Mission Driven Marketing

How Storytelling Inspires Action and Builds Your Business

All businesses tell a story about who they are and what they offer as soon as they go to market. The question is: What story are you telling? And more importantly, is this story worthwhile enough to move your consumers to action?

These are the kinds of questions we ponder most deeply with purpose-driven clients when working on their marketing strategies. Mission driven marketing is about so much more than getting people to buy your product or service. When you’re operating with a major mission in mind, the story you tell makes a huge difference in how people connect to your brand and then how they use that story to make a more far-reaching impact.

In this guide, we’re going to walk you through the concept of mission-driven storytelling in content marketing, explaining what it is and why it matters. From there, we’re going to offer our own tips to inspire action: These include examples of brands that are already doing missional storytelling well, as well as checklist tips and overarching strategies that can guide your storytelling journey toward actionable results.

Why Is Mission-Driven Marketing Important to Your Business?

Mission-driven marketing is important for many reasons, but at the core, impactful storytelling boils down to this: A good story connects you to your customer better than anything else can. If they understand and relate to your story, customers are far more likely to buy into what you’re selling and tell their like-minded friends to get on board as well. This is especially important for mission-driven businesses, where the story is one of your biggest selling points and value drivers.

Additionally, good storytelling is crucial to the purpose-driven organization because:

• It ensures you have a customer base that aligns with your values, making them more likely to be loyal return customers.
• It helps to attract the right employees who also align with your values.
• It puts your values front and center; people know what you’re about right away, which builds trust and credibility, both internally and externally.
• A storytelling approach makes your mission more digestible and understandable to a wide swath of people.
• Humanizing your brand through story helps more people connect than would otherwise feel a connection to your product(s) or service(s).
• Few companies do mission-driven storytelling well, so doing it right is a great way to differentiate yourself among your competitors.
• It drives real action and advocacy across your organization and its supporters.

Checklist: How to Turn Your Mission Into a Story People Remember

We’ll get into more details and direct strategies in the sections that follow, but for now, here’s an easy checklist to follow when moving your business in the direction of mission driven marketing that inspires action:

  Our brand story has a clear narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end, or a similarly easy-to-follow storyline.

  All storytelling across our brand assets uses accessible and compelling language.

Our “why” is clear and consistent.

Our story includes key points that directly connect to our target audience’s wants, needs, and goals.

Our mission is restated often, in different ways, in different formats, and in different places across our brand assets, including social media.

Humans and important causes are centered in our story.

Any visible partnerships clearly align with or otherwise complement our brand story and mission.

Our storytelling includes multimedia and/or multisensory experiences, like images, videos, podcasts, webinars, and testimonials.

Our storytelling approach speaks directly to the consumer, often pulling them in with CTAs or opportunities to get involved directly.

Our story isn’t overly polished; it makes sense and resonates with our audience, but we remain transparent and admit to past mistakes and faults where applicable.

Examples of Brands That Drive Real Action With Their Storytelling

These are some of the biggest brands out there that take mission-driven storytelling seriously. The results speak for themselves: Chances are, you’ve heard of one or two of these, and more importantly, they likely stick out to you as purpose-driven leaders right away. Here’s what we’ve noticed about what’s working for them:

Patagonia

Patagonia is perhaps the best-known and most capable brand when it comes to well-rounded missional storytelling. Their mission focuses on several related goals: taking responsibility for their impact, supporting grassroots activism, recycling products and gear, and more.

They have multiple storytelling and missional initiatives on their website, including the following:

• Footprint document: A detailed, visually appealing report with actual data that shows where Patagonia is thriving and where it is struggling to meet its goals since it “made Earth our only shareholder.”
• Patagonia Action Works: A portal that Patagonia uses to connect individuals with environmental and other grassroots organizations, based on their local region or preferred organizations.
• Worn Wear: A buy-and-trade program that allows customers to recycle and purchase already-worn products directly from the brand.
• Patagonia Provisions: A food program from Patagonia focused on responsibly sourced foods and gifts that align with the purpose and mission behind their existing brand.

Commitment Statement: A letter from Patagonia’s founder that tells both his story and the brand’s story, explaining why they’ve chosen a unique path toward making Earth the brand’s only shareholder.

Uncommon Goods

With the Uncommon Goods business model, consumers are encouraged to buy from local and independent craftspeople through an online shopping hub that makes it easy and affordable to access those goods. Uncommon Goods does a good job of telling not only their own story but the stories of each of these makers, further drawing buyers into a connection with the brand and what it stands for. Upon purchasing product(s), buyers then get a chance to enter the story from a missional standpoint, selecting one of Uncommon Goods’ chosen charities for part of their purchase revenue to go toward.

Ben & Jerry’s

Ben & Jerry’s has long been known for its support for a wide variety of social justice and larger causes outside of the ice cream business. They’ve stuck to these values over the years, leading them to find and retain a large collection of loyal followers. But how do they do it?

They are direct and clear about the causes they care about. For example, one of the first things that you see on their current website home page is information about the ACLU’s fight to protect First Amendment rights. With that information, they include a clear CTA that says “Sign the Pledge Now”; with very little text, they’ve already told a story about who they are and how you can become part of these causes that they care about.

Throughout their website and other brand content, Ben & Jerry’s does a fantastic job of elevating partners in key areas that their mission supports, particularly in the Activism and Issues We Care About sections of their website. So even if they’re not directly leading the advocacy work for their mission, they’re giving buyers clear opportunities, vetted partners, and resources to get involved. You can find many examples, but one of the best ones that shows how they are personally using their influence to help and how they are supporting their partners in this space is their Climate Justice content page.

