Unleashing Your Potential
Aligning PR and marketing with business goals is essential to winning strategies
Communications – and the strategic role of messaging and content creation – has never been more important. The instantaneous access to information, news, data and market intelligence itself has disrupted the media and journalists in tandem with marketing and PR professionals. Never has there been such a time where information can be accessed any time of day using devices from smartphones to tablets to televisions.
One thing is for sure, change is constant, and the world of communications is changing at an amazing speed. The traditional channels have been disrupted. That’s not just down to social media, messaging apps, AI and automated marketing, but the notion that organisations, businesses and brands can interact directly with end users/customers/consumers (however one categorises the purchaser) has changed the paradigm that worked previously. In today’s digital world of communications, that also thanks to the pandemic includes video conference calls (Zoom/Microsoft Teams) any time of day, messaging has become one of the most critical requirements on a daily basis. Not only are you expected to deliver the constantly updating company messages, but also how you portray the company brand is vital too. This requires the communications internally as well as externally to be on message and to be delivered in such a way that everyone understands their role within the bigger picture.
This constant change demands several fundamentals are remembered to ensure that any campaign or communications task is successful.
Firstly, the strategy must align to the business goals. As communications professionals in disruptive technology sectors, we understand the hard work that goes into developing new innovations and the need to get them on to the market as quickly as possible, but the messaging (playbook) incorporating the uncertainties, competitive analysis, vision, mission, objectives and product concept statement is a vital first step to outline the innovation you have and where it fits in what markets. After this has been agreed, how you message the innovation to the relevant market sectors must then be developed in conjunction with decisions made on what tools to deliver with. The media is one ‘tool’ to use, but examples of others on the agenda should include social media, webinars and events (virtual and face-to-face when they come back), database marketing and newsletters, self-publishing using videos and podcasts to name a couple, and your website. These marketing and PR functions should all work in tandem with the sales function at the front end to bring about a successful outcome.
That leads me on to the second key foundation, and that is measurement. Everything can and should be measured against agreed criteria. The opportunity with today’s automated marketing technology (martech) enables distribution, monitoring and evaluation of varying degrees of sophistication, but at the minimum level will allow both consultant and client to ensure the project is on track and ticks the right boxes.
This requirement of developing key performance indicators (KPIs) also needs to reflect outcomes (results) and not solely focused on inputs. The sea change in technologies that are disrupting the media and communications landscape has turned into a veritable tsunami, with no sign of stopping any time soon. That places a huge responsibility on communications professionals – both consultants and in-house executives – to ensure that they use the appropriate tools to execute the strategy, from online integrated marketing through to global real time media briefings, without dumbing-down or losing the essential ‘creative spark’ that turns a satisfactory campaign into a stunningly successful one.
Perhaps, though, the biggest demand placed on all of us, is the consistent need to be authentic. The pressing needs of deadlines, clients confronting momentous industry challenges or competitor attacks can each provide an excuse to go to ‘hype overdrive’ and let spin take over. That’s not sustainable and ultimately will backfire. Authenticity in today’s technology led markets lives or dies by trust in products, services and solutions, and equally important the messages and communications strategies that support them. Without trust, the new innovation will just not get past go.