In today’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world, good communications plays a more strategic and important role than ever before.
Whether your main stakeholders are investors, customers, employees, suppliers, partners - or all of the above - they expect more information about your business. And your ability to deliver that (in a digestible format that resonates with them) will directly correlate with your ability to secure investment, win customers, attract and retain talent and so on.
The ability to communicate to the above audiences takes a unique set of skills and tools that often aren't present in business. As companies grow, they’ll almost certainly invest in demand generation marketing teams, but asking a demand gen marketer to develop and execute a comprehensive comms strategy is like asking a plumber to fix your TV.
Some companies get to the stage when they invest in a communications manager to maximise these opportunities. But all too often, these comms managers report into the marketing department, and end up just communicating and amplifying marketing activities. Of course that’s important and valuable, but it’s unlikely to solve the challenges listed at the top of this post. And this can lead to frustration for the newly hired comms manager who knows they could be doing more.
Then there’s the companies who bring in an agency with a pricey monthly retainer. All too often I’ve seen these agencies with no management or clear direction from their clients - just a simple and vague brief to ‘get more coverage’ or ‘help articulate our strategy.’ And this usually ends up with the client believing the agency is no good, and undertaking a lengthy and expensive RFP process to find another agency (rinse and repeat).
Sorry for the bleak post! It’s a world I’m familiar with and passionate about.
So, onto the solution. Whatever your size, scale, or need for comms, the most important thing is to ensure that your communications activities are linked to your business objectives. So if you are looking to increase sales, then it almost certainly makes sense to deeply align comms to marketing activities. However, a different approach may be required if you are looking to attract and retain talent.
In order to help you get it right and maximise your invest in communications (or get you started) Coach Communications offers bespoke, short-term, project-based consultancy. Using decades of comms experience in B2B brands, Coach Communications will understand your business objectives and the role that communications can play to help you achieve these. You’ll then get a playbook with easy to implement short, medium and long-term objectives that you can deliver within the resources available to you. No ongoing costly retainers or big consultancy fees.
Read more about common comms challenges in this blog (link in comments), and get in touch if you want to discuss your comms challenges and how Coach Communications can help
Are you facing one or more of these communications challenges?
- Stakeholders who want more from communications
- No in-house communications expertise
- A comms person or team who need direction and support
- Expensive and unaccountable agencies
If so, Coach Communications can get you set up for sustainable communications success.
Read our blog to find out more (link in comments).
#Communications #StrategicValue #CommsChallenges
