A communications strategy provides a structured approach to effectively conveying messages, goals, and values to target audiences, both internally and externally.
Doing this successfully involves a few key components, or stages, which should be considered sequentially. These are as follows and further in this explainer you will see more details on each.
This should be considered in priority order for your two main objectives – attracting and engaging key audiences.
Below are a range of resources and thinking for each stage of building and delivering your communications strategy.
An example: resources for building an ‘Always on’ communications strategy
For the following framework, the focus is on building a company’s overall approach to communications, also called a company’s ‘Always on’ communication strategy. This framework can also be used for building and delivering specific campaigns, thought leadership content series or any other account-based-marketing or targeted campaign approach.
Ideation and planning
From a branding perspective, you need to ensure your name, logo and brand on a page speak to your key audience/s. Once you have defined this, the direction of your marketing strategy will be easier to develop. Note – an element of what works for and engages your key audience will be tested over time with content marketing.
Depending on where your company is starting in this process, for those starting at the beginning of building a brand, the branding and design explainer is a good place to start.
Once your audience/s have been defined and your visual brand has been ideated, you can move to things such as your tone of voice, content framework document and suggest distribution cadence. A content calendar is often used with internal stakeholders to show progression of ‘what’ you want to say and ‘how’, to ‘who’. All of these elements will play into your marketing strategy.
Use the ‘ideation’ stage of this process to work through the – who, what, when, why and how of who your company is trying to engage. For more inspiration on this, you can read Byron Sharp’s ‘How brands grow.’
All of these elements become the backbone of a successfully delivered and consistent approach to branding and communications.
Creation
When creating content, focus on the golden rule of ‘content repurposing’. This means, presume all audiences have short attention spans. Think about how to stretch all content (written, video or audio) to ensure maximum milage out of every asset and message created.
One example of how to do this is - Recording a video interview with a company key opinion leader that answers a need from a key audience, host it on YouTube, share it on LinkedIn, share snippets of the video on LinkedIn (as a quote graphic or video), then create a blog post out of key insights, which you can then share in a newsletter. Communication and messaging must be considered in ‘lines not dots’ - meaning that repurposing all content matters only if the message is delivered consistently.
Remember “You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them into buying it. You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you’re advertising to a moving parade.” David Ogilvy
For writing, we recommend using extensions such as the Hemmingway App, which can be used to provide phrasing and grammar edits. The book ‘Copywrong to copywriter’ is another resource for early-career writers looking to understand how to write like an advertising copywriter.
Execution
A mistake often made is to focus too much on ideation and not enough on distribution (sharing content, PR and other marketing activities externally). Both need equal weighting to be successful. As some say, “a job half done is a job as good as none”.
A distribution strategy should ensure that you’re delivering as referenced in your content calendar, while measuring key deliverables you’re trying to achieve (sign ups, new trials, conversion to paying customer etc). Each piece of content can be seen as testing the market for engagement on a particular topic or idea. For this reason, when looking to measure and evaluate the success of your communications plan, KPIs or key deliverables must be determined before you start your campaign. This includes understanding what idea (or hypothesis) you’re looking to test (i.e. That your audience needs more information on tax regulation in the US, so a downloadable and gated resource on ‘Steps to consider’ has been created and shared) and how you’re going to test it, which means how long you’ll test this thinking, and what success looks like from a marketing perspective.
This allows for effective reporting and optimisation on the success of marketing output, periodically.
Optimisation
What isn’t measured, isn’t managed. Measuring campaigns is vital for improving and scaling resource allocation. Optimisation of campaigns (or your core strategy) should be done on a periodic basis.
You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. This means evolution is vital in marketing and how we communicate.
When we look at measurement and optimisation of campaigns, companies like Snowflake and Intercom made the RICE framework popular. While it was built for product managers, the idea also stands true for marketers. Have your ‘Always on’ strategy, as well as ideas that you test for increased attraction or engagement of a key audience. These ideas can be measured using the RICE framework, which can help you prioritise based on both impact and probability of success.
Note – for more information on building frameworks for these outcomes, you can review Andrew Chen’s The Cold Start Problem, his newsletter or access his growth course, and associated resources, via Reforge.
Please reach out to our Folks to discuss this in further detail. With a range of experience, we can often direct you to a specific resource to best suit your needs.
This resource, and any guidance within it, must not be relied on as legal advice. We recommend that you seek specific advice to deliver an outcome best suited to your situation.
