In the A – Z of Marketing, V is for – Values

I hear a lot of people talk about their values and those of their business, they tell me that their values are things like ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’, so I ask them what they mean by integrity and how they apply it to their business – and most of the time they can’t. They just hear a lot of other people talking about integrity and think they should have some!

Your values are personal to you and to your business. You can’t copy someone else, but you can use your values to stand apart from your competitors. When you can stick to your values, your actions will be more powerful than any marketing you can pay for.

Earlier this year we reviewed our values at Appletree and this is what we’re about:

1. We get stuff done. Our clients trust us to set up and look after their marketing for them. Getting stuff done means that we don’t tell clients what marketing to do and then expect them to do it on their own. We do things for our clients even before they have to ask us to do them!

2. We stick to what we’re good at. Writing marketing copy is what we’re really good at, so that’s what we do. When clients need content for their website, material for their newsletters and blogs, or engaging copy for their tweets and social media updates, we can create it. Because we stick to what we know best, we can make sure that we provide our clients with top quality marketing solutions. If our clients ask for something we’re not good at (even if we think we could make some money from doing it) we will find someone to do it who really knows how to do it well.

3. We give free advice freely. Our business has been built on helping anyone who asks about marketing. We treat everyone as if they’re a paying client, so if people need advice, we look forward to them getting in touch and we’ll do whatever we can to help. We love sharing our advice and experience in our blog, newsletter and tweets.

4. We’re in it for the long haul. Appletree has been around since 2000. Since then, we’ve always done marketing. The business has changed as new marketing tools have been created – social media didn’t even exist when we started – but we’ve been consistent in the marketing support that we’ve provided our clients. And we’re going to carry on doing that!

So those are our core values – they are what drives our business and what keeps us in business.

What are your values? What’s important to you? What do you stand for?