One of the most impactful ways a brand can positively impact the world outside its product and service scope is to collaborate with meaningful causes. Mission-driven businesses remind consumers that companies have an obligation to support social good initiatives. The company simultaneously helps the mission they support by spreading the word about its work, but they also strengthen its brand identity by connecting more with its clientele.

Aligning Your Vision With a Mission

How do companies decide what causes to support? There are varied paths to unraveling how your business should contribute to your community or the planet for the better. But, the most important way to execute this is by understanding your audience and your workers.

The mission garners a more authentic reception from them if the cause aligns closely with the brand’s objective. For example, if a brand makes kitchen appliances, it makes sense to support soup kitchens because it directly correlates with the industry.

Businesses benefit more by looking close to home when choosing a mission because customers want to see you care deeply about the industry that gave you success. It perpetuates a mentality that you not only want to thrive financially in the sector, but you want to change it for the better. Aligning with an unrelated or even contradictory mission could confuse customer bases, leading to a loss in business or inconsistent press on social networks from clientele.

A tech company can support a charity planting trees, but what would matter more is reducing e-waste in underdeveloped countries — this carries more weight, and customers perceive a stronger sense of responsibility. Actions speak, and organizations will bond customers with a brand identity better than a product or service.

The next way is to create a vision statement and make every subsequent decision about your company based on those values — including what mission to support. Vision statements remind companies who may have lost their guiding purpose in trying to stay in the black. Companies should make their mission statements:

• Clear
• Concise
• Personal
• Applicable
• Attainable

Changing Your Brand

Knowing supporting a mission will strengthen a brand identity and doing the work are two different concepts. Define how the brand will shift to refocus on that value, because it can take a lot of forms.

Start Internally

Regardless of the brand value — sustainability, equality or innovation in your sector — everyone on the team has to embrace it for the brand message to come across. Meet with your employee base to establish a positive buy-in. Then, review the priorities to clearly outline how the company intends to participate in the mission. The clarity will help staff become more dedicated to the cause by seeing tangible results.

Allocate Resources Appropriately

Helping a cause isn’t always strictly financial — though that can be a big part. Businesses will probably need to rework budgets to consider their mission. Though supporting the cause will take up a larger slice of the company pie than desired, supporting causes increases business revenue — the ROI is higher, so make it a priority. Businesses can also offer non-monetary donations, such as helping promote a seasonal campaign or lending hands for a weekend volunteer project.

Strategize With Marketing Teams

Social media is one of the company’s most significant assets for publicizing its mission commitment. Sponsoring a mission’s event and posting about it on social channels alongside regular content will remind consumers of your dedication.

Brand identity increases the more consumers associate you with more than what you sell. If a personality behind the company name has goals that affect the public, it makes them feel like their patronage participates in that goal.

Supporting the Causes

Once a company defines its values and begins implementing them throughout its organization, it can determine how to best support its chosen causes in the field. Using the vision statement as a touchpoint will hone company branding, creating consistency in marketing content and internal communications.

It makes it easier for customers to have strong, positive reception when there are easily identifiable characteristics and goals from early on in the company’s career.

Supporting the cause can take various forms, with ranging degrees of commitment. However, there should be variety to ensure customers understand an organization isn’t only participating in what is easy. Here are some ideas for how to support causes that simultaneously increase brand awareness:

• Ask the organizations what they need help with the most
• Offer employees to mentor, tutor or speak at relevant events and conferences in your area of expertise
• Incorporate the mission in marketing and PR campaigns
• Inquire about participating in board meetings
• Make donations, financially or otherwise
• Initiate partnerships with other related businesses or nonprofits

Companies can take all of this to form a corporate social responsibility plan. Supporting a mission is one step in developing a more holistic social good strategy that could be more encompassing and impactful on the chosen goal. Outlining how the business will continue to commit to the mission can lead to posting research and impact reports on its website to inform consumers of the brand’s dedication.

Plus, it can lead to certifications — like how green businesses can be certified B Corporations — and other recognition. This good publicity will deepen that positive association with the brand name.

Mission-Driven Business Solidifies Brand Identity

Becoming a mission-driven business will increase brand identity by staying close to your customers and creating more consistent marketing strategies. Constantly returning to that mission will simplify decision-making and remind a company of its priorities if it gets lost among obstacles or increased demand. No setback is too great if a company always reverts to the mission, reminding itself why the brand developed into what it is today.

Eleanor Hecks is the editor of 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.