Aligning your comms and content strategy with your business plan

So, I started at the beginning and asked about their business plan. What were they trying to achieve? And how did they see their comms fitting into that? The colleague replied that they hadn’t thought about how comms related to their business plan, they didn’t need massive growth as they already had a capacity issue and in fact thought of comms as something they should do, rather than what it could do.

We live in a world where we have communication tools in our arm’s reach often 24/7, where we are given the option to communicate by telephone, by text, by social media platforms and by emails amongst other routes, where the world and its wife has a profile, many building their own personal brands. Communication is an expectation. Yet why do we do it? Obviously on a personal level, we often do it to educate others about what is going on, find out information or impart information. And the same is true of B2B communication, but with the underlying principle that it needs to have purpose – what are you trying to achieve? Who are you talking to? Where will you find them? How will you engage them? And how does that relate to your company. Or to put in marcoms speak:

- Comms objectives: how do your comms fit with your business strategy?

- Target audiences: who are you looking to promote your business to?

- Customer journey: where do you find them and how do you get them to engage with you?

- Key message communication: what are the key things you want to say to them?

- The comms bridge: how to say those key things in an interesting say to make them interested in your company

- Content calendar and schedule: repeat, repeat, repeat until it resonates

- Evaluation: checking in at each point to what works, what doesn’t, when and how.

Of course, this will look different for those with different starting points or objectives. If it is about growth and finding the maximum number of potential customers you might want to look at cross sector marcoms or linking events to comms so that you have capacity to meet audiences who are not known to you presently. If it is about credibility, then it could be about profile building within socials, PR and thought leadership. If it is about attracting talent to your organisation, it could be both of these things but with different key messages.

Communication is essential in any business – whether that be internal to your team members – or external to clients, stakeholders within your industry or an Another. However, communication without purpose is like shouting in the rain – it might feel good at the time, but no-one will hear you. And of course, if no-one can hear you, then you’re talking to yourself.