Why purpose matters to marketing: growth, revenue, and profit with Mack Fogelson, CEO of Genuinely

Does your purpose currently impact your marketing, revenue
growth, and profit? If not, it should.


Here’s why:


According to research curated by Mack Fogelson, consider the
following:


73% of people care about the company, not just the product,
when making a purchase. (BBMG)

50% of purchases are made because of word-of-mouth (Brains on
Fire)

85% of purpose-led companies showed positive growth (Harvard
Business Review/EY)



In sum, purpose matters because it impacts your growth, revenue,
and profit.


That’s why I interviewed Mack Fogelson (@mackfogelson), the CEO
of Genuinely, a consulting and training company. I met Mack
through a mutual friend, and we’ve developed a friendship too.
I’ve learned a lot about marketing with purpose and why it’s
important to revenue growth and profit, and I’m excited to share
her thinking with you. You’ll also learn four steps to articulate
your purpose.


Author’s Note: The transcript was edited for
publication.
Mack, can you tell us a little bit more about your
background?

Way long ago, I was a teacher and did that for a while. Then over
the last fourteen years, I’ve been in the marketing space, so
everything from building and coding websites to optimizing with
search engine optimization and SEM to building community and
brands and the full, integrated approach to marketing a company.


All of those layers have brought us to where we are now,
primarily teaching companies how to use these concepts,
frameworks, and the processes that we’ve tested and know really
work to grow their companies. We do this to ultimately help
businesses in the digital age compete, contend, and build really
great, meaningful, and sustainable businesses.
What inspired you to focus on purpose and humanize
marketing?

Around the time I started having my family, I just realized that
if I was taking that time away from my kids, I really needed to
make it count. I’ve built a business around something significant
to me and for my employees. We started by helping companies be
better. I started getting into the conversation about community
many years back. When many marketers were talking about how to
rank #1 in Google, I talked a lot about the benefit of the
community and businesses building a community to help their
companies. What I didn’t realize at the time, but unfolded many
years later, was that purpose was really at the heart of all of
that: helping companies understand how you bring people together
through purpose and drive the organization’s growth.
You said that it’s not about what you spend on
marketing; it’s the purpose that helps you get focused. Why is
that?

Because there is so much that has changed, the world isn’t the
same. Businesses aren’t the same, and the way the business
community works. Customers are not the same. So, we cannot expect
marketing to be the same. Mainly we’re looking at consumers now.
We expect authentic and authentic and human experiences. And not
only that, but employees are looking for more meaning in their
work just like I was many years ago.


It really comes down to the fact that it’s not about what your
company sells or solves anymore, and certainly, you need to be
incredibly stellar at what you sell and what you make, but it’s
about who your business is. And really, it’s about the three
components of purpose, people, and promise, and having those
pieces work together for any given company so that they can reap
all the benefits that purpose brings, like, customer acquisition
and retention, customer connection, and employee satisfaction.
How can we overcome this disconnect and better connect
with our customers?

Most companies are pushing their product and their services
rather than really leading from what their business is here to do
and bridging that gap between the purpose of the company and the
people in line with that. So, when the conversation is about the
product, there isn’t much of a conversation.


Let’s say we’re just talking about Dove. They sell soap. But
ultimately, they aim to help women feel good about their bodies.
So, it’s the intersection of those things (selling soap and
helping women feel good about their bodies); the cultural
relevancy of attacking an issue like women’s self-image and body
image and wanting actually to help solve that problem in our
world is what has given Dove such incredible growth in their
organization.


When the conversation shifts from being about the product to
being about the purpose, it becomes something else that drives
growth because it’s the word of mouth that companies are looking
for. And that doesn’t come through talking about a product; it
originates from the connection they have with the shared values
and wanting to do something bigger. Not to say that they don’t
generate significant profits from this path; it’s just a
different way to it.
You’ve talked about why building an authentic and human
company is necessary. So why should those in B2B marketing care
about this?

The purpose is becoming more of a trendy topic; you see it
everywhere, and I think that’s the biggest disconnect. Companies
think that, on the outside, if the market with purpose, they’re
good; they’re safe. And maybe many companies are doing that. But
if then the experience with your business is not really all the
way to the core, then that’s where you’re going to have
significant problems (think about recent events with companies
like Uber, United, and Pepsi’s commercial fail).


Ultimately, in the day-to-day, companies want to know how do we
achieve growth and how we continue to acquire customers? How do
we keep our customers? When your business is not looking at
building a deeper connection with that customer (which comes from
purpose and empathy, as we’ve talked about), there is no
connection. When you have no connection, you have no customers.


