Why Company Culture is Critical for your Marketing Strategy

When considering your marketing strategy, it is very tempting to rush the process along, grabbing for the low-hanging fruit of social media and Google Ads, and throwing marketing dollars toward slick ad campaigns. But one of the most important things you can do for your team, your organization and your customers is to slow down and invest in telling the story of your company and your values. It will give all your communication and marketing messages more effectiveness, traction, and depth. It helps you remember who you are as an organization and will ultimately help you connect to your customers at their “why” instead of at their short-term immediate need. Building your company culture and story intentionally will solidify deep relationships with clients who share your values and create an engaged and motivated workforce around you.

Your company culture is the set of values, goals, and practices that team members within an organization share, which gives a company its distinct identity and vision. Your company’s core values are the driving force behind your culture and dictate your relationships with employees, clients and how you generally do business. You’ll also want to consider your company mission statement when describing your workplace culture. What is the underlying goal of your company, and how do you envision achieving it? Who is your target audience made up of, and how will you make an impact in the world around you? Your mission statement should give meaning and action to your core values and instill a sense of purpose. For example, if your company aims to be known for its responsiveness and innovation, you’ll want to create a dynamic company culture that embraces collaboration, listens well, and actively seeks cutting-edge solutions for your audience. Essentially, company culture is the heartbeat of your brand.

If company culture is how you live out your organization’s values, marketing is how you convey your brand message to the rest of the world. Your branding and marketing efforts should flow from your company’s core values, mission, and the culture you have created. You will develop much more engagement and consistency in your campaigns if they are an outflow of your existing values. These marketing efforts will succeed in capturing and strengthening what already exists in your company, providing encouragement to your employees and a compelling story for your customers to buy into.

A strong company culture also makes you a more desirable business partner. In addition to creating a powerful brand, a well-defined culture helps you attract clients with similar ideals that buy into your way of doing business. When your culture is well defined, it makes your marketing messages stronger and more trustworthy because it gives prospective customers a better sense of what you value as a business. If a prospective customer knows your story and what you believe in as an organization, he is much more likely to do business with you — even in your values aren’t completely in alignment with his. Companies with a strong brand identity tend to attract more clients who trust the organization, what it stands for, and its objectives, creating brand loyalty and customer relationships that go the distance.

Capturing your company culture in your marketing efforts looks like creative and inspiring ad campaigns, intriguing marketing slogans, active identity sections of your website that include headshots and inspiring bios that recognize the unique gifts of each team member, strong mission and value statements, compelling content that tells the story of your company and its history, and social media posts that connect the ethos of your organization with the needs of the customer. Company culture should be reflected in the language of your onboarding process, employee recruitment efforts, and reinforced with all interactions with your team and clients.

A strong company culture creates an engaged, dynamic, and motivated workforce. Organizational culture is a powerful influence in your company. It reinforces employees’ confidence in their work and keeps them motivated and inspired to do their best. Strong company cultures give employees a cause to rally behind and purpose to do so passionately. That internal motivation is what inspires employees to find deeper satisfaction in their work and form a closer connection with their peers, organization and their role in the business. According to research by Quantum Workplace, employees who say their work culture is positive are 3.8 times more likely to be engaged at work. A Gallup report revealed businesses whose employees are engaged see 23 percent higher profits compared to those whose workers are unhappy.

A strong company culture - and communicating it effectively - ultimately delivers expanded business growth, longevity and customer loyalty. A recent study from Harvard Business Review states that companies with a strong culture see a 4x increase in revenue growth compared to companies with a weak one. Company culture has become a vital, even essential, ingredient in the ongoing success of a business.

As you consider your marketing strategy, don’t forget to include the work of communicating your company culture, your mission, and the story behind what you do to improve the world around you. It will make your brand stronger and pay dividends for many years to come.