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line within the market. Your vision for market
relevance creates your products’ value propositions.
Your vision begins simply enough with a mission
statement. Develop a vision for your business
and product; then create a mission statement
by encapsulating that idea in a sentence
or two. For example, an internet service may
say, “Create a single place on the Internet that
connects all people with anything or anyone
they need.” A small-town dairy may say, “Create
direct-to-consumer supreme quality cheese
from locally pastured grass-fed cows.” Th e later
statement identifi es a locally-produced product
that requires exceptional preparation and
quality control, produced from well-cared-for
animals. Many people discount mission statements
as superfl uous. Most highly successful
entrepreneurs and companies have them posted
throughout their operations. Th e mission statement
is the compass that keeps you on track.
By making your mission statement relevant,
and refl ecting it in your practices, it makes your
product relevant. You have articulated your
business and product’s value propositions; you
have defi ned its market relevance.
At the end of the day, market relevance needs to
be tied directly to return on investment (ROI).
Market relevance heads off the presumption
that your company’s vision or product is irrelevant.
Th e challenge is to continue telling
and adapting your story. You need to show that
your company is the leading force educating
and growing the market – solving real problems
for real customers. Th e secret to leveraging
vision is staying just far enough ahead that it
looks like your company is leading the market.
If your vision is too broad you run the
risk of creating a perception that the market is
not ready for your product. Once you have a
mission statement, you can then leverage your
company’s vision by using communication
tools to get the relevance of your product in
front of distributors and consumers. A positive
mission statement and communications message
also infl uences your suppliers and customers
to believe that your company is going to be
around next week. Customers want to develop
relationships with vendors whom they feel are
in command of their destinies, and thus able
to standing up to competition. In an uncertain
world, people trust a feeling of order.
Philip Kotler is well known for being the
pioneer of thought leadership marketing. He
is CEO of Kotler Marketing Group, and the
S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of
International Marketing, Northwestern University
Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
On his website (http://www.kotlermarketing.
com/phil_questions.shtml) Dr. Kotler discusses
“What is Marketing” and where oft en
overlooked marketing opportunities exist. He
immediately makes two important points:
• “Marketing is the science and art of
exploring, creating, and delivering value
to satisfy the needs of a target market at
a profi t. Marketing identifi es unfulfi lled
needs and desires. It defi nes then
measures and quantifi es the size of the
identifi ed market and the profi t potential.
It pinpoints which segments the
company is capable of serving best and it
designs and promotes the appropriate
products and services.
• “Marketing is oft en performed by a
department within the organization.
Th is is both good and bad. It’s good
because it unites a group of trained
people who focus on the marketing task.
It’s bad because marketing activities
should not be carried out in a single
department but they should be manifest
in all the activities of the organization.”
In Kotler’s 11th edition of Marketing Management
(12 Edition, Prentice Hall, 2006) he describes
the most important concepts of marketing
in the fi rst chapter. Th ey are:
• Segmentation
• Targeting
• Positioning
• Needs & wants
• Demand
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