What is Your Law Firm Content Marketing Mission Statement?

As we reported recently, according to 2017 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey, only one in four law firm marketers say they have a documented content strategy. 

I’d wager that it’s because the vast majority of content producers don’t have a content marketing mission statement – the document you need before crafting a content strategy, before creating an editorial calendar, and before producing content. 

So, what is a content marketing mission statement?

A mission statement is your purpose. Your firm’s reason for existing. Why you do what you do. What you are today and what you strive to be.

“To work, your mission statement has to be all about the pain points of your readers.” – Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute.

In a post on mission statements from the afore mentioned Content Marketing Institute, the author used Inc as an example:

Inc. magazine has its mission statement in the first line of its About Us page.

 

Welcome to Inc.com, the place where entrepreneurs and business owners can find useful information, advice, insights, resources and inspiration for running and growing their businesses.

 

Inc’s mission statement includes:

 

1. The core audience target: entrepreneurs and business owners
2. What will be delivered to the audience: useful information, advice, insights, resources, and inspiration
3. The outcome for the audience: growing their businesses

Inc’s mission statement is incredibly simple and includes no words that could be misunderstood.

To summarize, to craft your content mission statement, you need to know your target audience (check out our post on buyer personas), what to deliver to address their needs, and how it will help them. 

Stay away from tongue-twisting jargon and buzzwords. 

One way to do this is by keeping it concise. Think verb-target-outcome, the author of The Eight-Word Mission Statement (Harvard Business Review) recommends.

Using the “Inc” example, we can reframe the mission statement to: Inspire entrepreneurs to run and grow their business. Verb-target-outcome in eight words.

To be sure, Inc’s full mission statement is great just the way it is. The shortening exercise is an attempt to get into the habit of crafting a pithy statement that everyone can refer to before each piece of content is produced. The more concise, the easier it is to remember (and to imprint on marketing swag). 

After you’ve crafted a content marketing mission statement, don’t tuck it away. Hang it on the wall. Make it a permanent fixture on your whiteboard. Then, before you produce any more content or add it to your editorial calendar, ask, “does the content support our mission statement?” Proceed if it does. Otherwise, reject it.