I wonder how often business owners ask themselves this fundamental question. And I wonder how often they answer it in a way that actually (and honestly) drives their decisions relative to how they build and market their companies, as well as develop their products and services.
Sometimes, the relentless drive toward increasing sales and capturing market share becomes a business owner’s sole master – fed by a well-oiled “marketing machine” that can be blind to truly understanding the larger ecosystem in which the company exists. Over the years, we have seen companies that are so obsessed with short-term growth and marketplace dominance that they lose sight of their true “why,” and of how they need to evolve within an ever-changing world.
As companies
mature, it is critical to take “purposeful pauses” every now and then in order to be sure you understand if your initial “purpose for being” still rings true.
And if so, how do you further enhance it, keep it relevant, and communicate what is most meaningful about it within an ever-evolving marketplace? And if not, then what critical and timely decisions do you need to make in order to best realign with your current and future customer base? You may need to do some deep-dive research, not only within and about your own industry, but also apply that research in a broader “world-view” way.
In other words, it can be very productive to look at how the outside world around you is changing as a whole and to go beyond just focusing on your current business situation and on today’s economic drivers and successes. Key questions to ask yourself range from what the current marketplace needs that your company can logically and competently deliver to how you might need to reconfigure your staffing model in order to best meet those evolving and futuristic changes.
Ask yourself the truly tough questions, and don’t be afraid to hear and appropriately act on the answers. Marketing works best when it is executed within a carefully studied and honestly evaluated context and with an eye on the future, beyond the immediate job of serving your current customer needs.
Cathy Ackermann is founder of Ackermann Marketing & PR, now a part of Designsensory.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Do you know why your company exists? | Cathy Ackermann