It’s really in applying the purpose to the organization’s
day-to-day and understanding that it’s not just some visionary
thing. Still, it’s about identifying your purpose and then making
it relevant to your customers. It’s helping your teams understand
what purpose is or isn’t. Many companies think it’s a PR approach
or it’s a tagline, or it’s a mission or value statement. And
that’s all great, but when it comes down to it, the purpose is
really what does that mean to your customer who needs your
product and wants to connect more deeply with your company?


Think about Patagonia: they’re selling a stellar product, but
they’re also going deeper to say, “We are going to pioneer
technology to make better clothing. And we’re going to reduce the
impact of that on the environment. Then we’re going to give this
technology to our competitors because if they have it, then we’re
making a larger impact altogether.”


Companies need a purpose. Because they need to keep their
employees, they need a purpose to keep their customers, and
ultimately there’s something bigger than their businesses are
here to do, and it’s not an altruistic path. It’s a road to
profit. It’s just, again, a different way of getting there.
Does empathy play a role in understanding your purpose
and connecting with customers?

Definitely, one of the biggest things that we see is that
companies lack the customer connection and, apparently, the
connection to their purpose and any type of authentic or personal
or empathetic connection to their customer.  Because they’re
using data to make decisions (which they have a copious amount
of), some companies don’t know what to do with it anymore.
Success is not just analyzing your customer data or your audience
data, or the psychographic data you get.


Success is not just analyzing your customer data or your audience
data, or the psychographic data you get on your customers. It’s
participating in one-to-one interviews to understand their
behavior truly and, more accurately, knowing what they’re
thinking and feeling. Because when you get that digital data
about your customer, it gives you some very quantitative
benchmarks about the profile of these people, but it doesn’t tell
you what they’re afraid of; it doesn’t say what they’re
struggling with right now at this point in their lives.


Connecting with your customers on that one-to-one basis obviously
opens up a huge conversation for understanding and empathizing
with where they’re coming from. But then, by understanding that
thinking and feeling, you can then shape your entire content
strategy based on removing those roadblocks. And that is
something I think ties into many things, in addition to purpose
and empathy.


Brian: That’s where we were going to go next. I
often talk to marketers who really don’t get to spend face time
with the customers they’re looking to influence or reach outside
their companies. The takeaway here is that marketers need to
spend more time connecting with clients, not just through their
channel of their sales team, but actually having these
conversations and spending time practicing and using their
empathy to do just that.
Technology is getting in the way of customer connection.

Mack: You and I talk about this a lot with
technology, and how everybody thinks that technology is a magic
pill; they believe that there must be a tool or piece of
technology or software that is going to help them build their
customer base faster. The fact of the matter is that technology
is part of the root of the problem. Companies need a purpose;
they need empathy because they’re trying to solve these much
deeper connection issues with their customers by using technology
instead of speaking with their clients. Tools and technology
can’t help you do that.


So, I think the companies that understand how to use technology
wisely need to be able to use these tools at a certain level,
even to do a bunch of the heavy lifting and dirty work that we
couldn’t take part in many years ago. But success is in taking
that data and pairing it with the one-to-one participation in the
flesh with these people to understand who they are, what they
really need, and help them get their roadblocks removed.


Brian: I agree with you.  The very thing
that’s supposed to help us (this technology) connect with our
customers more efficiently and effectively is getting in the way
of doing that. And so, to counteract that, or the counterpoint,
is humanizing and putting more energy into that human connection
so that when we do apply the technology, we’re using it well and
in a way that can help facilitate conversations and connections
that we’ve already established.
Can you share any other tips or examples that our
listeners can use to articulate their purpose? 

Mack: Four steps would really help them
understand “how do we even approach this conversation?” There are
so many things that must be in line: strategy, leadership, and
obviously, your product or service. But purpose greatly enhances
the opportunity for success, especially in the digital age,
especially regarding competitive advantages.


So know, if you’re going to go down this road, that you don’t
have to start all over, you don’t have to overhaul your entire
organization. In fact, many companies we work with just need an
outside perspective to help them understand their systems and
processes that they use to market and sell; they need a little
tweaking here and there and a reminder of “Hey, at this place is
when you integrate purpose. At this place is when you really
bring it back to the goals of the organization, wrapped with
purpose.” Or, “You need to get to the customer in this place a
little bit earlier.”
Four Steps to Articulate Your purpose Step 1:
Clarify the purpose of the organization.

We talked a little bit about Dove.  Their purpose is not to
sell soap: their purpose is to help women feel better about their
bodies. So that’s a big difference there.


Same with Chipotle. Their purpose is not to sell burritos: their
purpose is to make food with integrity, and ultimately to pioneer
food safety systems and help other fast-food organizations to
know that they can make great food and still make it healthy and
good for our earth.


