Envisioning The Destination And Route Map Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey

Your Organization's Vision and Mission

A recent, interesting experience had me thinking about a lesson we learnt at the beginning of our entrepreneurial journey - the importance of setting a vision and defining a mission. I believed that, by now, with the many thousand articles and infinite success stories of great vision and mission statements, these concepts were the unwritten rules for any entrepreneurial or established initiative. However, I was in for a shock when one of my clients in asked me to prepare even their vision and mission statements while we worked on their website content! 

Though we specialize in content writing for ecommerce and IT products companies and its sales enablement, this unsettling experience took me back to the basics as I revisited the purpose of defining the goals of an organization, and I share with you a few of my observations. I hope you find them useful.

Our first vision statement was probably our innocent childhood answers to the evergreen question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" The answers varied from the obvious to the ridiculous: "A doctor saving all the poor",  "A pilot travelling across the world in a day", "A cricketer winning the World Cup for my country", or "A superhero swooping down to save a child from a burning house and killing the villainous demon". With almost no training, we were able to successfully define a purpose and set a goal.  Yet, somewhere, in our hurry to grow up, we often ignore these self-taught lessons.

So let's take a quick walk across the basics.

Why have a vision and a mission?

Vision and mission are two essential elements of any entrepreneurial or personal initiative. They give you a sense of direction, set the purpose, and impart a meaning to your aspirations. They motivate you to overcome challenges and steer you through your entrepreneurial journey with focus. Without a vision and mission, you have no dream and you meander around your sea of opportunities with no purpose and disastrous consequences.

Many articles explain the purpose of a vision and mission. These can be referred to before you embark on your journey of defining these essential aspects of your initiative.

What are vision and mission?

A vision is your goal, providing your organization and you the intended destination, leading you into a future state where you visualize the perfect end to the journey. A vision is inspirational and a target worth aiming at. It's short and specific, but not too restrictive. It's simple and ambitious but not too unrealistic. A vision can be set for about a period of 5 to 10 years, after which the organization can set new goals and define a new vision. Yes, visions too can evolve with time.

A mission is all about the present tense - it's about how you can achieve your short-term goals to get to your vision, what the purpose of your work is and your differentiators, who your target audience is, and what immediate effect you desire to achieve from your work. A mission is a map for the entire organization - every single employee and customer is part of the mission. A mission must be easy to remember and imbibe - it must represent the values and approach of every employee of the organization. Many companies widely publish their mission but might keep their vision to themselves.

The net overflows with great examples of vision and mission statements.

How do we go about defining a vision and a mission?

1. Vision is the founding members' goal and purpose when they visualize the entrepreneurial journey. Hence, the vision, at least initially, needs a lot of reflection from the organization's leadership group.

2. The company's vision statement is also a reflection of their core values. So start with defining your core values.

3. Ask yourselves the following questions:

·         Why did you embark on this entrepreneurial journey?

·         Where do you want to see yourselves, say, 7 years from now?

·         What is the ultimate goal of your initiative?

·         What is the biggest change you intend bringing to the lives of the people who would be touched by your service?

·         What is the most desirable outcome of your entrepreneurial journey?

·         What is the biggest differentiator that will set you apart in your field of expertise?

The answer to these questions would lead you to your vision statement - a precise, crisp, challenging, inspiring, and realistic statement that will be the leading beacon for your organization. Of course you will be going through multiple draft and reconsideration stages before you finalize the vision statement - do not rush because this statement positions your presence in the field of your expertise.

1. Defining a mission requires the organization's effort. A mission statement relates to the present situation. It requires every member of the organization to identify with the statement and spend every effort in realizing the mission statement.

2. The mission statement should lead to the vision - there must be an integral connect between the two statements.

3. Ask the following questions:

·         What does your organization do?

·         For whom?

·         What is the most important service your organization provides?

·         How do you work - what are your best known for?

·         What makes you the best in your field of expertise?

