About Purpose is about your purpose.
Aim: Identify and articulate your purpose.
Arm: Shape yourself around your purpose.
Act: Achieve your purpose.
Programs:
About Purpose,
YOUR Purpose
Now announcing a radical new way for you to afford quality consulting services. Read this press release.
Bare Naked Marketing 
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Bob Ryan, About Purpose, Inc. ©2010
I admit it. We at About Purpose are biased towards – well, purpose. We believe that the simplest and most effective way to go about anything is to articulate your purpose, shape your activities around it, and achieve it.
So, imagine my chagrin when the members of one our TAB boards (The Alternative Board®) confronted me with allowing the board to work him over for the zillionth time about marketing without realizing that we'd missed the real purpose of both his business and, therefore, his marketing effort! (For that I offer my humble apologies, and note once again the value of a board of trusted peers where these kinds of discussions can take place without taking offense.) We had been pushing him on the accoutrements of marketing while not realizing they would not accomplish his purpose.
So, it's time to simplify and clarify the idea of marketing. When it's all said and done, what is marketing? When all the trappings that get attached to marketing are stripped away, what is the naked truth? Stripped to its essentials, marketing is relationship building with a purpose. It's communicating who we really are, beneath all the glitz, the branding, the advertising, the features and the benefits the websites and the brochures. Bare-naked marketing is entering into and maintaining authentic, reliable relationships with customers, employees, vendors and any other stakeholders.
And relationships have purposes. They benefit the participants in some way. The purpose of any specific, relationship defines the type, activities and intensity of that relationship. The extent to which marketing is successful is the extent to which you can define your purpose. The activities of marketing then flow out of that purpose. Here's a sample of what this means.
If your overall purpose is to increase revenues, drill down and refine that. Do you want to increase revenues from current or new customers? From your current niche or from a different market? From non-users of the product or from those who buy from your competitor? From your neighbors or from a different catchment area? From a particular product or service or from the whole range of your offerings?
Do you see how the answers to each one of these questions might define a different type and intensity of relationship? Each will define a different approach to your communications, collateral materials, length and depth of interaction, and required skill sets among your own employees or contractors.
Our board member sells a commodity service that is delivered through skilled technicians. As we brainstormed, he helped us realize that his purpose is twofold – up selling current customers for more services, and capturing under-served or poorly served customers from his competitors. Well-crafted tag lines and a robust website will not help him accomplish that purpose.
So, get naked. Articulate your marketing purpose. Shape your activities around it. And get it done.
Note: Do you want that kind of relationship with peers? One in which there is strong give and take in mutual respect and accountability?E-mail or call 612-965-2253 about joining The Alternative Board and get the benefits you can only get from other business owners who make a commitment to excellence.