Mission-based marketing: why you need it

posted in: Reverse View | 0

Recently, I’ve been searching for a way to use more video in marketing for Reverse. A couple of years ago, I posted a YouTube videoblog series on how to create brand identities for a small businesses. However, although the series went down ok, I wanted to see if I could produce more lively and engaging content. I certainly didn’t want to repeat the same face-to-camera format I used back then.

This led to an immediate problem: what to point a camera at? The difficulty with consultancies like mine, is that there are no tangible products or shop windows through which we can immediately welcome clients. If you run (or work for) a consultancy, you will recognise the problem. After an exhaustive web search (and In slight desperation), I got in touch with Wistia, an innovative video hosting company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A kindly soul called Mercer replied and directed me to a post on their website entitled ‘Marketing to a Mission’.

So, what is mission-based marketing?

Chris Savage’s article revealed that Wistia had indeed faced the same problem. In essence, how could they keep thinking up new ideas for marketing content, when they essentially perform similar tasks for similar clients and work to a pattern? Using the idea of mission-based marketing, they looked at the problem another way. What was their core mission? What was their company actually set up to do? The answer: ‘to empower everybody to get more out of video’. Once they started marketing around this mission, the content strategy moved into additional, new and more interesting areas. They could make videos, write blog posts, or host conferences on a much more diverse range of topics.

What will the use of mission-based marketing mean for my company? For starters, I have now created an expanded remit for Reverse – ‘Let’s communicate’. This can now encompass opinions, thought-pieces and comment.  All of which is intended to help small businesses and others to improve the quality of their communications – visual, written and even spoken. This is what I believe communications design can and should do. It will all be done with the intention of providing positive, practical help that can be immediately applied to the situations that businesses will recognise. It doesn’t mean that I’ll be rushing into making lots of new video material straight away, but it does mean that when I think about using that media, I’ll have a clear idea of why I’ll be using it and what I want to communicate.

So, what could mission-based marketing could do for you and your business?

For example, a chocolate-maker could communicate around the health benefits of chocolate or the way we can (sometimes) indulge ourselves and others with treats. A music teacher could blog about the sheer enjoyment that making music gives people. A bespoke furniture maker could convey the idea of the beauty of all natural materials and hand-made objects (not just the particular pieces that he or she makes). In other words, you could start with some thinking around what your company cares about, or is passionate about, rather than remaining focused on exactly what you do.

So why not give it some thought and let me know how you might use mission-based marketing for your business.

Thanks to Mercer Smith-Looper and Chris Savage of Wistia.
Featured image by videohive.net

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