Convey your purpose in your digital marketing or you won’t connect with your target audience.
More importantly, make sure your purpose is larger and less inward looking than “profit.”
The danger in making profit your primary driver, even for publicly-traded companies with a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit is that it breeds resentment. It’s not the profit itself that is the problem. You can look at any number of major brands currently experiencing painful PR moments and see that they were raking in the cash even back when they were darlings of the public.
In contrast, there is a growing movement of true-blue capitalists who are looking more broadly and the role of the corporation in society. They’re still driven by the bottom line, but that traditional bottom line shares its place on the pedestal with other concerns.
Digital Marketing Beyond the Bottom Line
B Corporations, mission-driven businesses, conscious capitalism, triple-bottom lines, CSR … there are a lot of concepts floating around on this topic. Key among the lessons we can take from the organizations implementing these practices is the idea that conveying your purpose in your marketing is your best chance to connect with your prospects.
That is, of course, assuming that your purpose includes some greater good and/or some mission to help your target audience.
Marketing to a More Interested Audience
You don’t have to “sell one, donate one” as Tom’s and Warby Parker do. (Though they’ve been quite successful at it.) If you can demonstrate an authentic desire to be a positive force in your community and a commitment to something beyond profits, your target market will flock to you.
Don’t mistake that target audience for the total addressable market. You’ll forfeit access to some portion of the market because not everyone agrees with this idea of a “kinder, gentler” capitalism, or even your mission-driven purpose. But those who you do connect with, you will connect with more deeply.
Those deeper connections can put you on a path to a more fulfilling — and more profitable — business.
