Over the years, the brand purpose has moved from being a side investment for businesses and a gesture to improve relations with the community to be a core component of a business. Today, customers, employees, the press and investors are attracted to a business enterprise by the way that the brand operates. Stakeholders gauge a business by looking at the objectives and values of the brand and the level of corporate social responsibility exhibited.
Brand purpose is not a new word when it comes to marketing. In order for businesses to be more unique and impactful in a highly competitive world, they are changing their values and mode of operation. The purpose of a brand stands for more than a commitment to certain values and the mission statement. Rather, it defines the value that an organization has in society, which allows the organization to grow while creating a positive impact on the world.
For many marketing teams, this raises the question: How can you effectively communicate the purpose of a brand considering that you are dealing with many other contenting marketing objectives?
How important is a diverse content strategy?
The options for formatting content, delivering it and methods of consumption are increasing on a daily basis. This provides marketers with a wide range of marketing tools. Over the years, content strategies have grown to be more sophisticated as they target different audiences, product lines, business goals and much more. Your core strategy can include plans to showcase the executive thought leadership in an organization, promote company products, reach different target markets and create a platform for future products.
One critical area that should not be overlooked when a content strategy mix is being created is the brand purpose of a business. Today’s customers care about the brand purpose regardless of the information that it may contain such as corporate social responsibility undertakings, the ethical policies followed by a business or how consumer goods are sourced.
How is your brand narrative being shaped by the market?
The dynamic and ever-changing market outlay is changing the way businesses handle these efforts. Today, they can actually form a foundation for connecting with existing and potential customers.
As a marketing professional, what plans do you have in place to articulate the larger vision of your company and the impact you are making?
The expectations of customers, business partners, prospective employees and the wants of the general public are now being evaluated on a different level.
All of a sudden, businesses are very open in discussing how they choose their core business values and what makes them the most original in the market. These considerations are very important when proposing the value of a business. Today people do not want an enterprise that talks about itself. Instead, when looking at the purpose and value of a business, what is considered is how the content you are providing advances with the interests of employees and customers. It is usually considered if there is a movement around the available value system in order for a dramatic impact to be achieved.
Is there such a thing as too much purpose-driven content?
With the background that I have in economic development, it was always important to tell stories that showed that there was an impact. It was clear that those kinds of stories increased the investment made in economic development projects. Most importantly, those stories gave people the courage to dare and dream, and further, to believe that it was possible to effect significant change.
How many individuals who focus on empowerment and development have been inspired to do great things such as launch a healthcare program or build a learning centre because of a success story, heartrending needs or because of stories they have heard or seen?
To tell the truth, many countries have increased their projections for economic growth or started working towards alleviating poverty because of examples and stories they have heard or by taking cues after getting insights from neighbouring countries that have exhibited similar progress.
However, when the same is applied to the private sector, it becomes harder. It is important to articulate your brand purpose while at the same time taking into account your other content. This makes digital marketing experts face tough choices. For example, if your budget allocation is 20 new pieces of content each month, how many units should be allocated.
Though there is no single approach that can be said to work best for organisations, the brand purpose should be made to reflect organisational goals. You can attract new customers to your business by exploring your brand purpose. Exploring the purpose of your enterprise can also assist you in improving and enhancing the larger content marketing objectives of your business.
Customer behaviour is changing…
The demands of customers are not the only thing that is changing the role of content that is purpose-driven in organizations. Another key consideration is the context in which content is being used in an organization; from the role, it is playing in corporate communications, the integration of marketing to its role in sales.
It is unlikely that many people will follow an individual channel on this topic unless they are addressing the needs of a specific audience. The client reinvented the coverage of this area and began making it an integral part of all organisational processes. Blogs that are product-specific began carrying pieces that are relevant to the target audience. Blogs designed for the corporate level now carry content that tackles issues that deal with executive and organizational areas. Internal communications and investor relations content carry similar stories though with a different spin.
By looking for ways in which different parts of the organization can support the story you are pushing, you can be able to present it in a more compelling manner to the desired target audience.
Organisations have different departments with different functions. For example, you might have a public relations team in charge of managing corporate social responsibility. There you will have a team in charge of creating content for social media platforms. In an organization, you can also have a product team with the responsibility of making a product more relevant to the target audience. In most organizations, these teams function independently. If the efforts of all the teams were pulled together, it would be really fascinating.
For example, consider a Tech company that wants content tackling the involvement of women and technology. The top part of the content can provide on the skill gap for women seeking to embrace technology and the ideal road-map for making this happen. The PR team in the organisation can then focus on investments, coding camps and other partnerships necessary to make this happen. The customer profiles used in the content can contain information on women in the tech industry who are making huge strides in this area.
By focusing on each individual part of an organisation, you can satisfy the functional needs of each part and then link them all together. In order to start making a big impact and headway in this area, you need to start questioning how a connection can be made across the whole organization.
Content strategists…it’s your turn!
Content strategists and marketing professionals have a bigger workload. Simply talking about the purpose of your brand is no longer enough of a deliverable. It is important to offer more than the occasional distant blog post and annual reports of an organisation. Instead, strategists and marketers have to look at how the brand purpose dictates the organisation function and the way different individual parts of the organisation can be used to highlight this.
Interconnecting the bigger content marketing strategy of an organization with the brand purpose helps in telling the story better to the audience. At the same time, it also helps in weaving the brand purpose more strongly into the narrative of your organization.
