Create a simple promise for your brand

Business benefits

Differentiate your brand and unify the company strategy with a one sentence statement that promises transformation to customers.

Review or define the transformational end state, or promised land, your product promises to customers.

Note the high stakes change your product addresses, the stakes your customers face as a result, the villain standing in the way of transformation, and the superpowers your product possesses to help customers achieve that transformation.

Use insights from customer research or conduct customer interviews to answer if you were going to provide a referral to a friend or colleague, how would you describe the change you experienced once adopting our product and how would you get a colleague to consider our solution? Make a list of insights about the language customers use.

Brainstorm key concepts for your simple promise that are easy to understand, promise transformation, create confidence that you can help slay the villain, feel true, speak to the pains and aspirations of your market, and consider your demand type.

Avoid writing a tagline. Instead, promise transformation in the simple promise, like CXL’s Join the top 1% or Slack’s Slack replaces email in your organization. It may include direct mention of the change, promise land, villain, or stakes.

Write several one sentence simple promise ideas with your team.

Consider Brendan Dell’s “The 12 Laws High-Impact Messaging” when brainstorming ideas, especially the concepts of specificity, clarity, and impact, as well as:

  • Singular someone
  • Empathy
  • Trust
  • Inference
  • Conciseness
  • Edges
  • Authenticity
  • Results

Remove any technical jargon, filler, or hyperbole from your simple promise ideas.

Go back to your customer research, reviews, testimonials, and social media comments to see what words your customers actually use to describe your product and their situation. Avoid jargon, like Slack is a searchable log of all conversation and knowledge that streamlines workplace communication to increase efficiency and team effectiveness.

Narrow your list to the best 3 to 5 potential simple promise ideas.

Prepare to test and roll out your simple promise ideas by choosing your favorites, getting multiple perspectives at your company, and starting to develop roll out plans.

Last edited by @hesh_fekry 2023-11-14T15:05:40Z