For all my fellow brand strategists out there, which do you create first, the ICA Profile, or the Vision, Mission, and Values? I’m having a chicken and egg experience thinking about it lol…
For those of you who read above and are wondering if you’re reading what you thought you clicked on: an Ideal Client Avatar (ICA) Profile is a document you create for your brand to define your target audience, a VMVG is what I wrote about below to help you understand how to set your brand up for success by defining its Vision, Mission, Values, and Goals.
Key Points:
- What is a VMVG + Why Writing a VMVG is Beneficial to YOU and Your Clients
- How to Write Your Brand’s VMGV
- Next Steps: Tell EVERYONE
- Share From a Space of Authenticity
What is a VMVG
VMVG = Vision, Mission, Values and Goals
- Vision: your brand’s idea on how to impact the communities they serve.
- Mission: your brand’s plan for bringing the desired impact to the communities they serve.
- Values: your brand’s guiding principles for executing its Vision and Mission.
- Goals: milestones your brand hopes to achieve in serving communities.
Your brand’s VMVG is your foundation for an amazing client experience because it defines your brand’s culture. Being clear on how you strive to serve your clients not only helps leads to understand some of the benefits of working with you, but also helps keep your brand on-task for delivering the services you provide in a way that is authentic to your brand’s culture.
How to Write Your Brand’s VMVG
Because your brand’s VMVG is the foundation of everything your brand provides, you’ll want to write it down and rehearse it so that the words gracefully roll off your tongue whenever you talk to someone about your brand. You’ll also want your team to understand your brand’s culture; not to fit into the brand, but to add to the culture. Future post =]
Vision: your brand’s idea on how to impact the communities they serve.
Your brand’s Vision tells what you hope to accomplish through your brand’s services and products. Your Vision inspires your team to put their best foot forward in attempting to reach your goals, and inspires your clients to want to work with you because they admire the Vision your brand holds. In short, your brand’s Vision is its reason for existing.
When you write your brand’s Vision, think of the reason you decided to create/build/grow your brand? What Vision do you have for what your brand will bring to its clients/communities/city/etc.? How do you see your brand operating 5-10 years from now?
My Vision for Soul Signature Studios is to provide a space where youth can discover their natural talents and gifts and have a safe community to develop confidence around their talents so they may enter into adulthood feeling prepared to care for themselves physically (financially), mentally, emotionally, and spiritually; while also providing communities with resources to care for their families mind, body, and soul as a one-stop-shop for wellness and small business services utilizing creativity to achieve optimal effectiveness.
This article digs a little deeper in writing strong Vision statements: (https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/guide-writing-perfect-Vision-statement-examples)
Mission: your brand’s plan for bringing the desired impacted to the communities they serve.
Your brand’s Mission tells how you will accomplish the Vision by speaking to the purpose of your brand’s products and services serving your clients’ biggest pain points. The Mission statement is brief, yet powerful.
The Mission of Soul Signature Studios is to promote healing in communities around the world while cultivating opportunities for personal development through creative exploration and self-love in a judgement-free space.
Our Mission means that everything we do is with the intention to heal communities, cultivate opportunities for personal development, creative exploration, and self-love practice all in judgement-free containers.
Let’s take this blog post for example, it’s encouraging readers to creatively explore their brand’s Vision, Mission, Values and goals. If I were to take this a step further for my clients, we’d have an opportunity for personal development by discussing their goals and obstacles they face when working to reaching them to which we’d develop a strategy to overcome the obstacles, often leading to some form of self-love in order to face the obstacle and do the work to overcome it. By providing products and services to help my clients accomplish their brands’ Missions, I’m aiding in bringing healing to communities because all of my branding clients have goals to facilitate healing through their work.
Your Mission serves as the reminder of what your brand does, how it does it, who it does it for, and why you do it.
I found this article of 15 inspiring Mission statements: (https://www.bluleadz.com/blog/15-of-the-very-best-Mission-statement-examples)
Values: your brand’s guiding principles for executing its Vision and Mission.
