business-plan, visionCertainly, I have never started a business. As an employee of several companies through my life, I have found Mission and Vision Statements to be lofty, stuffy, and hackneyed.
Is it possible to have any type of business without such statements? Is there an example of every type of business without these? (i.e. LLC, Corp., etc.)
Actually, you’re so wrong on your impression that I can’t help but give a lengthy answer…
What counts isn’t a lofty, stuffy, and hackneyed mission or vision statement. What really counts is a so-called unique selling proposition.
Try this test: visit ten of your competitors’ websites and take the tagline and the first paragraph on their landing page or sales letter. Blank our company and product names if needed, and pass this around in your office. Buy a beer to anyone who can recognize who’s who in there. You’re not taking much risk because, well, they’re not so unique in practice.
See where this is heading? What are you communicating on precisely? Using which terms? And how is it different from your competition? As in, how recognizable are you once you weed out the BS marketing speak and break it down to benefits?
That is what the so-called lofty, stuffy, and hackneyed mission or vision statement is about. And it’s not lofty, stuffy, or hackneyed.
Compare this tagline from before and after I helped a recent client:
What about your media partner’s reliability?
It says nothing about what they’re doing. After researching what they did, I offered:
Ad fraudsters will steal over $6 billion this year. We make sure it’s not from you.
They weren’t happy with it because it was too close to a competitor’s. So I then offered:
We help advertisers increase their ROI by revealing the fraudsters that steal from them.
And it’s still a work in progress. A more recent version that we’re leaning onto is:
We help advertisers optimize their budget by revealing unviewable ads and bot traffic.
Frankly, it’s still not as good – as in strong – as I’d like it to be. But we’ll get there.
What the above will hopefully suggest is that there’s a lot more to it than mission statements or what have you. It went from a vague statement about what they might be about to a to-the-point, understandable by just about anyone statement on what they actually do.
And in the end, you really want to throw in a proper benefit in there, because that makes the difference between contacting you or not.
As to your actual question: yes, it is very possible to have a business without such a statement. In fact, most businesses don’t have one and fallback to a pointless slogan. But having a good unique selling proposition and articulating your marketing around it can make the difference between near-nil recognizability and conversion rates of 10% or more.
Two things are important: vision and passion. Show me in a few words that you have both and I’m interested.
Vision - this isn’t some mumbo jumbo management speak weasel word sentence, rather the raison d’etre, the core essence of the company. How are you going to make the world a better place?
Passion - show me you love what you are doing and that you really care about it.
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