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This is a book excerpt from our friends at FT Press. This excerpt is taken from Real-Time Marketing for Business Growth: How to Use Social Media, Measure Marketing, and Create a Culture of Execution by Monique Reece.
Purpose-Driven Companies Make Higher Profits
If you want higher profits, have a purpose. Writing this section of your plan will increase profits while also creating a business that is more fun and meaningful for you, your employees, and your customers. Companies that clearly define their mission, vision, and guiding principles, and communicate this consistently across the organization, have significantly higher profit per employee than companies who perform poorly in this area.1 Success Profiles, a performance management company, studied 600 businesses and found that the average profit per employee in the survey increased from $7,802 per employee to $27,401 in companies that make this a best practice in their organization.
If you think things like mission, vision, values, goals, culture, and company purpose are merely “soft,” nice-to-have attributes for a business, this fact alone should change your mind.
As the leader driving the development of this important effort, you have the opportunity to create the experience people have with your company. If you are the company founder, you will develop the mission, vision, values, and goals to inspire your employees. If you are a marketing or strategic planning executive, you will have the opportunity to drive this process and communicate the messages in unique and creative ways so they are understood and integrated into the company culture. You will facilitate this important assignment and communicate the messages in your internal company brand campaign. As you will learn in the chapters that follow, an internal brand campaign is as important as your external campaigns because it inspires the actions and behaviors that ultimately become part of your brand.
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We will explore several examples of companies that have done an exceptional job of defining their purpose. We will also look at a few special companies that have taken the road less traveled to create a company where company purpose is THE distinct competitive advantage for their company. Author Jim Collins defines the characteristics of companies like this in his book Good to Great. CEOs like Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Kimberly Jordon of New Belgium Brewery run companies powered by purpose.
Create Raving Fans
While hundreds of companies are beginning to embrace the concept of a purpose-driven organization, these companies tend to be the exception, rather than the rule. I find this surprising given the fact that not only are these companies adored by their employees and customers, but they also deliver consistent profitability and return to their shareholders. Perhaps I am oversimplifying this concept, but when you have a choice to run a great company versus a mediocre company, why not create a great company? Not only will you have more fun; but you will create loyal employees and customers who are “Raving Fans.” 2
Raving Fans, the title of a book coauthored by Ken Blanchard, describes customers who believe so much in a company’s people and products that they actually become a part of the sales force. The way to create customers who are raving fans is to first treat your employees with great care and respect. If you do this, they in turn will care for customers. The result of creating raving fan customers, being the employer of choice, and the investment of choice is a “triple bottom line.” As Blanchard is famous for saying, “Profit is the applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your people.”3
Blanchard not only writes about companies with extraordinary purpose, he runs a company that lives by these principles every day. As Chief Spiritual Officer of The Ken Blanchard Companies, Ken Blanchard’s role is to lead others at a higher level. He not only does this in his organization, but he also teaches other companies to embrace this concept. If you don’t think this concept is important, especially in tough economic times, read on to see how Blanchard handled a difficult choice in our last recession during the period of time immediately following the 9/11 tragedy.
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by Amy Howell
People ask me daily about social media and it has been fun as well as challenging to try and figure it out, but that’s the whole point— nobody has it all figured out although there are a lot of smart people out there blogging and discussing issues. The thing I personally like about social media is that nobody “owns” it and there’s something there for everyone.
You cannot control the tides of social media, but you can control your corporate message and your strategy to tell your story—good or bad. You don’t have to look very far to find daily examples of how Twitter or You-Tube can impact a business in minutes. Recent stats report most businesses don’t use social media but plan to in 2010 (I have posted a lot of these articles on my Twitter page).
Here are some of the leading “Trends” of Social Media for this year (and I predict they will grow):
* Traditional Media and marketing has been revamped, replaced. Much of what we did to market and tell our stories within the last year has been crushed.
* Social Media corporate marketing budgets are on the rise.
* Retailers need to be savvy online; Customers researching and buying online. One word exemplifies this: Zappos (435 Zappos employees use Twitter!)
* The Recession is helping Social Media as a cost control alternative.
* News is 24/7 now, and customers won’t buy week old news.
* Well known bloggers and influencers on Twitter are getting every media message out.
* Lots of good applications and increasing technology tools like the iPhone will advance the Social Media cause.
In closing, I will tell you that if you feel overwhelmed or intimidated by social media, internet communications and all the applications that are out there, you should! Even for some of us practicing it daily, it is like nothing since the Industrial revolution.
Use of the internet will continue to grow and smart companies are looking now at how they can plug into the dynamic—and fascinating tools out there to turn the tides of social media to their benefit.
Amy Howell is the CEO at Howell Marketing Strategies, LLC. Follow Amy on twitter and read more blog articles by her here.
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