Why Company Purpose and Profits Are Not Exclusive

Your company’s purpose can and should complement your profit because without one. You can’t have the other. You need profit to achieve your purpose. Meanwhile, consumers will be more loyal if you have a strong purpose, increasing your profit.

Explore how purpose and profits work together to help you achieve your ESG goals.

Key Takeaways:

• Having a clear purpose increases sales, encourages consumer action, and supports ESG initiatives
• Align your purpose with your business goals to increase your profit through ESG efforts
• Support your ESG claims with actions to build trust and boost your revenue

Why Companies Should Combine Their Purpose and Profit

Here are three benefits to combining your purpose and profit in your ESG company instead of keeping them mutually exclusive.

Increases Company Growth

Consumers are increasingly more aware of whom they are supporting when they shop. Consumers are four times more likely to buy from brands with a clear purpose. In addition, 83% of consumers say companies should only see a profit if they also have a strong purpose.

When you promote a mission, cause, and purpose, you will see an increase in profit. That profit helps you invest more in a positive environment and social impact while also growing your company.

Image from World Economic Forum

Encourages Consumer Action

Raising awareness about issues can motivate consumers to act on their own. For example, a pet food brand in Italy ran a series of ads about pet adoption. As a result, it received a 3.7-point rise in brand favorability. In addition, they saw an 8-point increase in ad recall.

Not only were they improving how consumers saw their brand, but they were also sending a message and encouraging their audience to react by adopting more pets.

When more consumers join in on your purpose and cause, you can have a more significant impact.

Supports Environmental and Social Issues

Businesses have some of the most significant impacts on the environment and social issues. For example, only 100 businesses are responsible for 71% of the world’s emissions. Making social changes is more than just increasing your profits. It’s about building a better future for your business and customer. However, profits are likely to follow when you invest in the future.

When you support your employees, community, and world, you build a healthier environment for your sales growth. For instance, Unilever reported that 75% of its profits came from its sustainable brands like Dove and Vaseline.

How to Combine Your Company Purpose and Profit

Use these five tips to achieve a purpose-driven business with consistent revenue growth.

1. Connect Your Purpose to Your Business

You are most likely to see profit from supporting your purpose if your purpose aligns with your business and goals. For example, Colgate provides oral health education for underserved children. That purpose is relevant to the company as a dental hygiene brand and supports a greater cause related to their industry.

In addition to your goals, consider your stakeholders and their needs. Investing in what matters to your stakeholders encourages greater loyalty to your brand and attracts more like-minded stakeholders.

2. Make Your Purpose a Core Business Goal

Setting goals gives your business a benchmark for measuring your success. That’s why you should set revenue goals each year to guide your business growth and drive your business decisions.

However, your purpose should also have measurable goals. Your goals will translate a purpose statement into specific actions you can take today to achieve that purpose.

For example, if your purpose is to encourage inclusion in the workplace, you might make one of your goals for the quarter to make your entire office handicap accessible. That goal is specific and measurable and provides a way to see how your business is achieving its purpose of being an inclusive workplace.

Another example is creating specific sustainability goals to reach. For instance, if you want to reduce your carbon footprint, provide specific short-term goals you can achieve over the next few months to move your business towards a more sustainable future, like the amount of plastic waste you want to reduce during your next quarter.

Image from FitSmallBusiness

3. Market Your Purpose alongside Your Products

Your purpose should be a core part of who you are as a socially responsible business if you want it to boost your profits. To ensure consumers know what you stand for and to attract like-minded buyers, add your purpose to your marketing strategy.

For example, Harvest & Mill sells organic clothing grown and sewn in the USA. That message is a core part of its marketing. The brand highlights the organic sourcing of its clothing more than other clothing specifications. For example, when it released a new line of blue clothing, it also posted a series of Instagram posts showing how they use dried oregano to dye its products light blue to support its claim of organic manufacturing and generate interest in its brand from environmentally responsible buyers.

4. Back Your Claims with Action

Greenwashing is using environmental issues as a marketing ploy to boost your revenue without any proof to back your claims or contradictory actions occurring behind the scenes.

Whenever you make claims, like being a sustainable company or supporting diversity, you should act on those claims even when no one sees them.

To avoid greenwashing, use reputable ESG disclosures that require standardized metrics to measure your environmental, social, and governance impact. It also helps you appear more authentic to your customers, increasing their trust in you as an ESG brand.

5. Share Your Progress with Consumers

Transparency about your purpose and how you are achieving it will increase your profits as customers are more likely to trust a transparent brand.

According to a report by the Better Business Bureau, 90% of consumers say they consider transparency when making a purchase decision. In addition, 94% of consumers say they are more likely to remain loyal to a transparent brand.

You can be transparent by sharing regular reports on how your business is impacting the environment or how you are fulfilling your purpose, and how consumers are helping by increasing your profits, which allows you to invest more in your purpose.

 Build a Purpose-Driven Company with High Profit

Televerde helps you achieve your purpose while also exceeding your profit goals through our outsourcing solutions. Our services help you unify your marketing, sales, and customer service teams so you can focus on what matters most to your business, like making a positive impact on the world through your ESG initiatives.

Contact us to learn more about our marketing and sale solutions.