) ways.
It really comes to life through the day-to-day marketing, communications and messaging strategies. When it all comes straight from The BH, get ready to capture attention, sales, sign-ups, and yes, hearts—without all that over-saturated, superficial, pushy, sell-sell-selling.
Consistently, genuinely, and generously share your passion and what you value most, and your tribe or niche will respond in kind.
At the end of the day, it really boils down to this…
What you give is what you get. Do it gladly, from your authentic brand heart, and it will come back to you multiplied.
Got Brand Heart? To work with me or for more info, access my CONSULT section from the link in the top navigation.
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