How to Create Your Skincare Brand Values
A brand is an emotional connection people have to a company’s product or service; they gravitate towards brands they like and avoid those they don’t like. Your skincare branding should be consistent and recognizable, including through your logo, brand colors, packaging, marketing, advertising, and pricing.
In order to create a skincare brand that stands out from the massive amounts of competition, you will need to get clear on your brand values.
Good brand values can help you establish a reputation for your company that people can remember and identify easily. And it is no different for skincare businesses!
Skincare brand values are the rules, beliefs, and principles that form the soul of your products and company as a whole. Since you are competing for your audience’s attention, it is crucial to develop a value statement that perfectly defines what your business wishes to achieve.
At Aventive Studio, we create memorable brand identities to help you make more wellness product sales. View our full suite of branding, skincare packaging design, web design, & brand strategy services here.
What Are Brand Values and Why Are They Important?
Brand values are the essence of your skincare brand. They are the things that you stand for and the things that you do to make your brand successful. They are core values that enable your business to thrive in the marketplace.
Brand values are not necessarily fixed; they can be changed as needed. While they must remain consistent, brand values can either be passed from one generation to another or altered according to time.
For a skincare business, brand values are important because they help customers identify with your company and its products. They encourage loyalty and help create a sense of belonging in the minds of consumers. They are also what help a brand stand out from competitors and attract customers.
Brand values are also important because they set expectations for customers as well as establish a standard that customers can use to judge your brand.
If your wellness or skincare company is ready to scale to the next level and make more product sales, contact Aventive Studio here. We can help you identify your brand attributes & values, as well as create unforgettable designs to achieve your business goals.
Your Skincare Brand Values Will Affect:
Your Business
Every business needs to have a mission and vision to achieve its goals. Not only can brand values help dictate these missions and vision but they can also steer marketing decisions in the right direction.
Your Culture and Employees
Brand values are usually used to define the work culture of the company. The way your external audience (customers) and internal audience (employees) perceive you is stemmed from what values your business holds.
For example, if your company’s brand values are making people feel secure about their purchase choices, you need to ensure that your employees actually derive that same emotion from your brand throughout their association with it.
Your Consumers
Your customers require something that they can associate your brand with – whether it is a feeling or a phrase.
For example, people associate Nike with athletic performance because the brand’s values are centered around athleticism and making people fitter. That’s why their marketing campaigns also feature words related to sports and performance like “Never Settle” or finding your “Greatness” through fitness.
Your Stakeholders
Your investors are one of your two primary customers. If they don’t believe in your core values, they can’t back you up financially.
Your Competitors
This is especially important in the crowded skincare industry where every player has a distinctive selling proposition. Your brand values are what will help you differentiate your business from the competition and establish a unique identity for yourself.
3 Characteristics of Skincare Brand Values
When developing your brand values, you need to follow the tried and tested approach. Brand values are a combination of words, images, and actions that dictate how your customers see you, so they should be:
- Honest: Be true to your roots and show your authenticity.
- Relevant: Be up-to-date with your customers’ needs and align your values accordingly.
- Realistic: Make sure that your values have a certain standard but let them be achievable and believable.
Your brand values should reflect who you are and what you do, not who you want to be or what other people think you should be doing. Unrealistic and false promises made by your brand won’t be in anybody’s best interest.
You can view our brand strategy work for a past skincare client, including defining their brand values and rebranding their entire product line, in our case study here.
Creating Skincare Brand Values From Scratch
Ask Why You Started a Skincare Business in the First Place
There are already many players in the market. Technically, we don’t need a new skincare brand. But Brad Pitt’s Le Domaine Skincare and Winnie Harlow’s Cay Skin launched after the first wave of celebrity cosmetic brands – all because they have something new to offer.
In Le Domaine Skincare’s case, the need identified is the lack of skincare brands for men. So, Pitt launched a gender-neutral line in the market to address that issue.
On the other hand, Cay Skin’s entire collection is centered around island-based ingredients and bursting the myth that anybody who isn’t white doesn’t need sunscreen by offering SPF products for people of color.
Brand values are what separate these brands from the noise. So, if you can’t identify a market need, you will struggle to come up with your brand values.
Consider What Problem You Are Trying to Solve
Brand values can’t be vague. A brand might say that its values are being “trustworthy” or “fun.” But these are not real brand values; they are just words that describe what the company wants to be known for.
A real brand value is something more specific and tangible, like “high-quality” or “creation with innovation.” It should reflect how you want your customers to feel about your product or service every time they think about them.
So, if you want people to trust your products, for example, then you would want them to think about how well-made your products are and how durable they are going to be when used in the real world. In such a case, words like “lab-tested” or “designed by experts” might work well as part of your brand values than “trustworthy.”
Identify the Values That Are Relevant to Your Target Customers
The more clearly you can define what your customer base, the clearer you will be on how to create a brand value that will resonate with them.
If your ideal buyer cares about vegan skincare, you would want to make a list of adjectives that would address that. So, words like “clean,” “cruelty-free,” “PETA-certified,” or “plant-based” could be included in your brand values.
Research Your Competitors
Peter Thomas Roth’s Instant FirmX Eye Tightener has been going viral on TikTok for a hot minute now. Even though there are already so many eye products on the market, this is one product that has the most virality attached to it. If you don’t know what we are talking about, you are missing out.
The product magically starts tightening pesky undereye bags within seconds after the application. There’s science behind it, which you can read more about here. But the point is there is not one product on the market that comes even close to what this eye tightener is capable of doing.
That’s what good competitive analysis can do. You can either launch yet another hydrating eye cream like Charlotte Tilbury or you can actually innovate and fill a market gap by conducting thorough research on what your competition is doing. Once you have identified what sets you apart, you can develop your brand values.
Be True to Your Vision
Brand values can be expressed in many ways — through your skin care packaging design, logos, or websites; through social media posts; or through conversations with customers over the phone or in person. But they should all be authentic and should align with your company’s end goal.
Skincare brands are often at a disadvantage in the digital world. Not only do they have to compete with other beauty brands but they also face the challenge of competing for the audience’s interest in a crowded space. That’s why branding has become an unavoidable component of starting a cosmetics or skincare business.
Branding is about creating a voice and visual identity for your brand, and developing your brand values is an integral part of branding! Since it is such a huge undertaking, this is a task best left to professionals.
At Aventive Studio, our team of branding specialists has helped countless health, wellness, and skincare brands define themselves with clarity and consistency.
We can take the stress of connecting your brand with your target audience off your plate, plus design unforgettable brands including your logo, website, visual designs (colors, fonts, imagery), and packaging. Let’s talk!