Although the mission statement is usually a short paragraph, of one to three sentences long, it is important because it focuses your attention on your most important goals.
There are three parts to a good mission statement.
- Descibing your key or main market
- Your contribution or what you are providing to that market
- Distinction of your company, or what sets you apart from your competition.
Here are a few examples:
McDonalds:
“McDonald’s vision is to be the world’s best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile.”
As you can see the main market is somewhat grandiose being ‘the world‘. The contribution is ‘service restaurant experience‘ which is descibed in more detail, or the distinction as being the ‘best‘ meaning ‘outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value‘. As an added bonus they want to make the customer smile.
Disney:
“We create happiness by providing the finest in entertainment for people of all ages, everywhere.”
Here we have the main market of ‘people of all ages, everywhere’, the contribution of ‘entertainment’, with the distinction of that entertainment being the ‘finest’ and that the entertainment ‘create happiness‘.
Now think about your business and find the three crucial elements that you can put together to create an individually focused mission statement.
If you cannot put everything together in one nice sentence, it doesn’t much matter. Just make it focused, something to remind you of your business goals.
You can see how this can help in your marketing efforts as it is a constant reminder of your target market of what you are supposed to be providing for them.