We dive deeper into how to use strategic communications specifically for brand introductions and product/service launches.
Let’s have a quick refresher about what strategic communications is about.
Foundationally, strategic communications is about creating and executing against a master plan. It is similar in function and usage to the business plan, or the business strategy roadmap or the master product plan.
With and for all these documents, the central premise is to take think through, place and arrange sequentially all of the decisions, steps, and tasks required to achieve a business objective or milestone.
The strategic communications plan shares the story, narrative, positioning and messaging that the brand wants to be recognised for. It decides on a number of channels that the brand has access to, and wants to use in order to achieve the objective. This plan even maps out the intentions (along with rationale) that will be taken, when reaching out to decision makers, customers, and stakeholders in order to influence, promote, and defend the brand and the outcomes.
Who cares about using reputation? We can focus on selling and making things.
The role of the document is to align and integrate efforts across the brand, regardless of the organisation being a 5-person show or a corporation. With alignment, there is lesser chance for siloed work to happen, or worse, sabotage the efforts of the larger group.
What can sabotage do? At the minimum, it can create confusion for the customer, leading them to find simpler alternatives in the arms of competition, resulting in negative impact to both reputation and revenue.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
We can help you fix and problem solve for many growth and revenue scenarios such as market entry, market expansion, product/service launches through a strategic communications approach.
Send an email to connect@wearebrandutility.com OR book an exploratory consultation through this link OR complete this form and we will connect with you shortly.
Our principal consultant is a registered management consultant, certified and recognised by the Institute of Management Consultants Singapore.
Still with me? Let’s talk about how to measure strategic communications efforts.
Strategic communications is not a sales or revenue generator. It is true that communications and marketing can be a tool to drive sales. However, it is not true that these functions will close the deal or convert a customer. Learn to respect the differences between the tools a brand has and can use to generate revenue, or build reputation.
No one uses a hammer to screw a nail in, and smashing the area around the nail does not mean the nail is secure. Find the right tool for the right outcome.
Strategic communications can help build, protect and enhance the value of the brand and its reputation.
With strategic communications (or a product team, or any other functional team), figure out what is the business goal that needs support and decide how would achieving that goal holistically look like.
For example, if your brand sells products that require public infrastructure (perhaps electric vehicles or last-mile electric scooters), a specific communications outcome would be to influence public policy to create more electric charging stations. This would require access to policy makers. To gain access, you would have to provide them with some value, perhaps a white paper, or a research study with a neutral academic, or even a early-stage focus group with paying customers. The steps to get all these activities done will sit in your strategic communications plan.
Here’s another example, if you are a start-up that is bringing in an alternative food product (perhaps millet, or plant-based meat) and you want to validate the product-customer fit prior to launch. That’s what a communications plan will outline. How and where would you find a customer focus group, whether you want to provide media and influencers access or to participate in the group, as well as the mechanics and anticipated outcomes of the group. With the successful execution of this tactic, the brand can use the data to decide on variables such as packaging, promotions, pricing, etc.
So you are planning to introduce your brand to a new market, or launching a product.
Here’s the summary we share with our clients. Barring any specifics to your case, we would recommend the following:
Customer/market research: Seek to understand the market/target customers and their consumption habits, determine their wants and how you can own a niche and deliver value.
Confirm/revise the business roadmap: With research data, determine and decide upon offering, timeline, resources and measurements. Bring in an operations team member to lead or project manage across all aspects related to the introduction or launch.
Integrate the strategic communications plan with the business roadmap
Build/update the vision, goals, objectives, narrative/story, positioning, messaging
Establish key outcomes/measurements that the introduction/launch must achieve in order to be successful. Be specific. Be clear. Be realistic.
Identify the introduction/launch audiences, and map specific tactics to the audiences, the objectives and the outcomes/measurements by timeline
Measure when the programme starts, measure halfway and measure at the end of the programme. If something starts to go against the data or the assumptions partway, realign and check whether the plan needs to adapt to the changes in environment, factors or audience behaviour.
At the conclusion of the programme based on timeline, be honest, detailed and realistic about what worked and what didn’t, and how to prepare mitigation tactics for the next introduction or launch.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, 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 and growth marketing: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website.
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