Your mission statement goes straight to the core of who you are as a company. Knowing your purpose translates into everything you do. It drives your company culture, how you treat your customers and even how you market your brand.
There are currently more than 32.5 million small businesses in the United States. If you don’t know what makes you stand out from your competitors, you’ll likely get lost in the crowd. Here are some crucial ways to ensure you deliver a strong business mission statement.
1. Keep It Short
Your mission statement doesn’t need to be paragraphs long. Save that type of dialogue for your about page or explainer videos. Instead, try to keep your mission statement to a sentence or two.
Ideally, if you were in an elevator with another person and they asked what your company does, you could summarize this statement in a few seconds.
2. Highlight Achievements
What are you proudest of about your company? Think about the unique value proposition (UVP) you bring to the table that no one else in your industry does. When presented with a choice of brands to choose from, you want customers to see you as superior to all others in certain areas.
Scro’s Roofing does an excellent job of highlighting what makes them unique through their customers’ eyes. They add the tagline of “We’re the trusted name in roofing since 1995.” This showcases how clients feel about them and shows they have a history of trustworthiness.
3. Don’t Limit Yourself
Although you need a narrow focus for your mission statement, don’t limit yourself too much. You may expand in the future and you’ll want to be able to point employees and customers back to the objective for your brand.
If you only focus on great customer service, your employees may forget about attention to detail, for example. Think about how you can highlight what you do well without limiting your future growth. For example, Uber talks about setting the world in motion. This gives them room to expand with smart cars or other devices as technology changes.
4. Make It Relevant
Your mission statement must be relevant to your customers. While you may care about the technical side of delivering a service, your customers only care about the results. Look at the definition through their eyes and decide whether it meets their needs.
Life Is Good presents their mission statement as “To spread the power of optimism.” At the core of every product they sell, every employee they hire, and every project they embrace is the mission to spread optimism. Being happy is something their customers care about. It taps into a powerful emotion and a desire to make the world a better place.
Create a Strong Impression
Your mission statement should leave an impression on your target audience. The better you understand your customers, the easier it is to find a mission statement that aligns with their values and yours. Choose a statement that takes you through the long term. You want something you can embrace no matter what products you offer.
Eleanor Hecks is editor-in-chief at Designerly Magazine. Eleanor was the creative director and occasional blog writer at a prominent digital marketing agency before becoming her own boss in 2018. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dog, Bear.
