The 20-Minute Marketer Magazine May 2014 | Page 10

Interconnected roles:

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Look up “mission vs purpose” in Google and you will have a million definitions. For the sake of keeping things simple, however I would like to consider mission and purpose as having interconnected roles:

Purpose is the reason your business exists, the raison d’être for starting it, it answers the question: WHY did you choose this business in the first place and WHAT are you therefore providing/doing?

Mission takes it a step further by identifying two things: HOW you want to do it and for WHOM. It answers the questions broadly, considering a long-term vision of what you want to accomplish.

A lot of businesses create a vision or mission statement, statement of purpose, etc. Call it whatever you want; the important thing here isn’t the format in which the words are strung together. The importance is in answering the questions that will provide clarity to your business.