The heart of a very successful business beats loud and clear. You know exactly what it provides and there’s a palpable unity to its staff—from founder/CEO to the front lines.
We are drawn to businesses like this. We resonate with the things they say and do, whether we’re purchasing products or services from them, working for them, or investing in them.
Such magnetism doesn’t arise by happenstance.
A visionary leader grounds their business in a clear purpose and articulates who the business is built to serve and how it helps them.
If you aspire to grow a business like this—or you hope to compete with businesses that have established such a reputation—there’s work to be done.
In today’s digital-first world, content marketing has become the mission critical approach to attracting and engaging customers, employees, and investors. To do so, your content must handle the heavy lifting when it comes to showcasing the purpose and mission of your business.
How should you go about accomplishing that? Read on! We’re going to explore six ways you can bring purpose and mission into your B2B content, positioning your company to capture hearts and minds—and ultimately, business.
Before you can introduce your purpose and mission to others, you must first be clear what they are and how to communicate them.
This is hard work.
Decide whether this is a task you will undertake alone—often the case for a solo founder or the figurehead leader of a business—or tackle with a team of leaders.
Reflect on why you started or joined the business. What personal objective does the company help you strive toward? If the company succeeds, what achievement will you be most proud to tell the world about?
A purpose statement should be far-reaching and ambitious. It should be difficult, if not impossible, to complete
A purpose statement should be far-reaching and ambitious. It should be difficult, if not impossible, to complete.
The impact of making even partial progress toward your company’s purpose should be substantial and noteworthy.
Your mission, in contrast, should be measurable and achievable. It captures the primary challenge your company is focused on tackling today, in pursuit of your bigger purpose.
Mission statements can—and should—change over time, as you substantially complete the original mission or when it makes sense to refocus the company’s efforts on a different challenge that has become more pressing or more tractable.
Your purpose statement clearly and succinctly explains why you are in business.
Your mission statement explains precisely who you are in business to serve, how you intend to deliver that solution, and what it does for your target customers.
Toss your purpose and mission statements back and forth like flotsam in your mind (or between team members) until they are smooth and polished.
Now you are ready to live and breathe them, in front of other people.
Many companies claim to be “purpose driven” or “committed to our mission” and yet leave us unclear what they are pursuing or why it matters.
This smacks of gaslighting—or greenwashing, for businesses claiming an environmental or sustainability purpose—and we are put off rather than attracted.
It’s imperative to go beyond simply stating your purpose and mission. Explain why they matter and how the world will benefit from you having chosen to pursue them.
Note: A well-constructed vision statement can play a valuable role here, too.
Many different content types can be used to show and explain these elements of your business, from social media posts to videos to web pages and blogs.
Whichever medium you choose, examine the content critically for authenticity before it is published.
Write what is true, not what you hope will become true if you talk about it often enough.
It is said that actions speak louder than words. So, put your purpose and mission into action and then report on what happens.
What decisions has your company made differently from other businesses because of your purpose?
Which strategic choices have you made to stay focused on your mission?
Where do your purpose and mission bring you into conflict with established doctrine and ways of working?
Are there examples of you choosing not to maximize profitability or shareholder return because of your commitment to purpose and mission?
Are there examples of you choosing not to maximize profitability or shareholder return because of your commitment to purpose and mission?
Not every business is hell-bent on saving the planet, eradicating poverty, eliminating inequality, or donating its proceeds to charity. And that’s okay.
The relentless pursuit of world-changing purposes gets tiring for your customers, employees, and investors. They’re happy to buy into less ambitious missions, too.
Examine your purpose and mission in the context of the businesses around you in the marketplace. Identify the ways in which your product, service, or approach set you apart because of the purpose you bring to the work and the mission you’ve chosen.
All these answers matter to your target audience.
The stories you tell about how your company makes a difference and why help the audience understand who you are, how you align with their personal values and goals, and why they should choose your company over its competitors.
Talking a good game is different from accomplishing something and delivering value.
Take things to the next level by showcasing real impact that can be legitimately tied back to your purpose and mission.
Take things to the next level by showcasing real impact that can be legitimately tied back to your purpose and mission.
This is where case histories and user testimonials become powerful.
Beware the trap of focusing only on features and benefits—what you delivered—and not joining the dots to show value.
We want to understand how your solution made a difference, how big that difference was, and what it meant to your customer.
As you develop this type of content, role play a critical audience member by repeatedly asking yourself, “so what?” After five or six rounds of that game, you’ll either dig deep enough to identify real value or realize that you don’t know enough about the use case to tell an impactful story.
What’s even better than a well-crafted case history? A case history written by the customer themselves.
User-generated content, third-party reviews and testimonials, and peer-to-peer communication are a trust-building elixir.
Whenever possible, encourage and showcase content from outside your organization that describes your solution in action
Whenever possible, encourage and showcase content from outside your organization that describes your solution in action.
Once again, the key to success is authenticity.
Resist the temptation to filter third-party content—except to eliminate anything that’s blatantly untrue, malicious, or intended to deceive.
Publishing the good, the bad, and the ugly (which is hopefully rare), demonstrates transparency and integrity, and lays the foundation for a high-trust relationship with your customers.
Is it acceptable to solicit this kind of input, rather than waiting for customers to volunteer it? Absolutely. There’s nothing wrong with asking customers to write reviews or for guest posts describing their experiences.
However, it’s not acceptable to reward contributors for their kind words. As soon as there’s a benefit to saying something nice, the less-than-positive comments will disappear into a cloud of fluffy accolades and so will the authenticity.
Implementing steps 1 to 5 will bring you to a state of conscious competence. You will have the ingredients and tactics necessary to deliberately produce content showcasing purpose and mission.
That’s a great first step—and vastly superior to companies who pay scant attention to these topics.
However, there’s one more level to which you can aspire. This is where those companies I mentioned in the introduction operate: unconscious competence.
Companies that embed purpose and mission in everything they do move beyond the point of structuring content around purpose and mission. It’s simply part of who they are.
Companies that embed purpose and mission in everything they do move beyond the point of structuring content around purpose and mission. It’s simply part of who they are.
We observe consistency in purpose flowing throughout their organization, rather than being preached from the top and nodded to by the workforce.
It’s why their content feels purposeful without overtly saying so.
It makes us want to purchase their solutions and apply for their jobs and buy their stock without necessarily knowing why we are drawn to do so.
Getting to this level is both hard and time-consuming.
It requires a relentless commitment to making decisions based on purpose and mission—at every level of the business.
At first, this will feel clunky and contrived. Over time, with persistence, it will become second nature.
Not all of us are able to influence an organization at such a deep and powerful level. But, if you are, I strongly encourage you to make the effort.
With purpose and mission encoded in your organizational DNA, producing impactful content will become matter of fact. Then, watch your business soar.
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Image credits: Adobe Stock
