03 Feb How Does Your Company Make the World Better?

Editors of trade publications love to run articles that suggest how their readers can benefit from innovations that improve productivity or increase efficiency and cut costs. We’ve found over the years that when we can put together a good story that relates how a productivity or cost problem gets solved we have no problem getting it published in a nationally recognized trade magazine. Some of these stories share an engineer’s vision of how a particular product or service shouldhelp his or her customer, describing that customer’s real application, how it was performing sub-optimally in the past, and how it works better now that our client’s product or service has been employed.

This all relates to our client’s mission being fulfilled. When we meet with a new client, one of the first questions we ask is “What is your mission?” The answer should relate somehow to enhancing the lives of their constituents in some way, by saving them energy for example, or reducing machine downtime or cutting maintenance costs. That’s for our business-to-business clients. Our business-to-consumer clients should have similar missions, making their customers’ lives better in some way. We find that cementing that mission, getting it down in writing, and sharing it with the whole organization is crucial to getting it accomplished. The simple act of doing this can energize an organiztion in pursuit of that vision.

Likewise, sharing the vision should be at the core of a company’s marketing strategy. People want to purchase from a company that is going somewhere, one that shares their own vision of “how the world should be.” Just look at how purchasers align with brands with which they have build an affinity. Their recommendations can have a major impact on other people’s purchases as well. As a brand’s awareness and credibility builds in the marketplace, the early adopters are joined by customers who need to know that others have had positive results before they buy.

This explains why we put so much enphasis on case studies in the content that we devolop. The recently published articles listed at right are examples of how ‘storytelling’ aligns the reader with the company they are reading about. When a new technology comes out, decision makers often want to know that they’re not alone in making the decision to buy. Editors want to share information about industry problems and how they can be solved, and salespeople want to be able to share these stories and anecdotes in the process of getting prospects closer to completing the sale.

Being a company with a mission - ``on a mission`` not only gives your team a reason to feel good about what they do, it makes good business sense, too!