Your brand’s Values help steer decisions of all parties in ways that are most aligned to your brand’s Vision and Mission. Having brand Values is like having boundaries: you are making clear statements about what is considered acceptable within your brand’s culture.
Soul Signature Studio Values:
- Creativity: we believe in creative expression and creative solutions; we encourage our members and clients to find ways to be creative in their day-to-day life.
- Compassion: we believe in compassionate consideration among communities; we find ways to add messages of compassion when creating programs, services, and products for our member and clients.
- Wellness: we believe healing others is more effective when you first work to heal yourself; as a creative wellness studio, we provide a variety of services, programs and products to aide our clients and members in maintaining their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness.
- Community: we believe people thrive in environments where collaboration is used to lift one another up; we strive to make collaborations easy to host and organize for our members and clients in a way that benefits all parties involved.
- Integrity: we believe honesty and upholding strong morals are the foundation to success; when we are honest with ourselves and others, our efforts to effect change are most effective.
When team members and clients are also aligned with your brand’s Values, work feels easier and more enjoyable because there is an agreement in place to how you will treat one another during your time together. On the flip side, having clearly stated Values will deflect those who aren’t aligned with your brand, helping you to be more available to the people who will get the most value from your brand’s work.
This article has cool ideas to help you brainstorm your brand’s Values. (https://b2b.kununu.com/blog/how-to-develop-and-define-your-company-core-Values-expert-advice)
Goals: milestones your brand hopes to achieve in serving communities.
Defining your brand’s goals is just about as straight forward as it sounds, just be sure you’re setting SMART goals that align with your Vision, Mission, and Values. These objectives may take one to several years for your brand to achieve, but they will be exciting milestones for your team and clients to celebrate as your brand grows.
Soul Signature Studio’s Current Goals:
- Implement an online community that provides virtual services for members and clients to support their creativity and wellness, complete with programs for families to participate in with their youth.
- Open the first Soul Signature Studios location, converting the virtual programs to in-person events for members and clients to experience.
My favorite thing about being transparent with my audience about the goals in place for Soul Signature Studios is it makes us feel more like a family, they love what the Studio stands for as much as I do. My success is their success because they believe in the Vision. And that’s the feeling you want to create with your VMVG.
Next Steps: Tell EVERYONE
Pair a strong VMVG with a thoughtfully crafted ICA Profile to get the perfect recipe for amazing content your audience CRAVES.
How? When you know exactly who you’re talking to and exactly how you provide value in their lives (thanks to your VMVG), you can now create content that your audience is waiting to fall in their lap. And when you master getting your content to the right people, you have a recipe for the most amazing lead magnet. In the meantime, tell everyone, anyone who will listen, about your brand’s VMVG. Not everyone will be excited in the beginning, but as you build momentum, you’ll start to find that everyone in your audience gets just as excited about your content as you do.
Grab your FREE ICA Profile Worksheet with email companion here. (https://teairramitchell.wordpress.com/2020/11/23/ica-profile-freebie/)
Share From a Space of Authenticity
Having a VMVG written for your brand speaks volumes to your audience by telling them exactly what your brand is all about on one piece of media. Keep your VMVG’s impact by only sharing content in way that feels good to YOU. Don’t mind what everyone else is doing, what are you doing? Worrying too much about what other’s will think or how your performance looks compared to other brands only adds icky energy to your content, and you didn’t work this hard to be icky.
Trust yourself; trust that you created your VMVG with the intentions to provide a service unlike anything your competitors could ever design because there is only one you, and no one could ever begin to replace your creative indulgences.
Focus all your energy on how well you are doing to execute your VMVG in all of your endeavors and watch how it increases overtime.
That’s pretty much all I have on your VMVG, and I want to reiterate: tell everyone, anyone who will listen, about your brand’s VMVG. This helps to build positivity and momentum around your brand, making it easier to breakthrough in your market. Looking for a place where you can talk about your brand’s VMVG? Let’s connect in the comments!
Light from My Soul 