The value of working with a strategic communications partner for your business

Brands often ask about the value that a strategic communications and marketing partner can bring to the table. There is a sense that such partners deal with concepts and are not specialists when it comes to provision of end-to-end services. Through this article, we will share about some points about the value a strategic communication structure and process can bring to your brand and team.

In a previous article, we defined and explained strategic communications to be “…concerned with performing against a master plan, and importantly doing the right set of communication things and not just the optics of doing some things.” We pointed out that this is not a new discipline, despite the introduction and use of digital-first frameworks and tools.

The emphasis with applying a strategic communications structure to your brand and organisation is on creating a master plan, that coordinates and uses various channels that the brand owns; in order to support outreach, and influence decision making in favour of the brand.

Without the structure, or the master plan or a target outcome, the brand is simply blindly trying to connect with their audience and has about the same odds as gambling. Sometimes something sticks. Ofttimes the house typically wins.

From a business value perspective, here are several points of value that a strategic communications partner brings to the table.

Work with experts who understand the challenge and can bring a solution to the table efficiently.

The partner can evaluate direction and approach, ask the right questions to form an approach or apply relevant frameworks as well as partner with the executive and/or management team. Over a period of time, the partner would also coach and guide internal resources to eventually take charge of the master plan, execution and outcomes. This encourages leadership, ownership and success.

Your business benefits from efficiency, that is results delivered in a shorter timeframe vs. the inhouse team while building internal capability of your team.

Benefit from a fresh, unbiased perspective from a partner that is aligned with supporting you achieve your business goals

It can be easy to get lost in the day-to-day operations and lose the big-picture perspective needed to create strategy and make mid and long-term decisions. A partner can provide a fresh and neutral take on challenges and marketing matters. The partner would also be equipped with business and analytical frameworks that can be applied to provide more data and information required for decision making.

Your business benefits from being able to move forward with mid and long-term planning without sacrificing the management team’s time away from operational matters.

Bring in differentiation that will help your brand dominate and own an area or niche

The partner will work with the executive team to ask difficult questions and help guide the team towards decisions as well as ownership of those decisions. These questions can lead to research, and information-gathering that a neutral party is better placed to work on.

Once perspective, context and understanding is achieved, the partner works with the executive team on the master plan and how to use communications effectively share, promote, and defend the points of differentiation consistently and frequently across all available marketing and customer channels.

Your business benefits from having a master plan and structure to help achieve wins in the area you can differentiate in, leading to more revenue or growth.

Here are the 5 most common questions we have been asked about providing a strategic communications scope of work.

Q: When should we work with a strategic communications team instead of relying on my inhouse team to execute?

A: We find that organisations usually approach a strategic communications partner when they need to refresh or revise their communication strategy, approach and frameworks. In recent months, some clients have also had to re-evaluate their target audiences and customer profiles. As shared earlier in this article, a partner can provide a fresh and neutral but specialist opinion and perspective to help support the business outcome and the inhouse team as well.

Q: How do we evaluate a strategic communications partner as their past portfolio might not have similar clients or brands?

A: A fair and realistic evaluation would include a briefing about the challenge, with a brief on sharing perspective on how to manage or handle the problem. The proposed idea should be weighed against the lack of internal information or data while keeping in mind whether the thinking process and style aligns with the executive or management team. It’s also useful to arrange a meeting between the partner and the executive/project lead and do a ‘chemistry’ check to see if both parties can work together. Sharing or a walk-through of past case studies or success cases have limited use since the circumstances, and environment where the approach or master plan worked is different. It should not form a major component of the evaluation.

Q: Why is there a business analysis and/or strategy component in the communications and/or marketing proposal?

A: Strategic communications in support of a strategy and or an industry differentiation plan requires understanding the business and its drivers, levers and direction. Without that perspective, the master plan created can only focus on delivery of tactics. If that is what’s required, then the brief should state so and deemphasise the need for strategy in the scope of work.

Q: Why do you need access to my executive team?

A: Positioning and messaging requires understanding the goals and outcomes that the business leaders have set for the organisation. If created without understanding the executive team’s perspective, the messages will be ineffective and require more edits and changes. This is also an inefficient use of a partner’s time. Importantly, without access and by implication ownership of the executive team, marketing and communications will constantly be treated as a nice-to-have instead of a strategic tool to help grow the business.

Q: What outcome can we expect working with a strategic communications partner?

A: That depends on the scope of work. This can be mainly strategy and planning work with a master plan and a playbook to guide and coach the internal team and provide them with signposts to execute on the master plan. It can also include execution work where the partner works through several communications or marketing channels and delivers output.

From a partnership outcome, the organisation should have more clarity on messaging and positioning, when and which channels to use them in as well as how to publicise and defend the organisations strategy and differentiation points to the target audience.

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We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.

Our principal founder is a registered management consultant, certified and recognised by the Institute of Management Consultants Singapore.

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: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce

· Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a seconded marketing and/or PR lead for your brand

Discover more about our services at our website or book an exploratory consultation through this link.

Photo by Cristian Escobar on Unsplash