Brands with a Social Purpose Grow

Most Brands with a Social Purpose Don’t Think They Have One!

I want to talk today about social mission marketing and how it can build your brand. Many brands with a social purpose do not think they have one. Do you have a social mission at your business that you actively pursue? Whether it is you individually and that mission kind of comes into your business, whether it’s volunteer work, donating time, donating money, or maybe it’s integrated into the type of service or product you do. Maybe it is an eco-friendly product or eco-friendly service that you practice. Here at BeeSmart, we love to work with companies that have social missions. It’s probably no surprise, but companies with social missions are a little bit easier to market. Most likely you have some type of social mission in your business- you just don’t talk about it. Do you have LED lights throughout your entire facility? It might be you all work from home three days a week to help lower carbon emissions from commuting.

Authenticity is key for brands with a social purpose

There are a lot of different types of social missions and most business owners, these days have something that they do and that their company practices that is authentic to them in their business. Once you have identified it, one thing that you can do is try to find other organizations to align with that support that social mission. We have clients who work with river advocacy and river conservation efforts. Some who work with LGBTQ advocacy efforts. We have clients that are eco-friendly and have no plastic in their packaging. Others who are passionate about the no waste movement. And then we have some clients who just simply donate a certain amount of money to certain nonprofits throughout the year. All of these are examples of brands with a social purpose.

Marketing your social mission

There are a lot of missions, but the idea is that you find one that you and your people are passionate about, and you want to align yourselves with other people who are passionate about the same thing and other organizations that are passionate about the same thing, and that can kind of help you start to figure out how to make it more, a part of your culture and of your organization. Now, let’s talk a little bit about marketing this. So, number one, you need to talk about it, post on your social media, write a blog post about it. It doesn’t have to be every single post or every single email that you send out. It doesn’t have to be in everything, but you want to talk about it because that, that brings it to life.

Bringing your social mission to life helps you make it more of part of your culture, which is important. Now I will say, it has got to be authentic. You can’t just pick something that doesn’t align with your business. Let’s say you are in a business that for whatever reason, it requires harsh chemicals. Listen, there are businesses out there that still require harsh chemicals. You’re probably not going to align with an organization that talks about keeping your waterways clean. If you are, it’s going to be from the perspective of what are you doing to minimize the impact of those chemicals seeping into waterways. You don’t want to hide behind it. But it should make sense with your business.

Beware of misalignment

Here’s a side note: if you are passionate about a volunteer activity and it doesn’t align with your business, there’s probably some value misalignment there that you might want to take a look at. When you are passionate about one thing, but your business is on the other end of the spectrum, there might be values misalignment there that can cause some issues later on down the line. Be on the lookout for that.
The reason you want to market your social mission is that it attracts like-minded people to your business. It’s going to attract people who value what you value. Who believe what you believe. As Simon Sinek has taught us –those who probably have a similar WHY to you. And those are the people who buy from you without needing to be sold.

Now, again, number one is authenticity. Do not do this just to make sales because it will backfire in your face. If you start working on the social mission, just because it’s where all the rich people are or where all of the people who you want to work with are- please don’t go about it that way. It’s got to be authentic to you. If it is authentic, if you do it right, if you talk about it in the right way, it can help your business and it can give you something else to market outside of just your products, your services, your people. It gives you something else to talk about with social media and any other type of content you do.

Lean in to your social mission

My number one point here is to figure out what your social mission is because most of us have one- we just don’t talk about it.  Figure out what it is, figure out if it’s aligned with your business and then identify ways to bring it into your business a little bit more. That can help you attract people who believe what you believe. These people are going to be a lot more likely to purchase from your company, because you are aligned on not just the products or services you sell, but you’re also aligned in a social mission. That is a very powerful piece of marketing that you can do for your business. If you have any other questions about social mission and how to tie it into marketing, let me know. I’m happy to help you happy to answer those questions. Most of our clients do have a social mission these days. And so I can show you some examples as well. Thanks for watching guys. And I hope it was helpful.