Leveraging Your Purpose for Good

Marketing is a lot like dating. A brilliant quote by Ian MacDougall, founder of Corporate Lifecycles Associates, in a presentation, said, “Don’t tell me you love me; bring me flowers.”

This advice holds just as true for marketing as it does for dating. In marketing, we woo and form relationships with our audiences. This can be rephrased for marketers as, “Don’t just tell me your mission, show me how you do it. Give me a sign that you mean what you say.”

Why this is required of businesses today is because, now, more than ever, businesses of all shapes and sizes are focusing on corporate social responsibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and sustainability initiatives. 

Clients from all sectors—business to business, consumer, healthcare, and finance—are now, more than ever, making buying decisions based on your values.

Simon Sinek once said, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.” 

For many, the danger of just talking about your purpose without backing it up is that people  won’t believe it. So while there’s a lot of talk out there about corporate responsibility, your walk must match your talk! 

How can you bring the flowers with your purpose?

At KidGlov, we get to see this every day with the organizations we work with. Immanuel, for example, in the senior living and retirement space, has a mission of Christ-centered service to seniors and the community. 

So, how do they bring the flowers? By providing free resources to seniors who have been isolated during the pandemic. They have landing pages, blog posts and do media interviews. In addition, they are waging an all-out war on the epidemic of senior loneliness.

Another organization that brings the flowers with their purpose is Farmers and Merchants Bank. They have a mission of supporting the Nebraska communities that they serve. They donate towards community projects and provide volunteer hours within those communities.

They also maintain a strong physical presence in the communities and supply a load of free mobile services, so people don’t have to drive into the bank all the time. 

The Lancaster Event Center, Fairgrounds, and the Lancaster Agricultural Society is another example. They have a mission to educate and engage youth in agriculture by hosting hundreds of events per year, supporting 4H and FFA (Future Farmers of America). In 2019, they became an impromptu center to support farm families who were suffering.

MembersOwn Credit Union is an organization that also brings flowers. They bring the flowers by fulfilling their mission of service to members by promoting free educational meetings to help people improve their credit scores and by providing a multitude of free resources.

Finally, Verdis Group brings the flowers to their purpose of creating a thriving and resilient world by hosting Green Eggs and Bam. They provide a stipend to their employees to support sustainable transportation.

At KidGlov, our mission is to help the organizations who are changing the world by putting a megaphone in front of those who are making efforts to extend good services, not merely talking about them. 

We bring the flowers by sharing stories through our Agency for Change podcast and through the Marketing Monday sessions as well. 

So what about you?

In your business, ask yourself the questions:

• How is my organization bringing the flowers?
• What actions do I take beyond my product or service offerings to demonstrate authentic purpose?  
• What am I doing to let people know what I do and why I do it?

As a matter of fact, everyone wants the flowers brought to them. That is, we all want to work with an organization that backs up its purpose with real action. Your mission statement becomes more believable when you demonstrate your purpose.

Recommendation to Leverage Your Purpose

Want to make sure you’re really leveraging your purpose? Get marketing involved in your business early. It may be an in-house team, a consultant, or an advertising agency like KidGlov. Just bring them in early. This may not be like the traditional advertising or marketing assignment, but you can tap into these experts in many ways.

• You can start by having them use their creativity and strategic skills to help you identify and develop consistent strategic messaging around your purpose. 
• You can then have them create an internal communications campaign to help your team understand your purpose and the need to live them.
• Have your marketing experts develop a content strategy that draws audiences into your work.
• You can have them use social media and blog posts to highlight authentic examples of you and your team living the purpose.
• Lastly, incorporate your purpose into your marketing efforts. This should come last because you need to ensure that you are living it first and that your team fully understands it.

What to Find on Our Page

To learn more about this topic, you can check out our website at kidglov.com. 

• Under the expertise page on our website, you will find there an entire landing page dedicated to purpose-driven businesses with blog posts
• You will also find thought leader interviews on our Agency For Change podcast
• Furthermore, we have provided helpful case studies from other like organizations. 

Leveraging your purpose for good goes beyond having a good mission statement or a statement of purpose. More people will buy into what you do if you back up every of your purpose with corresponding actions. By so doing, you are not just saying I love you, but bringing the flowers. And that is how you leverage your mission in a meaningful and heartfelt way. 

If, at any point in time, you are looking for a marketing partner, KidGlov would love to extend her services to you.

KidGlov is a boutique, full-service, advertising, branding and content marketing agency and certified B Corp, with offices in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, specializing in nonprofit marketing, healthcare marketing, financial services marketing, social impact marketing, and purpose-driven businesses.