Investing in Purpose can help SMEs Thrive

Being clear about what you stand for is critical to building loyalty, a strong USP, and long-term brand value in an increasingly uncertain world.

Let’s be honest, it’s tough running a small business. For so many of the businesses I’ve worked with in 2024, it’s felt like a game of survival.

Rising costs, customers with growing expectations and diminishing budgets. Forget staying ahead, just keeping going can feel like an uphill battle sometimes. The pressure to ride the bike while you’re still building the thing, and at the same time about how you invent the next thing can mean it’s hard to think about much more than short-term survival.

But purpose is a secret weapon for SMEs, and as business owners, we need to do more to leverage it.

At a time when we’re being told that it’s all about growth, it’s important to ask what kind of growth we really want to deliver? Growth without purpose is unpredictable and hard to regulate in an increasingly uncertain world.

Purpose can help create an emotional connection with customers and a sense of loyalty that it can be hard to cultivate unless we’re lucky enough to have decades of trading history and the relationships that go with it. And for SMEs, customer loyalty is at the heart of how we survive and thrive for the long term.

Purpose helps establish what you stand for, as well as a sense of how you work. It’s important for motivating customers, employees and partners and can attract a premium with your target market. Just look at the exodus from X or the growing boycott of Tesla in the wake of the US Presidential Election. What you say and how you behave matters as much as the business you’re in for increasing numbers of customers.

Spending some time clarifying your purpose and thinking about how you express it is an important investment in your business, and can help drive sustainable growth.

And the good news is, it doesn’t have to be complicated. As a general rule of thumb, of course the more you invest in your purpose, the more authentic and valuable it will be to your business moving forward. But it’s ok to start small.

Here are my top tips, for articulating your purpose.

What is your why?

Think back to why you set up your business. Sure, you want to make a living, but you could do anything. So why do you do what you do?

Why should your customers care?

How would you describe your why to your customers? Why do you think it will make a positive difference to them? And what will make them feel good about buying from you over a competitor.

What do you believe in and what’s the difference it makes to how you work?

How do you put your purpose at the heart of your business? How does it guide the way you serve your customers, or even the community you’re a part of?

It’s all about impact!

What do you want to your impact to be? It’s got to be bigger than purely the service you deliver or the product you make. Where is the added value, the secret sauce, the thing that only you can bring to the party? Remember, it doesn’t need to be life-changing, just life improving. Small conveniences can have huge impacts for your customers.

Tl;dr? Think beyond the goods and services you produce and focus more on your reason for doing It and how that benefits your customers and the wider world. It might just be the best business decision you ever make.