Purpose-driven marketing is arguably more important than ever before, according to the 2025 Higher Impact report on purpose-driven brands. Their survey found that 67% of respondents make it a point to support brands that donate money or supplies to causes that are important to them, and 87% of respondents said that more brands should do their part in helping the world. If you’re a purpose-driven brand, chances are you agree with them and are making efforts to do just that.
We’re living in truly interesting times, if you haven’t noticed. Technology and society are changing all around us, and people (both as individuals and consumers) are making changes and taking action accordingly.
In this era, we believe there’s a real opportunity for purpose-driven brands to get their purpose out to people more effectively than ever before. Why? Because, right now, more people than ever before actually care.
With these tips, we hope we can help our purpose-driven clients (and you!) craft a content strategy that will more efficiently and impactfully reach this growing pool of conscious consumers. The great work you’re doing deserves to get noticed by the right people.
Get Your Purpose in Writing
You can’t create a content strategy based on your purpose if you don’t have a consistent purpose statement to refer back to. So if your purpose-driven brand and its team can’t clearly articulate what the purpose is, it’s time to reflect and get something concrete written down.
We highly recommend dividing your purpose into a clear mission statement, a vision statement for your future and how you’ll get there, and core values that drive your business forward. Once your purpose is in writing, anyone on the team can refer back to it when deciding if a content decision aligns with the brand and its intentions.
If you’re not sure what these kinds of purpose statements look like in practice, you can see how we’ve written about Mane Impact’s purpose on our About page here.
Conduct Team-Wide Brainstorming Sessions
Your team is one of your greatest resources when it comes to developing a purpose-driven content strategy. After all, they probably found your organization and you probably hired them because they care about the cause(s) you represent. Many of them will have unique ideas and perspectives about how to get your purpose out into the world in the most effective ways.
When you decide to conduct this type of brainstorming session, come in with a preplanned agenda and the right people at the table. It really doesn’t matter if this meeting happens in person or virtually, as long as you are able to discuss and visualize what purpose-driven content means for your organization.
You can use this time to get clear on your purpose, to solidify who your target audience is, and to plan future content around these core concepts. Brainstorming meetings also offer a great opportunity to review the good and bad of previous content quality, the good and bad of previous content performance, and what similar brands are doing that you can learn from.
Get to Know Your Audience and Their Values
Whether you already have a well-established audience or you’re building one right now, you likely have an idea of the target audience and persona you’re trying to reach. Spend some time really digging into who your ideal audience member is, asking questions like these:
- What do they care about?
- When, where, and how do they spend their money?
- When, where, and how do they spend their time, especially online?
- Based on their background, what type of language and content format is most likely to resonate with them?
Once you’ve answered these questions and more, create an archetypal persona and write about them in your style guide. You and your team will be able to look back at this information to make sure that your content is likely to resonate with this type of person.
Create a Style Guide That Balances Purpose With Professionalism
Your style guide should tell all relevant stakeholders in your organization what the brand sounds like and how they can maintain that tone and feel across platforms and formats. Because you’re running a purpose-driven company, this guide shouldn’t just focus on design and linguistic elements that are “buzzy” or trendy. Thought needs to go into how your brand can best communicate its purpose to your core audience.
The guide can and should include things like:
- A detailed description of your ideal buyer persona/target audience and what they care about.
- A brand personality description that explains how your voice/tone sounds and how it might look a little different, depending on which platform you are creating content for.
- Words to use and words to avoid when writing company content.
- A mission, vision, and values statement, with examples of how you can translate that purpose into user-friendly content.
- A value proposition statement that really leans into your purpose (not just how your company makes money). This can and should be translated into an elevator pitch.
- Marketing-specific guidelines, including rules for logos, brand colors, typography, email signatures, hashtags, etc.
- Dos and don’ts, with example scenarios and messaging content for each.
Develop Thoughtful Content Pillars
Especially when you’re creating long-form content like blogs and videos, content pillars are a great way to make sure you’re staying on topic, on brand, and on purpose. Purpose-driven brands should create pillars based on their core purpose and any nested purposes that matter to them.
One purpose-driven brand that does this really well is King Arthur Baking Company. On the Impact tab of their website, you can clearly see that their blogs, reports, and other long-form content are divided into four primary content pillars: Employee Ownership, Grains For Good, For Goodness Bakes, and Community Giving. Each of these pillars align with their overall purpose and make it easier for their content marketing team to 1) Write relevant yet diverse content and 2) Organize content in a way that is more accessible to their audience.
Measure Your Results Against Predetermined Goals
Don’t just stick to traditional marketing goals, like achieving a certain quantity of engagement and likes. As a purpose-driven organization, you should think about how many people are reached with different content types (especially educational and advocacy content), review where people are clicking and spending their time on your website and newsletters, and do qualitative reviews of audience sentiment, especially through online comments and DMs.
Every purpose-driven company’s goals will be a little different, but all of them share one common goal: Get your purpose out to the right people in effective ways. Selecting metrics that include both traditional marketing KPIs and these more subjective measurements will help you evaluate how well you’re doing against this primary overarching goal. Once you’ve identified your most important metrics, measure your performance against those KPIs regularly, and make changes to your content strategy based on those results.
Make a Point of Writing About Your Impact Regularly
This is where purpose-driven content strategy differs most dramatically from other corporate marketing and content strategies. Because you’re operating with a clear and important purpose in mind, you should be writing about it often. Your audience wants and needs to hear about what you’re doing and why it matters!
Whenever possible, include data that proves the success of your purpose-driven efforts. Talk about the third-party partners and customers who you’ve helped. Share testimonials and case studies that illustrate impact. Become a force in your local community and beyond for education, advocacy, and more. Photos, videos, and written content about these impactful efforts go a long way to reassuring your customers that you’re putting your money and resources where your mouth is. Even better for proof: Consider collecting data for and putting out annual reports that show the impact you’re making. If you’re interested in getting started with this type of reporting, whether you’re operating a nonprofit or a for-profit business, Mane Impact can help you get started.
More on this topic: Content Marketing for Social Impact
Conclusion: Make Content Marketing a Core Part of Your Purpose
The right content marketing strategy is a great way to communicate your purpose to people who care but wouldn't otherwise find out about or engage with you. At Mane Impact, we are passionate about helping brands like you craft a content marketing strategy that is data-driven and savvy so you'll reach these people, all while never losing sight of the mission that drives it all.