What Is The Point Of Your Business? (And What Does That Have To Do With Marketing?)

If you ask most business professionals or investors or people who track the KPIs (“Key Performance Indicators” - basically metrics to show how a business is doing. Consider them vital signs of your business the way your heart rate and blood pressure are vital signs for your body), they will tell you the bottom line is money and that the purpose of any business is to “make money.”

Now, unless you actually work for your government and you literally MAKE money (running the printing presses or minting coins or some such thing), there isn’t a business in the world that “makes” money. Business and people EARN money.

And the way they earn money is by providing goods and/or services that is of use and value to others.

This may seem like an extreme or wild idea, but think about out for a few minutes. How does a business get money coming into it? Aside from raising capital (which seems to be the default mindset of too many “entrepreneurs” these days), the heartbeat of a business is actually the work that it is meant to be doing for its clients or customers or collaborators or whomever its products or services are meant to be of use to.

There are whole other conversations which can be had on the difficulty of bootstrapping, but those are largely more systemic problems than the simplicity of this: What is the point of your business?

What do you do?

How does it help people?

What problems does it solve for others?

Why does it make the world a better place?

What good is it?

Who can use it?

How can it make things better for them?

Now you might look at that list and think “But I’m not a non-profit!”

Yes, that’s what being a business means - it means you’re for-profit. Which is fine. And good. You should still be creating or producing or making or providing something that is of some use to someone else.

So, what is it that you do?

Defining that can help focus your marketing on sharing that. Because making people aware of that, and connecting with people who are going to need and want you and what you offer is going to help you provide more services or products to the people who need and want them.

Maybe it is as simple as you’re a landscaper who provides lawn trimmings and that’s it. But when you look at it through the above list of questions, it potentially is a lot more than that, even if you didn’t realize it.

So, what is the point of your business?