5 mistakes to avoid when thinking about your purpose
Yesterday I learned a brilliant new phrase from a brilliant strategy book I’m reading at the moment – marketing myopia. As it says in the book,
“companies in the grip of marketing myopia are blinded by their product and are unable to see the larger purpose or market dynamics”.
And this means that these companies focus on all of the wrong things so they fail to meet the needs of their consumers as a result.
Here’s the thing- we ALL suffer from marketing myopia at some point. We get so caught up in the day to day of delivering our product/service/doing the day job that we forget why we do what we do and even how we do it differently.
That’s where your brand comes in. Specifically, your purpose. As I wrote last week, if you have a clear purpose it helps you focus and consistently deliver what you’re in the world to do. Versus just doing stuff.
Yet often people miss out this vital part of developing their brand framework. Or they find it the most challenging to develop.
So here are 5 common mistakes to avoid when developing your purpose:
- Dismissing purpose as a buzzword (so you don’t take seriously or understand why you need it)
- Trying to find something everyone is happy with (so you end up with something that is either generic or diluted)
- Not looking to the outside world (so you fail to consider why the world needs what you do)
- Confusing purpose and vision (so you only look at the future aspiration without thinking about what it means now)
- Thinking the job is done once it’s written (so you never act on it).
The good news is that if you avoid these mistakes, you’ll be able to articulate your purpose in an authentic and compelling way. You can then use your purpose to make the decisions needed to drive your business. Which means that not only will you avoid marketing myopia but by consistently living up to your purpose, you’ll ultimately win – whatever this means for you.
