Strategic communications ranges from public relations to marketing to policy. The field is concerned with performing against a master plan, and importantly doing the right set of communication things and not just the optics of doing some things.
The role, practice and value of strategic communications to an organisation is not new. This is despite the changing definition of what constitutes strategic communications. As we build new means of connecting with and segmenting audiences for different purposes; strategic communications will add more components to its repertoire.
At its heart, it is about creating and executing against a master plan, by coordinating the various channels of communications an organisation has; to support its outreach to decision makers and stakeholders and influence, promote or defend against outcomes.
Strategic communications to an organisation covers far more ground than just branding or thought leadership. It crosses many fields such as public relations, marketing and policy. Investing and developing strategic communications capability within your organisation can help build, protect and enhance the value of your brand and reputation.
Here are some considerations on applying strategic communications for your organisation, with a view to achieving growth outcomes such as revenue or expansion.
Stop viewing communications, public relations, or marketing as purely a service function or cost centre.
Re-evaluate the functions as a strategic choice with shared responsibility for growth. Leaders are responsible for providing a clear mission and objectives that get the company closer to goal while ensuring that team members all pull in the same direction.
Using communications to do so organisation-wide effectively will save you time and resources. Managing this process will help instil discipline and a consistent set of behaviours that can benefit the company with regards to the mission.
Define and own what the outcomes will be, and ensure it is SMART.
Find answers to questions such as the following:
· What does it mean to reach out to decision makers and stakeholders?
· What does my communications need to convince or inform them about?
· How will the outreach be counted as positive?
· Can we deliver if the customer connects with us?
To be strategic, there has to be investment in research in order to understand your audiences. Post-pandemic, this will be important as the audience might have changed in reaction to new consumption habits, for example across media and purchase decisions.
The strategic communications master plan should include objectives and outcomes. It will incorporate insights from the questions and research in order to build consistent, long-term approaches; supported by tactical execution.
When it comes to creating the master plan, it is useful to have a team member that can champion the process together with you.
Co-create systems, processes, frameworks and materials that can be shared throughout the organisation.
Invest time in training team members on how to understand and use them.
Bring in specialists where required to help conceptualise positioning and key messages, train team members; and otherwise speed up the process of understanding and adopting the master plan.
Get comfortable with data.
Many leaders look for quantitative goals, while ignoring intangible output. Look to combine insights from ‘hard numbers’ with proxies for measuring ‘softer’ metrics.
Remember first principles, the plan is working if communications is driving towards these measurements.
Set milestones along the way to collect data, interpret what they mean and refine the approach.
Keep the master plan constantly updated as new data and insights happen.
It is a totality of all communications – internal and external – that the organisation is doing across sales, marketing, public relations, and customer service.
Don’t make the mistake of viewing it as a high-level plan, disconnected and silo-ed away from other functions and activities.
It is both a guiding light and a reminder about the company’s strategic goals and how the organisation intends to achieve them.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, retail, travel and technology spaces.
We offer strategy and tactics to support growth outcomes - revenue, scale, regional expansion and market entry – for our clients.
Areas of support include:
· Strategic communications: Approach to market, brand concept and map, positioning, messaging, story and narrative, thought leadership
· Marketing: Campaign/programme planning, story-based marketing execution, digital marketing, community amplification, content planning and production, go-to-market execution
· Lead generation: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
· Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a seconded marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website or book an exploratory consultation through this link.
Photo by Will Porada on Unsplash
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