Is Your Business In Tune With The New Purpose Economy?

Earlier this month, Jack ma announced his retirement plan by declaring two things: His successor and his retirement date. He declared his intention of doing Philanthropy and working in the education field.

From his declaration, it seems his purpose in life is not just to earn money till death or till he becomes incapacitated.

Simon Sinek who has given one of the most-watched Ted Talks of all time states in a 2017 HBR article,

“Profit isn’t a purpose. It’s a result. To have a purpose means the things we do are of real value to others.”

 (Apart from just earning money) What is your purpose in life? If you are an employee, what is the purpose of the company which employs you? If you are an entrepreneur, what is the purpose of your company?

Many of you might never have thought of this. No business plan or mission vision statements talk about non-monetary Impact purpose.

The world is changing. The purpose has acquired the center stage and rightly so. The following extract from the book The Purpose Economy indicates the economy we all are about to enter.

Based on PwC’s data, it appears the majority of CEOs now share the vision that purpose is the new driving force of the economy. They see that understanding the importance of purpose—for employees, clients, and customers—will soon mark the difference between competitive companies from others that fall off the map.

Why do we see more and more social enterprises are beings set up by the millennial? We have many highly educated individuals choosing to drive social change through their social initiatives rather than working just for money and working just for the profit-centric corporations?

The Purpose Economy has already arrived.

Neel Ghosh is the co-founder of Robinhood Army (RHA). He is studying at Harvard. His NGO, RHA is a volunteer-based organisation that works to get surplus food from restaurants across to the less fortunate.

The RHA has a network of 16000+ Robins who are active in 80 cities and has served meals to 8.5 million people till date.

The Purpose Economy is not only about his NGO, or an educated is starting an NGO, but dedicated 16000 volunteers working selflessly to help the poor.

These 16000 volunteers are from all walks of life, working and studying. Yet their inner need for purposeful living is not met by their education or employment.

Taproot Foundation in the US is a social organisation. They help nonprofits and social change organizations solve critical challenges in their communities with the support of skilled volunteers sharing their expertise pro bono.

They have delivered services of about 1.7 million hours to the non-profits and social organisations. These 1.7 million hours of work is performed by their volunteers pro-bono, i.e. without any charges.

People are working free of cost to satisfy their purpose need.

“Based on what they see in the market today, CEOs expect demand for purpose in the consumer marketplace to increase by nearly 300% by 2020. This demand means consumers putting less emphasis on cost, convenience, and function and increasingly make decisions based on their need to increase meaning in their lives, and buying products and services that fulfill that need.” Aaron Hurst, Author The Purpose Economy.

The question for everyone is: What is Your Purpose? If you are ‘for profit’ company and have not defined this social impact purpose, it’s time to do it NOW. The competitive advantage is moving towards purpose-driven companies.

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THE ROLE OF CONTENT IN THE NEW PURPOSE ECONOMY:

Content Marketing has emerged as a powerful approach to marketing in the last 5 years. This is perhaps the indicators of upcoming Purpose Economy.

All these years CMOs were busy in creating content about their products, services, features, benefits and were using every tactic only to lure the target audience to buy the product.

Internet and Google have changed everything. Your competitor is just a click away. Customer reviews are just another click away.

People do not believe in marketing messages, people do not believe in advertising. Yet many CMOs are still self-focused. The messages and content they create is about themselves – their products, their awards, their ranks, their superiority.

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In the self-centered content, no one but only the self is interested. “Self-centered” marketing talks too much about the business and the product for sale, and not enough about the customer who’s buying it. Self-centered marketing is about MY company, MY product, MY story, and all the reasons why a customer should buy from ME.

The definition of content marketing is : (By Neil Patel)

It means that content marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building a strong relationship with your target audience by giving them high-quality content that is very relevant to them on a consistent basis.

Eventually, when customers make a purchase decision, their loyalty already lies with you. They will purchase your product and prefer it over competitors’ options.

In the inbound content marketing world, genuine, meaningful and contextual content is created to help the target audience.

Your content will be purpose-driven if you believe in;

”Don’t think about people as targets of the sale. The question isn’t who can you land, it’s who can you help? ” Michael Stelzner

It is here where Content Marketing meets the Purpose Driven Economy.

The purpose of Content Marketing is genuinely helping the target audience. The Purpose of Purpose centric company is creating a meaningful social impact beyond profit. One is the target audience first and the other is sociality first approach.

Therefore your Content Marketing Statement should read something like this:

The content we produce helps our company accomplish, ___ (GOAL), ____ (GOAL) ____  by providing  ____ (ADJECTIVE) ____ (ADJECTIVE) ______ that makes our  __ (TARGET AUDIANCE) _____ feel ______(EMOTION) _______ so they can focus on the ___(TASK) _____ (TASK) ______.

Once you fill the blanks it read like: (For a SAAS company, catering to professionals)

The content we produce helps our company accomplish, market leadership and trustworthiness by providing educative and interesting content that makes our target audience feel confident and motivated so they can focus on practice development & knowledge acquisition.

There is nothing about the product or services. Though the ultimate objectives are trustworthiness and market leadership the means is target audience focused content not self-centered content.

To repeat the quote mentioned above:

Simon Sinek who has given one of the most-watched Ted Talks of all time states in a 2017 HBR article,

“Profit isn’t a purpose. It’s a result. To have a purpose means the things we do are of real value to others.”

Content Marketing is about creating the Content which adds value to others i.e. target audience.

The real content marketing is purpose-driven. The real content marketing is the sustainable marketing approach in the Experience Economy. The real content marketing is the sustainable marketing approach for the Internet Economy. The real content marketing is the sustainable marketing approach in the Purpose Economy.

“Companies with a higher sense of purpose outperform others by 400%.” Tony Hsieh

Yet many companies are still creating self-centered content. They are missing the whole purpose of content marketing. This happens when content marketing is initiated as short-term ‘only lead generation’ objective. This happens when the content marketing is just ‘me too’ exercise without a strategy or mission statement.

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The Purpose Economy will compel the companies to become Purpose Driven. Only purpose-driven companies can create purpose-driven content.

Companies with a higher sense of purpose will create purpose-driven content to help and not only to sell. 

• Purpose Driven Companies = Profit + Social Cause
• Purpose Driven Marketing = Sales Content + High-Quality Target Audience Relevant Content
• Purpose Driven Individuals = Job/Business + Pro-bono Volunteering | Social Enterprise

 “Great marketers have immense empathy for their audience. They can put themselves in their shoes, live their lives, feel what they feel, go where they go, and respond how they’d respond. That empathy comes out in content that resonates with your audience.” Rand Fishkin, Wizard of Moz, Moz.

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Customer and employee centricity are the prerequisites of the Purpose-driven companies.

Conclusion:

• Decide the higher sense of purpose for your enterprise.
• Engage with your employees/customers to pursue the purpose.
• Create content that engages, educate and add value to your target audiences’ lives, and not just content to achieve sales.

“At the end of the day, you want to be profitable, but that’s not the meaning of life.” Daniel Lamarre, Cirque du Soleil