Mission statements and marketing have three things in common. Both should be simple, clear, and focused on value to customers. There the similarities end. And the differences are truly fundamental: different purposes and different audiences. 

An organization’s mission is its raison d’être. Strong, successful, focused organizations, whether for-profit or non-profit, are clear about how they wish to improve the condition of their clients, customers, members, or target populations. It doesn’t matter whether you are:

• Clothing the poor for warmth or the rich for status and beauty
• Helping the long-term unemployed develop better skills or educating the crème de la crème
• Providing children with colored pencils for drawing pretty pictures or engineers with computers for modeling complex systems
• Saving money for your customers by producing inexpensive alternatives or saving them time with costly services

What is important, is that you have chosen wants and needs to satisfy, and you are determined to do it the best you can. A mission statement that successfully and succinctly captures that desire creates energy, focus, inspiration, determination, and alignment.

Marketing, on the other hand, is about screaming from the rooftops, standing out from the crowd, and generating enough interest to make a conversation about the value you provide possible, whether that conversation involves two people face-to-face or just getting a customer to pick up your book in the bookstore to read the back copy. It’s about creating needs, wants, and urgency. It’s about developing relationships and influencing buying decisions.

I encountered a perfect example of this difference right after finishing college. I was developing educational games for children struggling with math and reading skills. With the permission of my employer, I brought some of my games to an educational game company. They told me my games were too obviously educational. Their mission was to educate children, but the market wasn’t there yet. Back in the seventies, they actually downplayed or actively disguised the educational value of their games. Later, parents eager to give their children a leg up, flocked to anything labeled “educational,” even if it wasn’t. While this company’s mission could easily have remained constant for decades, you can bet their marketing has shifted dramatically more than once.

In summary, the major differences are as follows:

Mission Statement

• Must be clear to employees
• Reflects the organization’s passions
• Is stable as long as market wants and needs, and a viable business plan for meeting those needs, exist
• Is a stake in the ground to rally round and reaffirm with success stories
• States simply how you wish to improve your customers’ condition
• Need not use language readily understood by customers
• Inspires employees while increasing focus and alignment

Marketing

• Must be clear to customers, often many different types of customers in multiple markets
• Taps into customer passions
• Shifts with factors such as demographics, competition, technology, the season, and the latest buzzwords
• Is a process, a dance of intrigue and value that attracts customers, builds relationships, and influences customer decisions
• Must use the language of the customers
• Requires creativity and an understanding of your customers and the way they make buying decisions

To be perfectly clear, develop your mission statement to inspire and align employees. Develop your marketing to inspire your customers. Scramble the two and you create fog, not clarity, not success.