Defining Purpose Drives High Quality Content Marketing

Does Purpose Really Matter?

It matters to customers - which matters to your bottom line.

In research conducted by growth consultancy Kantar, interviews with 600 CMOs and 15,000 consumers worldwide revealed that “purposeful positioning” was a key driver of marketing success, behind only “big insights” and “total experience.”

Another key piece of research in 2018 by communications strategists Cone/Porter Novelli demonstrated the idea of purpose as much more powerful than an emotive buzzword. Key findings from respondents include:

• 77% feel a stronger emotional connection to purpose-driven companies over traditional companies
• 66% would switch from a product they typically buy, to a new product from a purpose-driven company
• 68% are more willing to share content with their social networks over that of traditional companies

It also matters to your employees, present and potential.

Growing companies need great talent, and in an increasingly-digital world, great talent has a lot of options. They can work for any company, any where. They’ve come to expect remote working, great initiatives and even equity options.

Imbibing your content and communications with your unique purpose, and showing the courage and vision to do so, gives you an edge that can’t be easily replicated by competitors for the same skills.

Purpose-Driven Marketing as a Brand Differential

This unique purpose acts as a powerful differentiator in what can be crowded and noisy markets.

Outdoor apparel retailer Patagonia is a highly visible global example. From taking the bold and unusual step of endorsing political candidates and publicly roasting Donald Trump to its ‘Don’t buy this jacket’ campaign that urged customers to buy only what they need, Patagonia is confident and committed to purpose as a key business driver - and it’s working.

Placed for the first time ever in this year’s annual Most Innovative Tech Brands survey conducted by Brand Keys, Patagonia was ranked number one in the category consumers felt most inspired innovation. That’s a powerful result from Patagonia’s courageous stance on purpose-driven marketing.

Defining Purpose and Quality Content Creation

How do you communicate your commitment to purpose? With meaningful, high quality content.

We’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating - the goal is not to create content for vague, egotistical or arbitrary reasons. The goal is to create high-value content that elevates your brand and can be repurposed in multiple ways.

Great content types to convey purpose could include:

• Long form articles, for publication on your website and social media channels
• Interviews with your senior stakeholders
• Original research backing up your proposition
• Compelling case studies or use cases
• Testimonial pieces from customers

This will give you not just content, but high quality content - the type that will help develop trust with your customers, rise above your competitors and be viewed favourably by search engines.

The internet is full of content, and Google is continually releasing new updates to ranking protocols to favour content that is helpful and relevant, and sift low from high quality content.

Google’s E-A-T guidelines are used when it is crawling online content, favouring and ranking sites and pages that are determined to possess:

Expertise
Authority
Trustworthiness

(You can delve deeper into EAT principles here).