Every business has a mission statement. It is something that’s decided and written when the company is started. Most businesses like to document their mission statement. But even if they don’t, it is something that the major stakeholders have in their mind and have agreed upon before they start the business venture.
A mission statement helps a business to be steered in the right direction. Without a proper vision and mission, a business wouldn’t be able to allocate its budget and other resources efficiently.
When entrepreneurs begin to commercialize their business idea, they often forget to formulate a formal mission statement in their excitement to implement their plan, only to get in trouble at a later stage. Creating your vision and mission early on helps you stay focused on your actual objectives.
We will get into the details of the importance of writing a business mission statement soon. But before that, let’s clearly define what a mission statement for business is.
What is a Mission Statement?
A mission statement describes a company’s existence in a single sentence or a short paragraph. It defines the line of business the company is in and its purpose in the industry. It also explains what differentiates the company from its competitors.
Company mission statements provide inspiration and direction to the employees and set expectations for the customers and clients. They are often part of the business plan, a more detailed document discussing what and how the business plans to achieve over a specified period.
How to Write a Mission Statement?
The well-crafted and professionally written company mission statements follow these steps.
- Identify the company’s buyer persona, target audience, or potential customers.
- Think of the company’s unique selling proposition in a way that you can convey clearly.
- Prepare realistic and reasonable business goals.
- Make sure the business objectives are specific, feasible, and relevant to the industry trends.
- Create a business mission statement that’s short and to the point.
A good mission statement generally has three fundamental parts or components.
1. The Key Market
The key market refers to the niche or the specified audience that the business is targeting. Identifying this is the beginning of preparing a business mission statement. When your audience reads your mission statement, they should be drawn to your products or services. If you can maintain their attention, the point of your mission is fulfilled.
2. Your Contribution
The second component of a mission statement for business is the company’s contribution to the industry it is in. In other words, it describes the products or services that the organization plans to offer.
3. Distinction
This is the characteristic, quality, or other feature of the company’s products or services that differentiates it from all other players in the industry. You need to take out time and effort to come up with unique points about your brand. A good mission statement should convey to the audience why they should select your brand instead of others.
Making sure that your mission statement includes all these three components makes it worthwhile and effective. Moreover, a mission statement for a business should not be written by a single person in isolation. It should involve all the stakeholders. If the organization plans to hire many employees from the start, it can also get ideas from the first few employees hired to prepare its objectives and mission. Taking ideas and feedback from a team of experts only helps a business better understand where it stands. Crafting an accurate statement on your own is not easy. It is better to brainstorm different ideas and perspectives until you can develop a statement that you can use over the years.
Once the draft of your mission statement is ready, it is again a good idea to test it with your employees or sharing it externally with your business network. This way, you can get some constructive feedback. Your staff can be the best source of feedback in this case because they will be the ones to ‘walk the talk’ as you begin with your business operations.
9 Key Benefits of a Business Mission Statement
Here are nine key benefits of creating a mission statement for your business.
1. It Creates Identity
Your mission statement will help you create the core identity of your company. It will establish the basis for everyone involved in your business for making important decisions. It will contribute to your branding and align everyone to work towards the same goals. The identity of your organization will differentiate it from the other players in the industry. It is, therefore, important that you express this identity to your audience by posting your mission statement on your marketing platforms, such as on your brand website.
2. It Attracts Talent
When people are applying for jobs, they usually read the hiring company mission statements to decide if they would like to work there or not. When you have a powerful mission statement, it will attract the right people for the right job positions in your company. Talented and determined people would like to become a part of your organization when they see how clear and focused your business model, and goals are.
3. It Guides Culture
Company mission statements have a significant impact on the culture of the organization. If you create a strong mission statement, you’ll develop and maintain a positive work environment in your firm. Your company’s values, beliefs, and norms will be derived from your mission statement and reflected in your organization’s internal environment.
4. It Develops Purpose
Without a proper mission statement, a business can lose or forget its main purpose. A well-crafted mission statement keeps everyone in your company reminded and informed about why it exists. You can use this to persuade your audience and get your customers to continue buying from you. You can also use this to keep your employees motivated by making them feel that they are a critical part of the organization. When you convey your vision and mission clearly to your employees, they feel more engaged in your business operations because they know precisely why you are making them do the work that they’re doing.
5. It Improves Performance
A mission statement helps you improve your performance in two ways. Firstly, as mentioned above, your employees feel more motivated to do their work efficiently when they know why they are doing it. Secondly, it keeps everyone focused on the business objectives, which in turn minimizes wastage of resources.
6. It Builds a Community
When everyone is working towards the same goals and objectives, they like to work as a team. This helps you build internal and external communities that support your business. Your internal community would be your employees teamed up together and working towards your goals with full determination. The external community would be your audience and prospective clients or customers, who will be more willing to prefer you over other brands as they can see how honest, open, and focused you are in what you do.
7. It Allows Envisioning the Future
When you are more guided as to what you want to achieve, you can easily envision your business’s future. Your mission statement can help you derive timed goals, which you struggle hard to achieve to maintain your business reputation.
8. It Aligns Behavior
Using a strong mission statement for describing your brand and products clarifies to everyone what your business is about. This, in turn, helps align the behaviors of your internal staff and your external stakeholders or partners.
9. It Encourages Critical Thinking
Company mission statements encourage the audience and internal staff to think critically. Your employees can realize what influence their actions and behavior will have on the organization. Your customers will see how much clarity and value you place on fulfilling their needs. In short, a mission statement provides a philosophy for your business that will apply to any situation it goes through.
Mission Statement Examples
Here are a few mission statement examples from companies that have built their website on Strikingly. The benefit of using Strikingly as your website builder is that it allows you to insert and edit any text at any time on your own without having to write a single line of code.
Many of our users mention their mission statement on the slider or main image at the top of their home page, while others write it on their ‘About Us’ page.
1. Heaven Shakes
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
2. Pretty Olive
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
3. Against the Grain
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
4. National Alliance on Mental Illness
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
5. Wondrous Film
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
If you create a website on Strikingly, you can key in your mission statement prominently at the top, right below your brand logo and menu bar. It will clarify to your audience what your business is about and help your internal staff remain focused on your primary objectives.
Having a website helps in maintaining a one-stop platform for giving out basic information about your business. If you would like to build a new website for your brand in just a few hours and at minimal cost, create your free account on Strikingly today and get started with keying in your website content.