·         What would your customers feel after they interact with you every time?

4. The answers to these questions will help you achieve a measurable mission statement. Here too, you will have to work on defining and refining multiple times - especially since it involves buy-in from your employees as well.

5. Ensure that your mission statement is understood and imbibed by every employee.

Now, at least some of the instructions for vision and mission statements do seem to overlap, doesn't it? So, let's try to clarify the concept of vision and mission through some examples:

 Maruti Suzuki

Vision:

To be a leader in the Indian automobile industry creating customer delight and shareholder wealth - a pride of India

Mission:

·         Modernization of the Indian automobile industry

·         Production of fuel-efficient vehicles to conserve scarce resources

·         Market penetration, market development

·         Networking and partnerships

·         Openness and learning

Google

Vision:

To provide access to the world’s information in one click

Mission:

To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful

 Uber

Vision:

Smarter transportation with fewer cars and greater access

Mission:

To connect people with reliable rides through the use of data and technology

Philips

Vision:

To make the world healthier and more sustainable through innovation. Our goal is to improve the lives of 3 billion people a year by 2025. We will be the best place to work for people who share our passion. Together we will deliver superior value for our customers and shareholders.

Mission:

Improving people's lives through meaningful innovation

Walmart

Vision:

To be the best retailer in the hearts and minds of consumers and employees

Mission:

Saving people money so they can live better

How can a content writer help you?

Well, we cannot step into your shoes to build from scratch - but we can definitely guide you craft the vision and mission statements. After you do your brainstorming, do come to us with your thoughts and we will work with you to derive the statements that represent your vision and mission.

So what are you waiting for? Take a step back from your routine work to define the vision and mission statements that best represent your dreams, aspirations, purpose, and differentiators. We'll help you fine tune these statements that will guide your organization to achieve all your ambitious goals.

Good Luck!

For more detail visit @ http://www.addkraft.com/

DON’T SELL YOUR SAAS PRODUCT - GIFT YOUR AUDIENCE A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE OF THEIR LIFETIME!

Gone are the days when Asian Paints sold just paints! Today they offer a wide range of user experiences for sale through their paints. Customers now choose the experience package they prefer – the shades and hues that match their personality, textures and combinations that support them emotionally in the various rooms of their home, and options to experience an online preview of how their painted homes would look like even before they make a decision. Yes, “user experience” has emerged the winner in the race to gain your buyers’ attention. Technology or product features and benefits are no longer attractive terms to SaaS or technology product marketers. Although a few IT folks tend to take marketing discussions to their technical world, as a marketer, my vote is always for user experience.

A common mistake many start-up IT product companies make is to go overboard trying to convince customers about just their product and the core technology, especially if members from IT team are part of the decision-making panel at the customer’s end. Many a time, such attempts fall flat, unless the new product is game- changing innovation. I present one of our recent experiences when we worked on technology marketing for a SaaS start-up company and were successful when we adopted the user experience strategy. You may appreciate and make a note of our conscious decision to avoid details about technology throughout this experience.

A year back, when we pitched for a SaaS project in the travel & logistics segment, we were using tough technical language and detailed specs – the result was a big flop. CIOs and IT leaders from the travel industry turned the sessions into long-winding sessions questioning the technology used and providing advices about alternate technology solutions based on their whims and fancies, but most of the prospective users chose to stay within their comfortable technology zones. We then decided that trying to sell product and technology would only lead to never-ending discussions. We chose an alternate approach.

Today, a year later, we tasted success with fantastic results on another project. Yes, we are just completing an exciting project for a start-up in the GCC region. The start- up provides a certain set of services and products with a unique concept to a target segment. It has both a b2b and b2c focus, targeting an entire population and a set of business buyers. The backbone of the project is a SaaS framework and its technology is wide encompassing with user-friendly services and apps. After 6 months of go-to-market with this project, as a marketer, I am happy to see positive feedback from the business owners and early adopters.

