Retailers, discover your core values and use them to anchor your brand story

This is a guest post by the brilliant Abby Kerr. Abby is an ex-indie retailer of a nationally award winning lifestyle boutique. She’s a brand editor who helps entrepreneurs rule their realm and up their addictability factor. Find her at Abby Kerr Ink and on Twitter @AbbyKerr and@IndieRetailWhip

I’m thrilled to have been invited by Vianza to contribute posts regularly on branding and marketing for retailers. I’ll be drawing on the best of my experiences as an award-winning lifestyle retailer, as well as a brand editor for creative entrepreneurs with online presences. In today’s post, we’re talking about how to discover the core values driving your retail brand.

Every retail brand tells a values-based story about the aspirations of its ideal customers.

Values? This loaded word may take you by surprise and seem at first blush like an unnecessary distraction from the important work of selecting merchandise, designing your online store, and sending out the next customer email.

However, truly savvy and successful shop owners know that core values are the drivers of every smart business and branding decision. In fact, retail stars wouldn’t think of making a branding decision without gut-checking their core values.

I have an exercise for you to help you discover the core values of your retail brand. What’s your shop really all about? What’s important to you as a customer experience designer? What story do you want to tell through your brand?

Here’s a terrific list of values  you can peruse for fittedness with your brand.

1. Print the list, then read through and quickly check off the value words that resonate or appeal to you for your retail brand.

2. Next, go back and look at your checked off words and cross out all that don’t feel like a tight fit with the brand story you want to tell.

3. Then, copy the remaining value words into a new list. Go back through and continue crossing words off, round after round, until only 3-5 words remain.

4. Finally, do a gut check to see if these remaining 3-5 words feel to you like values you’d like to have driving your brand. Hone the list until it’s just right.

Now you’ve got 3-5 core values to help guide your brand decision-making. Now it’s time to think more deeply about each one.

The next step is to write out {or record yourself talking aloud} a statement of what each of your core values means to you with respect to your ideal customers.

Did you decide that contentment is one of your retail brand’s core values? What does contentment look like for your ideal customers?

Sacredness is on your shortlist? How do your ideal customers want to express sacredness in their daily lives?
If you’re feeling stuck for ideas, remember that this is your retail brand and you are the one guiding it. So you get to make decisions on behalf of your ideal customers, just as if you were a novelist creating a character in a story.

Deepening and extending into the context of your core values is the way to make them come alive for you. You’ve got to start breathing them as if they were molecules of air. This way, they’ll get into the bloodstream of your brand, as evidenced through every decision you make.

Finally, evaluate your brand as it currently exists and look for what no longer seems to fit.

You may have discovered that certain items you sell, or certain phrases you use in your marketing, or even your store tagline, no longer seems to align with one or more of your core values. This is a fantastic realization!

It’s time to shake things up. Make small tweaks at first, cutting the obvious glaring misfits, like off-kilter marketing copy or site photos that set the wrong tone. Then work your way deeper into your brand, reframing bigger pieces like your sales process and the way you plan events.

Branding is deep work. The core values of a brand resonate on every level with your most passionate customers, from the foundation up through the flourishes. No aspect is too small to withhold attention from.

Brand story grows from the seeds of intention you bring to discovering your core values.

Retailers, I’d love for you to share your results from the core values exercise in the comments below. What are your top 3-5 and now that you’re aware of them, what steps do you plan to take next?

Photo Credit :: sfh3314

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