It’s like understanding the difference between just a mission and
the product you’re selling and actually making the conversation
about purpose. So, start there. If you’re at a loss as to how to
do that, there are many resources online. And that is how you
find your purpose. It’s not easy to do, but it’s certainly a
place that will make you extremely relevant in your customer’s
lives.


For more on this, read Ogilvy What’s the big ideaL and Evolve or
Die: How Authenticity and Purpose are the Future of Brands.
Step 2: Deconstruct your customer’s journey.

So, now I’m getting specific to sales, marketing, customer
experience, and those teams in your organization and
understanding how to do this by talking to your customers. As I
mentioned earlier, you definitely want to be looking at the
customer data you can collect digitally. Understand the audience
data, the demographic data, psychographic data that you get. But
that is typically where companies stop.


They build these personas, and they don’t go any deeper into
actually spending face time with the customer. And that’s where
all the good stuff is. That’s where you’re going to find
connections, and that’s where you’re going to understand what
your customers are thinking and feeling at every stage in your
funnel so that you can generate resources, content, experiences
that help to remove those roadblocks. So, that’s the second part,
deconstructing that customer journey so that you can make that
bridge between your purpose and your people.
Step 3: Connecting your team’s purpose to your organization’s

The third step in getting purpose really well integrated into
your organization is connecting your team’s purpose to your
organization’s purpose. Ultimately, you have to know the purpose
of your organization in its entirety to really understand why
your organization, as a whole, exists beyond making money?


With your team: understand what role they play in achieving that
purpose to apply that more specifically to their day-to-day. That
can go a really long way toward efficiency, output, and morale,
especially when your team is pushing hard and days are getting
longer. The meaning side of that really matters to them.
Step 4: Adjust how you communicate your purpose externally.

This very much directly applies to your sales and marketing and
customer experiences team. They’re the most outwardly-facing, and
they have the biggest responsibility in making sure that what is
happening inside of your organization is also being effectively
communicated outside, so customers know you’re not a façade; that
purpose is not a veneer and that it’s truly how you operate
inside and out.


You want to teach your sales and marketing team to understand the
difference between having a productive conversation and a purpose
discussion. When you make that shift to not just pushing your
product, but to helping those teams understand the bigger purpose
of your organization and how that connects to your customers,
you’re opening an opportunity to connect with exponentially more
people, more organizations, more influencers, more people in the
media, more communities, who are either already your ideal
customers, or they know somebody who could be.


For more on these steps, read: Why Your Organization Is Getting
Sales and Marketing Wrong.


Brian:  Mack, that was fantastic. Thank
you. You did a good job breaking down to four points, and I feel
like this will be tangible for our listeners. We’ll also supply
some resources and links for people to dig into these areas as
well.


I wanted to ask what advice you would give to those who want to
apply what you’ve just talked about and bring this idea to other
leaders inside their company.
What if this idea inspires someone – how can they get the
conversation started inside their company?

Mack:  That’s a great question. I think
it’s starting small. I believe that purpose as a concept seems
very intimidating, especially to leaders, because they feel like,
“Oh my gosh, you’re talking about an entire organization
overhaul, and we can’t even keep up with what we’re doing every
day.”


It’s not really starting over. It’s just optimizing what you have
and better connecting it and communicating it to understand your
employees and customers. So, I think it’s just starting small.


We typically start with a small purpose workshop. We’re talking
maybe 45-60 minutes of helping companies understand what purpose
is and what purpose isn’t.  Once they start the
conversation, I think it’s also to understand that purpose seems
fluffy, maybe, when you’re trying to hit your ROI and your
metrics and the goals you have financially for your team and the
organization. But it’s not fluffy. This is about growth. And in
this day and age, this is the approach to growth.


But when you’re selling it to your leadership, it’s “We’re going
to teach our sales, marketing, and customer experience teams how
to remove roadblocks for our customers by connecting that
purpose. And that, ultimately, is going to drive sales, it’s
going to drive retention, it’s going to drive connections, and
ultimately it’s going to drive our growth.”


Brian:  Terrific. What’s the best way for
readers and listeners to get in touch with you?


Mack:  They can come to our website
genuinely.co or find me online. I’m on Twitter at @mackfogelson
most every day, happy to chat there.
Additional resources on purpose:

Why Your Organization Is Getting Sales and Marketing Wrong


How Purpose and Authenticity are the Future of Brands


Winning with Purpose – EY


Purpose at Work – LinkedIn/Imperative


The Business Case for Purpose – Harvard Business Review [PDF]
You might also like:

How Empathy Will Grow Your Sales and Marketing Pipeline


4 Ways You Can Humanize Marketing and Build Relationships


Lead Nurturing: 4 Steps to walking the buying path with your
customers


How sales hustle and automation can hurt customer experience


Stuck on words: how can marketing connect with customers better?