So what did we change, what lesson did we learn, what magic happened through the course of the year?

We made key changes in our product and service positioning and our marketing communications. We consciously avoided focusing our pitch on the advantages of SaaS or the product and service features. We stayed away from terminology jargons and IT/SaaS lingo, which confuse and create mistrust among the target audience.

We instead moved towards a customer-centric and user-persona-based content marketing. As content specialists, we prepared our content marketing briefs after studying our client’s service/product offering and the user/buyer persona. We prepared our content pitch focusing on user experience – how the experience would improve the users’ quality of life, what benefits would it bring to their lives, the convenience and time-saving features of the service, and how the users can feel pride by being part of the user group. In summary, our marketing content spoke about how this service/product would impact their lives positively and benefit the society.

The framework of the product and service pitch was hence built around end-user experience and positive influences, with just a few mentions of the product features. We realized that there are about 100 million ways of connecting with the buyers and gaining their trust, the buyers, instead of forcefully convincing them with just technology and product talk. We then designed the marketing strategy and UX/UI experience, moved on to go-to-market planning and narrowed down the final list of digital marketing techniques that helped immensely in conveying the client’s value proposition to the end users.

To our surprise, there was hardly any instance of long-drawn technology-relateddiscussions, counter-arguments, or suggestions that often kill an otherwise successful pitch. All the query arrows from the IT members were successfully broken by the much-appreciated imagery of the end-user experience, clear value proposition, and strong content writing that blended business strategy with user persona.

I must say here that content writing for technology marketing helped our customers (product owners) significantly. Nailing the final content plan was the central focus for the initial period, where the product management team, digital marketing team, support team, and leadership team were part of the go-to-market content framework evaluation and signoff. Content metrics were monitored with respect to content propagation at each stage – that is, awareness stage, product interest stage,desire-to-buy stage, and so on. Stage-appropriate content was created, published, and communicated to thousands of users, again channeled based on their persona, to deliver the desired results at each stage.

Result The customer

(SaaS product owner) almost immediately began to see positive results when the list of early adopters was surprisingly long. They were attracted by the influence the product would have on their daily life, and not by the Opex or Capex features. The marketing strategy and techniques used were cost effective

since not even one sales person was recruited to meet customers in person. The entire sales funnel was handled by digital processes, CRM strategy, and, yes, backend technology.

The customer is now moving on from the acquiring mode to the retaining mode. They are also expanding to neighboring countries and are known as a solid service provider rather than a technology company.

Role of strategic content writing in this success story

Our technology marketing to convince end users was through content marketing. Our content strategy was to deliver personalized content based on the buyers’ persona. Different personas were tracked through CRM and custom-fit content that conveyed the customer’s story and their value proposition were made available to end users. We created virtual user experiences, developed intrinsic value experiences from the designers of the products, built the content package, and shared them with potential buyers. Creating content strategy and content writing - was key - our technology content writers provided innovative content to engage the audience at every stage of buying cycle.

In summary, we never sold SaaS products and their technology advantages; we just marketed customer experience, and yes, answered our end consumer’s questions about how this product can enrich their lives. This strategy spelled success in our current initiative.

A retrospective note:

A few years back, an interesting advertisement for a car caught my attention. A sales person was shooting a barrage of pointers about all the features of a super luxurious car. At the end of this rather exhausting monolog, all that the buyer wanted to know was, “how much mileage would I get per liter?” The sales person stood stumped! It always pays to know what the buyer is looking for and provide just that experience – this will always establish an immediate connect with your buyer.

Author

Technology marketer at www.addkraft.com

Content Writing, Content Marketing USA, India – Addkraft

Addkraft content crafters make sure that your content marketing is unique, makes you stand out among your competitors and helps you achieve your marketing goals using a 360-degree approach.

For more detail visit @ http://www.addkraft.com/strategic-content-and-marketing/