A communications strategy provides a structured approach to effectively conveying messages, goals, and values to target audiences, both internally and externally.
Doing this successfully involves a few key components, or stages, which should be considered sequentially. These are as follows and further in this explainer you will see more details on each.
This should be considered in priority order for your two main objectives – attracting and engaging key audiences.
Below are a range of resources and thinking for each stage of building and delivering your communications strategy.
An example: resources for building an ‘Always on’ communications strategy
For the following framework, the focus is on building a company’s overall approach to communications, also called a company’s ‘Always on’ communication strategy. This framework can also be used for building and delivering specific campaigns, thought leadership content series or any other account-based-marketing or targeted campaign approach.
Ideation and planning
From a branding perspective, you need to ensure your name, logo and brand on a page speak to your key audience/s. Once you have defined this, the direction of your marketing strategy will be easier to develop. Note – an element of what works for and engages your key audience will be tested over time with content marketing.
Depending on where your company is starting in this process, for those starting at the beginning of building a brand, the branding and design explainer is a good place to start.
Once your audience/s have been defined and your visual brand has been ideated, you can move to things such as your tone of voice, content framework document and suggest distribution cadence. A content calendar is often used with internal stakeholders to show progression of ‘what’ you want to say and ‘how’, to ‘who’. All of these elements will play into your marketing strategy.
Use the ‘ideation’ stage of this process to work through the – who, what, when, why and how of who your company is trying to engage. For more inspiration on this, you can read Byron Sharp’s ‘How brands grow.’
All of these elements become the backbone of a successfully delivered and consistent approach to branding and communications.
Creation
When creating content, focus on the golden rule of ‘content repurposing’. This means, presume all audiences have short attention spans. Think about how to stretch all content (written, video or audio) to ensure maximum milage out of every asset and message created.
One example of how to do this is - Recording a video interview with a company key opinion leader that answers a need from a key audience, host it on YouTube, share it on LinkedIn, share snippets of the video on LinkedIn (as a quote graphic or video), then create a blog post out of key insights, which you can then share in a newsletter. Communication and messaging must be considered in ‘lines not dots’ - meaning that repurposing all content matters only if the message is delivered consistently.
Remember “You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them into buying it. You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you’re advertising to a moving parade.” David Ogilvy
For writing, we recommend using extensions such as the Hemmingway App, which can be used to provide phrasing and grammar edits. The book ‘Copywrong to copywriter’ is another resource for early-career writers looking to understand how to write like an advertising copywriter.
Execution
A mistake often made is to focus too much on ideation and not enough on distribution (sharing content, PR and other marketing activities externally). Both need equal weighting to be successful. As some say, “a job half done is a job as good as none”.
A distribution strategy should ensure that you’re delivering as referenced in your content calendar, while measuring key deliverables you’re trying to achieve (sign ups, new trials, conversion to paying customer etc). Each piece of content can be seen as testing the market for engagement on a particular topic or idea. For this reason, when looking to measure and evaluate the success of your communications plan, KPIs or key deliverables must be determined before you start your campaign. This includes understanding what idea (or hypothesis) you’re looking to test (i.e. That your audience needs more information on tax regulation in the US, so a downloadable and gated resource on ‘Steps to consider’ has been created and shared) and how you’re going to test it, which means how long you’ll test this thinking, and what success looks like from a marketing perspective.
This allows for effective reporting and optimisation on the success of marketing output, periodically.
Optimisation
What isn’t measured, isn’t managed. Measuring campaigns is vital for improving and scaling resource allocation. Optimisation of campaigns (or your core strategy) should be done on a periodic basis.
You aren't advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade. This means evolution is vital in marketing and how we communicate.
When we look at measurement and optimisation of campaigns, companies like Snowflake and Intercom made the RICE framework popular. While it was built for product managers, the idea also stands true for marketers. Have your ‘Always on’ strategy, as well as ideas that you test for increased attraction or engagement of a key audience. These ideas can be measured using the RICE framework, which can help you prioritise based on both impact and probability of success.
Note – for more information on building frameworks for these outcomes, you can review Andrew Chen’s The Cold Start Problem, his newsletter or access his growth course, and associated resources, via Reforge.
Please reach out to our Folks to discuss this in further detail. With a range of experience, we can often direct you to a specific resource to best suit your needs.
This resource, and any guidance within it, must not be relied on as legal advice. We recommend that you seek specific advice to deliver an outcome best suited to your situation.
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