Founder & CEO of Advantages, a branding and marketing agency that connects profit to purpose through performance-focused marketing.
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A clearly defined purpose must infuse everything you do—from lead generation and the customer journey to sales and marketing. When you can accomplish that infusion, you are able to increase profitability. It’s simple—purpose is significantly connected to profit.
When your brand is confident in who it is and what it does and that confidence is palpable, its place in the market is clear. Customers who see that confidence and connect with your purpose will inherently know it’s the right fit for them. When you immediately align on values, it means much less wasted time and establishes more sustained and fruitful customer relationships.
How To Define Your Purpose
The first step to creating a purpose-driven marketing strategy is to identify that purpose. It goes beyond a simple statement of what your business does. You must consider the bigger picture. Ask questions like:
• What dream did I have to achieve?
• How does this business make the world a better place? What impact on the world do we want to achieve?
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• What cause are we dedicated to every single day?
• What do we value most, and what do our customers care about most?
The foundation of your brand is actually three components that work together, known as your 3 Keys:
• Purpose: Why your business exists and the mission and vision that derive from it.
• Values: The principles and beliefs that guide your team and customers.
• Story: Your brand’s authentic narrative that makes it unique.
Define the purpose, value and story for your brand, and your foundational purpose will emerge. This purpose must be infused in the language you use in all your marketing content. One of the worst things you can do is be afraid of being honest and assertive about what your brand cares about.
7 Steps To Allow Purpose To Guide Your Marketing Strategy
Any marketing strategy has a few essential components, such as clearly outlined goals, platforms you’ll use and budget. You also need a strategy to gather marketing data so you can understand the performance of all your channels. To ensure your purpose is behind your strategy, follow these seven marketing strategy steps:
Set clear goals and objectives.
Your strategy must start with a clear, solid idea of the goals and objectives you want to accomplish. What do you want your results to look like? What about the journey itself? What do you envision for your relationship with your customers? Once those are established, the rest of the process can be more easily implemented.
Develop a consistent voice for your messaging.
You now know your purpose, so for better marketing, you must develop a voice and tone that represents your purpose and aligns with your customers’ needs.
This language must be consistent across all messages and platforms, so it’s best to have the same team develop your marketing content whenever possible. Your audience needs a reliable and familiar voice, no matter where they see your messages.
Identify the personas you’re speaking to.
Your purpose allows you to connect with people who have the same values as you. Create a persona for each component of your marketing strategy. What groups of people care about the same things you do? A strategy with purpose means you know your ideal personas and can engage them in meaningful topics with your messaging.
Build assets that establish credibility.
It’s one thing for a brand to put out tons of daily content that hits all the right keywords and gets ranked highly on Google. It’s another to establish credibility and authority. Your marketing strategy needs to factor in how to establish thought leadership that derives from your brand’s purpose.
Your content must address developments in your industry, common customer questions and topics that give people a new perspective. Guided by your purpose, create a marketing presence that shows—not tells—why followers need to listen to what you have to say.
Select your channels.
Once you identify the personas you want to target, determine which channels your audience uses. Where are they most engaged, and what types of content do they interact with? What platforms do they go to when they want information or must decide on the purchase of a product or service? Keep your purpose in mind to help you figure out where people go who have the same values as you.
Determine and track KPIs.
A feedback strategy must exist alongside the insights you gather from your marketing platforms. Don’t underestimate how pivotal customer feedback is and how informative it can be for your marketing strategy. Feedback alerts you to how people feel about their journey with you. It goes beyond simple social media metrics that track likes and clicks.
No matter where customers are in their journey, ask them for feedback about their experience, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative. All feedback can give you invaluable insight into the mind of your customers.
Start at the top.
You may see marketing as reserved for a few employees who are experts at SEO or social media. But just like your purpose, marketing goals must infiltrate the whole business. It helps to view your purpose as an umbrella—the overarching theme that connects everything.
This means your brand’s executives play a role. Your purpose-driven marketing strategy won’t work if your marketing channels say one thing and your leaders say another. You can show people you follow through on promises and statements when you start at the top.
The marketing strategy process is just one piece, but it’s a significant one. Your strategy must be guided by your purpose and connected to your business objectives, and you must never compromise who you are simply to attract leads. Following this advice will help to demonstrate your authenticity in every message you put into the world.
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Author: Fran Biderman-Gross, Forbes Councils Member
