What Is a Mission Statement and How Do I Create One?

A mission statement sets out a company’s purpose, aims and values. It’s an essential tool in branding your business and ensuring that employees know the route you have set out in order for your business to succeed. If you don’t yet have a mission statement or you’re looking to refine one, read on to find out more.

What is a mission statement?

An effective mission statement is a clear and concise statement that sets out your company’s reason for existing and what you want it to achieve.

So, why is a mission statement important? It’s useful when you’re making long-term strategic decisions for your business as it helps you to remain focused on your core objectives. It gives you a reference point – and a chance to bring every decision back to this. If the decisions you’re making don’t tie in with the aims outlined in your mission statement, then you should probably rethink them.

A mission statement vs a vision statement

Unlike a mission statement, a vision statement describes your ultimate goal for your business. It is also much shorter and tends to be just one sentence.

As an example, here is Amazon’s vision statement:

Our vision is to be earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.

A vision or mission statement vs a value statement

A value statement tells both customers and employees where the company stands on big issues and sets out the company’s core values.  

Contents of a mission statement

The best mission statements demonstrate a clear understanding of: 

• Who they’re aimed at
• What you’re offering and why it has value
• Why your customers should care about your business
• Your key markets

There are three main areas a successful mission statement should cover:

The purpose: What does your business do? What can it provide? Why is it unique? Cast your mind back to the day you first had the idea for your business. What did you want to achieve?

The direction: This is the plan. The plan for now, the future and even further beyond. Don’t hold back. If you want to conquer the world and become the best in your field, say it. Don’t allow room for doubt. Your mission statement should be filled with drive and passion.

The things that matter: This is what makes your business your business. What do you stand for? It’s not just how you’re different but why you’re different too.

Each of these three ingredients can form a mini statement on their own, but together they unite to create the ultimate picture of the company. It’s this mission that can make someone want to work for you or encourage someone to spend money with you.

How to write a mission statement

Now that we know why we’re doing it and what goes into one, it’s time to discuss how to write a mission statement. 

Ask yourself key questions

Firstly, ask yourself some key questions: 

• Why is my company here? 
• What do/should people expect from us? 
• What is important to our business? 
• What do we stand for? 
• What do we aspire to do and become? 

Forbes, for example, knows why it’s here: “To deliver information on the people, ideas and technologies changing the world to our community of affluent business decision-makers.”

Answer these key questions clearly 

Next, make sure you actually answer the questions in a clear way. You want your customers to know what you do from the first line of your mission statement. ASOS, for example, states: “Our mission is to become the world’s number-one destination for fashion-loving 20-somethings.” Even someone unfamiliar with the brand would have a good idea of ASOS from this alone.

You can include some business goals here – and these can focus on the long term. PayPal has a goal within its company mission statement: “To build the web’s most convenient, secure, cost-effective payment solutions.”

Speak in the present tense

Live in the now – vision statements are about the future, whereas mission statements are all about the here and now. 

A present-tense mission statement example comes from Whole Foods: “…helping support the health, well-being, and healing of both people — customers, Team Members, and business organizations in general — and the planet.”

Be concise

You don’t have to write a best-selling book. Some of the best mission statements are the shortest. Something short and sweet which summarizes a business perfectly is all you want. You don’t have to have more than one or two lines – as long as the words sum your mission up, it can work.

Here are a few great short mission statements from some of the world’s leading companies:

Google: To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

LinkedIn: To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.

Alternatively, here are two examples that are a little longer – but still relatively concise:

Spotify: To unlock the potential of human creativity – by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by it.

Apple: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

Your mission statement can change with the times

Apple’s mission statement (above) hasn’t always been that. If your business has to move with the times, your statement needs to be updated to match. We’re not talking huge sweeping changes – it’s often more of a subtle realignment.

If you’re wondering what Apple’s early mission statement was, Steve Jobs set it out in 1980: “To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.” Pretty powerful, right?

As long as you remember to define your purpose, offer inspiration, and are specific about what the company does, your mission statement is sure to be as powerful as the ones featured here.

If you’ve got a strong identity and goals baked into an appealing mission statement, you’ll stand every chance of success as a business. Sign up to become a Groupon Merchant to tap into a growing audience today.