The mission statement test

Use this simple test to figure out if your marketing team has the right focus.

Author

Joe Michalowski
October 25, 2023

What’s your marketing team’s mission statement?

I thought this was a strange concept moving from agency jobs to an in-house role.

But when I saw this as a workshop topic for a team on-site, I figured I’d just go with it. I guess this is what in-house teams think about, right?

The meeting turned out to be a real eye-opener for me.

Our marketing leader stepped up to the whiteboard and wrote a simple formula:

The marketing team ______ for ______, so that ______.

Those were the bones of our team's mission statement. And it only took about three seconds for us to hit an impasse.

First question — what does the marketing team do?

Well, we drive pipeline, of course! The marketing team drives pipeline, because that’s what good marketing teams do.

Sounds nice, but it made me raise an eyebrow. That answer paints us into a corner for the rest of the mission statement.

The marketing team…drives pipeline…for…the company? Okay. Then what?

We drive pipeline for the company, so that…the company grows revenue? So that we maximize company valuation? So that we deliver the biggest returns for investors?

Maybe that makes some sense to you on the surface. But there’s one massive omission from that mission statement — the customer.

If you come up with a mission statement for your marketing team and the customer/audience never makes an appearance, it’s time to go back to the whiteboard.

Pipeline generation and company growth are crucial goals for any marketing team. They just have to show up in the “so that” section of the mission statement to make sense.

Anything your team puts into the first slot explaining what the marketing team should lead into a “for” statement that outlines your audience.

Because when your team is entirely focused on engaging and delivering value to the right target audience, pipeline and revenue growth will follow.

Go through the exercise with your team — see what y’all come up with and decide if you need to rethink the priorities.

— Joe Michalowski

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In a world full of calls to ungate every bit of your marketing, Sydney makes the case to actually start gating product tours of all things. And she makes a great point. Check out the episode to get the full context.

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— Joe Michalowski

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