How to Improve Your Marketing Strategies with Your Company’s Vision and Mission Statements

Developed from the ProThink Learning Course Effective Marketing: Methods, Models, and Processes to Ensure Success

A Company’s Vision and Mission are two essential factors when you are building your marketing strategies and promotional messages. By identifying what these are in the early stages of creating a new marketing strategy or planned promotion and continually referring back to them throughout the process, your marketing team will have a common direction and instill each of your promotions with a persistent message and tone that aligns with your brand. But do you know the difference?

Vision: The Ultimate Goal

A Company Vision is something yet to be achieved; it is an imagined state to be realized in the future. When a company founder or leader codifies the future form of the company in writing, this is a called a company Vision Statement. The leader has the responsibility of creating the vision, then communicating that vision to the rest of the company in a way that it can be easily recalled.

For example, a pet food company’s vision statement might be

To become the leading value pet food brand in the United States

Many times, Vision Statements are far too long for the purpose of your Code Sheets. Your Vision Statement should be short. Here’s the problem with long Vision Statements. No one can remember them, and no one will take the time to repeatedly read them. You’ll need something you and the rest of your organization can keep in mind as you move through the day-to-day details of creating promotions — in other words, short and memorable.

If you have already been given a Vision Statement that is too long, and the bureaucracy of your company prevents you from shortening it, then shorten it anyway and call it your “marketing version” of the company’s Vision Statement. You can always link it to the longer version in case someone needs to see it.

You might think it’s impossible to come up with a Vision Statement that is only a few words, but it’s not. Taking the time to distill your Vision Statement to a short, inspiring, and memorable phrase might take some thinking, but it will serve your organization and, most especially, your promotions well.

Mission: The Game Plan

A company Mission Statement describes how a company intends to achieve its Vision. Once again, keep it short, no more than a simple phrase. Everyone should be able to remember and repeat your mission. If it’s a catchy little phrase you have a good chance that it will be memorable.

The Mission Statement for our pet food store might go something like

To provide flavorful and nutritious pet food at the lowest possible price

Having a clear Mission Statement is a reminder to your staff of how the details of the team’s daily activities fit into the big picture. A concise, usable Mission Statement contributes to morale. Having a mission confers a sense of meaning and purpose. Employees benefit from feeling like they’re a part of a mission and understanding how their work fits into that mission.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

The connection between a company Vision and company Mission is this: A Vision states where you are going, and a Mission states how you are going to get there. How is our pet food company going to become the United States’ leading pet food brand? By giving consumers flavorful and nutritious options at the lowest price possible.

While the company Vision and Mission are two distinct facets, they do share in that they should both be:

· As short and simple as possible

· Easily memorized and, if possible, even catchy

· Held constant for the organization in general as well as for every product and promotion

What Does This Mean for Marketing?

Having a clear Vision Statement and Mission Statement will help remind your teams about what they are working toward and provide them with the direction to craft relevant, consistent promotions. Every new promotion or revision to the company’s marketing strategies should begin with a review of these two foundational pillars of the company to provide focus and purpose.

As the marketing team creates promotions, make sure they are continually referring back to the company’s Vision and Mission and evaluate how their work aligns with each. Have them next to you whenever you are creating a promotion to constantly remind you of who your company is and what its goals are. You might find that it’s helpful to print out a physical copy of each and keep them at your desk for quick reference.

Because of the creative nature of marketing promotions, it’s easy to get out of alignment. But, if you look to your company Statements to evaluate promotions before they go out, it’s just as easy to make adjustments and get them back on track. None of your marketing communications should be out of line with your company’s Vision and Mission Statements. They should support them.