Marketing > Marketing Impact & Performance > Structure, Workflow & Alignment > Mission, Vision & Values for the Marketing FunctionMission, Vision & Values for the Marketing Function
Why mission, vision, values are also important for the marketing team. Mission, vision, values for marketing teams.
The value of a mission statement for the marketing team: It gives orientation, serves as a value promise and code of collaboration.
Learn how to create a mission statement and find practical examples that you can use with your marketing team.
➔ Mission, Vision & Values B2B Marketing Practice Guide. Make it Work.
Why do we do what we do and does anybody bother?
Many marketing teams were not built on purpose from scratch but they evolved over time. In larger, complex organization they can easily be squeezed between the daily dynamics and the never stopping bombardment with inquiries.
While keeping busy is a good problem to have, over time the team itself and certainly the also ever changing stakeholder groups might not be fully aware of the team’s core purpose (anymore).
Moreover, you might hear team members asking and saying things like:
So, we do 'this' now? What happened to “X”…?
Why do I keep getting similar requests from folks in the same department?
Sometimes I get the feeling that Sales don’t even know what we can provide.
When it comes to the marketing team’s future and how to continuously improve, there might be differences in clearly understanding what needs to improve and how to do it. Plus: how to stay aligned within the bigger entity and how to keep them updated on marketing’s new abilities and deliverables?
And with all the fast paced developments going on within the organization, how can market communications specialists, market researchers and competitive analysts ensure that collaboration is smooth and influential?
Marketing AND stakeholders get frustrated
One of the biggest frustrations in any work environment is for people to be uncertain of their contribution and impact. What’s worse: if they live under the impression that what they do is neither making a big difference nor fully understood within the broader organization.
Stakeholders might also grow frustrated as they don’t understand how to allocate the marketing resources or how to address much needed improvements in the marketing functions to meet future challenges.
With that much uncertainty chances are that there is not a lot of fruitful collaboration going on and the various teams might not even live the same culture.
Three key questions
In summary both the marketing team and also the stakeholders they serve are asking the exact same questions:
What is the purpose of the marketing team?
How will marketing continue to adjust and improve?
Does the marketing team stand for a specific behavior, do they follow specific rules that make them an authority?
We need a purpose, a supported future and a good way to collaborate
Here is the good news: a proper mission statement, a common vision and values to adhere to help to response to the above questions and uncertainties.
Let’s break it down into these three parts that clarify the uncertainty as stated earlier:
Mission = Our purpose here, why do we exist as a function?
Vision = The horizon and how do we get there?
Values = How do be behave and interact as a team, with the stakeholders and in context with the company culture and corporate values?
Creating a mission, vision & values statement
The goal is to create short, simple but effective statements that the team and the stakeholders can relate to und fully understand.
This should be a team effort and it can be a very rewarding experience for the entire marketing team. If the tasks within the marketing group differ greatly there can be individual mission statements per team or functional area, one for each e.g.:
Marketing Communication
Market Intelligence
Strategic Planning, etc.
A good way to get started with the marketing mission statement is to debate and answer the following four questions. Whether all the team members prepare this up-front or in a meeting session does not matter:
Role and offering:
How will we offer benefits?
Who will benefit?
Service definition:
Which benefits do we offer?
Which needs do we satisfy?
Distinctive competitiveness:
Which essential skills and capabilities will be utilized to achieve the mentioned benefits?
Indications for the future:
How will we further act in the future to keep succeeding?
Once everybody had a chance to provide their input to these questions the marketing team should find consensus on a mutual response to each question and consolidate them into two or three sentences each for their mission, the vision and the values statement.
At the end of this article you find two examples of mission, vision and values statements for a Marketing Communication function and for a Market Intelligence function.
Mission, vision, values for a Marketing Communications team
After the team agrees on a draft it is always a good idea to run it by some key stakeholders and gather additional input for content and format. Make sure they understand that this is a promise to get the benefits they need and assurance for them how to collaborate.
Mission, vision, values that live
To establish the new marketing mission, vision and values statements and to give them a chance to become part of the team’s DNA here are several tips to roll-out and support:
Print posters and hang them in the meeting room
Frame the mission, vision, values statement for every marketing employee
Feature the marketing mission, vision, values statement on the marketing SharePoint or Intranet site
Include the marketing mission, vision, values statement in all internal slide decks that introduce the marketing team and its deliverables
Show the marketing mission, vision, values statement slide in internal meetings to other stakeholders and explain its benefits to them
Agree that the language of the marketing mission, vision, values statement is also used in the performance reviews
Make it a friendly habit within the team to refer to the marketing mission, vision, values statement when daily tasks or situations unveil new uncertainties
Below you can find mission and vision statements for a marketing communications team and for a market and competitive intelligence function:
Marketing > Marketing Impact & Performance > Structure, Workflow & Alignment > Mission, Vision & Values for the Marketing Function