Uncover Your Story and Drive Your Brand: The Power of a Mission

Think about your favorite brands. What do you like about them? A brand is more than just a logo or a website. When you walk into your favorite store(s) or when you engage or collaborate with a company you love, you usually walk away with this feeling of satisfaction, excitement, wonder.

Creating a memorable, impactful brand stems from your purpose. Your purpose contributes to your mission – and this is what will not only attract the right audience, but also motivate employees, lead to more beneficial business, and elevate you to do your best work.

Ready to create a mission-driven brand and achieve better results? Here’s what you need to know:

Every Brand Has a Story

Before we discuss the purpose of a mission-led brand (and how to discover yours), consider this working definition:

A brand is the total emotional experience someone has with you. “You” means all of your business’s touch points – your website & social media presence, technology, team interactions, partnerships, loyalty programs, customer support, product purchases, product use.

Your brand isn’t based on a color scheme or a laundry-list of interests. Your brand encapsulates everything from the way you started and the way you collaborate to the products or service you create and the way you share them with your audience.

Your brand is all-encompassing. The most effective brands ignite a feeling. They offer not only solutions but also memorable experiences. They captivate a community. And most importantly  they tell a story about who we are as human beings and why that brand exists in the early 21st century.

Re-Discovering Your Purpose Starts with the Right Questions

Let’s say you’ve been running your business for five, ten, fifteen years. It’s possibly you’ve been reaching for the same goal, using similar tactics. Maybe you feel stuck. Your growth has been stunted. How do you implement changes? How do you re-discover your purpose? How do you re-create a brand?

Consider that a decade ago a company called Airbnb launched. Before Airbnb, travelers stayed in hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts, or if they were lucky, with friends or family. The idea of staying in a “home” wasn’t yet discovered. But this isn’t a story about how Airbnb came to be. You know that story.

Their brand wasn’t, then, what it is today. They started with an idea, and years later, after asking a lot of questions and hitting a lot of dead-ends, they found their mission: to create a sense of belonging.

This central idea runs the way they work, the way they market their service, and the way they interact with their customers. No matter where you go, this company wants you to feel like you belong.

So what’s your purpose? Purpose relates to the feeling an employee has that the outcome and impact of her work aligns with her values and how she sees herself.

Finding your purpose and creating your mission starts with self-reflective questions:

• What drives me?
• How will I impact the world?
• Who do I want to attract to my brand?
• What makes me want to wake up and work every day?
• What do I want to create? What am I creating?
• How will my business help me achieve my personal goal(s)
• What are my beliefs? What is my truth?
• Where do I want my business to go this year, next year, and ten years from now?

Reshaping your own brand starts with asking the right questions, unlocking the secrets to your mind, and channeling your purpose into one central mission. Before Airbnb established their mission, they asked themselves questions and they went out and asked their partners questions, and consumers questions. By taking a step back, you can re-shape your thoughts, re-define your purpose, and establish new goals.

You’re Making a Promise of How Life Can Be

A Purpose at Work study, initiated by LinkedIn with the research company Imperative, showed that 85% of purpose-led companies showed positive growth and 58% of companies with a clearly articulated and understood purpose experienced a 10% growth.

Your brand offers a promise of what life will be like when people work with you, buy your products, or utilize your services. Shaping or re-shaping your brand extends far beyond your website. It’s a new identity that will extend to all aspects of your business.

Do you want to evolve beyond your current endeavor or brand/business presence? Are you ready to discover your mission? Do you want to make your brand more relevant to our times? Do you want to become more focused or purpose-led?

On January 27, you can embark on a journey not only to figuring out your mission, but also to changing the way you work, and the way you run your business.

The ArtMark™ Branding Program will help you uncover the problems in your business and guide you to a more successful future through practical advice, implementation, and collaboration. This 15-week program offers a framework for platform-building, marketing, and branding, with the help of community support, expert guidance, and concrete goals.

Start the New Year off right and learn how to make your ArtMark™ on the world.