New Rule: Watch me make the world a better place and admire my Soul!
Old Rule: Watch me make tons of money and admire my Might!
Word-of-Mouth marketing is widely known as the ultimate, most effective and least expensive form of marketing there is.
To take advantage of word-of-mouth marketing or “WOM”, a business needs to start with three ingredients. One, you need a compelling, honest, emotional story. Two, your business needs a meaningful purpose (to you) other than making money. Three, listen to your customers, partner with them, co-develop with them and help them to get what they want and what their customers customer wants.
Today, especially after the financial fallout of 2000 and in addition to the growing awareness of issues like global warming, broad spectrum pollution, globalization and general cynicism directed towards big business and governments, customers do not care how much money you need to make in order to pay your bills or to keep your investors and Wall Street happy. Customers just don’t care.
As a result, several enlightened and progressive companies have realized this and are communicating to their customers in genuine, honest and emotional ways, the reasons why their companies exist today and the value they desire to offer the world.
The purpose of a business is not to make money. The purpose of a business is to allow an individual or a group to use their passion and talent to contribute to society and ultimately to make the world a better place (on a large or small scale). Money comes second, and is used as a medium of fair exchange for the value you offer. Thus, money allows you to continue your mission of adding value and is used as a gauge or measuring stick to figure out how successful or unsuccessful you are at effectively adding value to your customers (in the form of financial statements, etc).
The Soul Purpose of your organization
How do you figure out what the ultimate purpose of your company is, other than making money? Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great” offers these three questions as a tool to help you to figure out what your purpose is, other than making money. Answer these three questions:
- What are you naturally and genuinely passionate about (other than making money)?
- What can you naturally be the best in the world at?
- What’s the best way to get the highest, most fair exchange for the value you add?
Use short sentences with plain and simple language to respond to these questions.
When you’ve answered these three questions, answer this one:
- Will the answers to question 1 and 2 above, be valid 300 years into the future, when today’s technology will be obsolete?
If the answer is “no”, then you haven’t gotten down to the level of pure, human emotion, so try again and dig deeper.
Once you’ve identified your “mission” or “ultimate purpose”, you should use simple language and one short sentence to capture it. This ensures that it will be easy to:
- Understand
- Repeat to others
- Remember
Your customers don’t care about you, they only care about what you can do for them, so help them to understand what that something you can do for them is and why you’re so excited or passionate about it.
If you focus on your passion, the commonality of all Human Beings and your customers, the money will come, just as sure as the day follows the night.
Copyright 2006 Christopher A. Gayle & Capital Genesis LLC ©. All Rights Reserved.