Top Methods and Strategies for Telling Your Brand Story and Inspiring Action Through Mission Driven Marketing

Combine Data and Emotion in Your Storytelling Process

Start by noticing what messaging has worked well with your audience in the past, paying attention to real data like social media and other audience analytics. You may be surprised to find out which storytelling methods resonated most and generated the most action within your base. You can also confirm across your team which strategies will likely work best moving forward.

But don’t rely so heavily on data that you forget about the human emotion aspect of your story. If telling your story a certain way feels right to you and your employees, experiment with it and follow your instincts. You can also take into account any direct feedback you’ve received from supporters, whether that be from a survey you conducted, comments on social media, or in-person conversations. 

Through this process, you may find a new data point that performs really well because you’re paying attention to the values that got you started in the first place. When in doubt, find ways to combine data and emotion to tell a story that drives your audience to care about and get involved in your chosen causes. Too much of one or the other will not connect your audience to the mission as effectively.

Measure Your Impact Regularly

Speaking of data: Occasionally checking out how many likes you’re getting on social posts and the number of visits you’re getting to your website is only a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to measuring impact. You should be looking at engagement across all channels and assets on a regular basis, paying attention to everything from clicks to comments to reshares. 

This is especially important when looking at storytelling assets that include a CTA. Did you tell your story in such a way that it drove multiple people to follow through with that call to action? Do you have a way to measure how many people this CTA reached and how many people took next steps? Clickable CTA buttons and landing pages are both great resources for tracking and measuring how many audience members actually did something with the information you provided.

There are other creative ways to measure impact, as well. Consider pulling together focus groups, conducting customer surveys, and finding other ways to ask your audience about your brand and what they do or don’t like about it. This information will help you understand A) if people actually know who you are and what story you’re trying to tell, and B) if some part of your story isn’t currently clicking with the audience. With actual human feedback now in your back pocket, you can make meaningful changes to your storytelling strategy moving forward.

No matter how you do it, you can’t skip out on measuring impact. Measuring the impact of mission-based storytelling can be difficult, but it’s a crucial part of telling your story well and having the results to back it up.

Connect Before You Convince

If your story’s pitch to customers feels too sales-y or self-serving, they’re likely to be turned off from your brand, even with all of the good things you have to offer. That’s why it’s important to build a real human connection with them, even before they make a purchase. You can do this by responding to people’s comments and tagged posts on social media, writing newsletters and blogs that talk about your story and why you care about it, and finding other ways to tell snippets of your story throughout your brand assets. 

And never underestimate the power of strong inbound and outbound marketing techniques. Having well-planned marketing funnels is an effective way to ensure that audience members at all stages of the buyer’s journey are hearing from you on a regular basis in a way that is authentic and personalized. 

As part of the process of developing these funnels, also take the time to get to know your audience well. What do they care about that resonates with your brand and its story? What else do they care about? What would they consider the most important aspects of their identity? Thinking about these questions and applying them to the buyer personas that you create will help you build funnels that align with the people you’re contacting.

Be Authentically You

Completely mimicking other brands and their strategies isn’t likely to work for you. After all, every business, every team, and every overarching goal in purpose-driven businesses is unique. That’s why it’s important to get clear on who you are, who you serve, and what you want to accomplish before you put pen to paper for a mission-driven storytelling strategy. The leadership team is a great place to start when figuring out this identity, but you’ll want to talk to the rest of your team and existing customers as well to get a full picture of what you want to communicate about your brand.

Once you have a solid picture of your brand identity, it’s time to stick to it. You should always strive to sound like you. Customers will notice immediately if your brand’s tone takes a turn, so think about how you talk about your brand internally, and then find a way to translate that into a conversational and approachable tone for external storytelling. Authenticity is rewarded more than anything else in a mission-driven market.

Provide Abundant and Clear CTAs in Your Stories

If there’s a natural way to incorporate a CTA in the story you’re telling, you should consider doing just that. When you’re running a business with a big purpose, these CTAs can act as helpful guideposts to your customers, telling them what you care about and how they can get involved in the cause, too. Many people won’t take the time to read a full blog post or newsletter, but if there’s a clear CTA button or section, their eyes are more likely to be drawn to that.

When writing calls to action, it’s important to write clear, succinct phrases that point to truly actionable next steps. Some examples of effective mission driven CTAs include:

• Volunteer with us.
• Shop with purpose.
• Become a monthly partner.
• Contact your representative today.
• Make a difference with your Black Friday purchase here.
• Learn more about our partner’s mission.
• Help us build more wells in Ghana.
• Hear what your support means to our community.

You’ll notice there’s a wide range here. That’s because there is a wide range of purpose-driven businesses, brand tones that you might be going for, and story and substory placements that might make certain CTAs more appropriate than others. There is no one-size-fits-all CTA.

The important thing is this: Whether you’re posting part of your story to Instagram, writing a newsletter or blog post, or creating a page on your website to discuss your mission and company values, find creative and organic ways to include CTAs like the ones we’ve listed here. Your audience will feel empowered to take greater action, and as a result, they’ll get more involved in your brand’s causes.

Take Action With Your Storytelling Strategy Now

You’re probably already telling your story and reaching people with it, but a solid storytelling strategy is what can take your mission to the next level. At Mane Impact, we firmly believe that your story serves a purpose not only for profits but also for people and other causes you’re so passionate about. Our goal is to carve out enough time and thoughtful planning to develop a storytelling strategy that truly fits your mission, vision, and values that you want to express, even if you haven’t been able to fully articulate them before.

Interested in getting some additional support with your storytelling and mission driven marketing strategy? Contact Mane Impact today