When it comes to politics, a policy is never going to be useful if you don’t know how to correctly communicate it to those whose input matters. The same can go for business, as you may be innovating, developing new, tried and tested methods, and also have a healthy approach to your future planning. But if your investors, customers, and staff don’t see or believe in it, you’re going to have a harder time. It’s not just customers you should limit this to. If you’re a company with a presence in a local community, however modest, it can be worthwhile to prove your own worth, including highlighting the value you bring in small ways. This way, you can build goodwill, support your marketing efforts, hire better talent (perhaps locally), and develop a consistent approach to the branding you hope to achieve. In this post, then, we’ll discuss how to prove your business's worth in the community without platitudes.

Saying you care and quietly proving it through your day-to-day decisions will, of course have different results, but you have to market that action through it being visible. So a business that pays attention to the community it’s in will open the pathways to communicate their actions, but without seeming artificial about it. Examples of that could include offering apprenticeships to local college students or working with nearby suppliers instead of importing everything from across the country, because it’s five percent cheaper on paper. It might also involve caring for the impact of your work, such as by using local civil engineering firms to help process your construction and its impact more reliably.

Not every interaction needs to be part of a sales funnel. In fact, the businesses that do better in their communities usually have a reputation that’s built on something a bit softer than just the product they’re selling. Smaller examples of that is the owner remembers names, or if the team makes time for a quick chat before the order’s ready. There’s value in that kind of familiarity, even if it never shows up in a quarterly report. But culture matters too, such as supporting the local football team, offering your space for an open mic night once a month, or letting a school group tour the warehouse just so they can see how things work. It’s low-key but influential, and sometimes it doesn’t look like much, but it does help you connect, and is worth investing in.

A business can only show its worth so much through social posts or a nicely written statement, and eventually, it comes down to the people inside the company, the ones actually doing the work. That’s why it helps to build a culture where staff feel comfortable being themselves and speaking positively about where they work without feeling like they’re just repeating lines from the staff guidebook.