Boost your marketing and PR from a support team to a strategic function
Do any of these sound familiar?
"Can you just put out a quick press release?"
"Something’s not selling, can you do another social post?"
"Is it OK to send an extra newsletter this month?"
"Could we use the creative I like?"
Yes, I thought so. I’ve heard them too. Many times.
Requests like these are normal. It’s true what they say: everyone’s a marketer or communicator. How you manage these requests is what matters, and this is something I get asked about a lot by clients of all scales and sizes.
If you’re seeking advice about situations like these, it might be because your colleagues see you and your team as a support team rather than a strategic function. Perhaps this is because your team is actually operating in a supporting rather than strategic role. That’s something for you to think about.
How might you transform your marketing and PR team into the best, most strategic team you know you can be?
I’m going to respond to this question in two parts.
In this blog, I’ll respond as a consultant and former marcomms director. I’ll offer a framework you can use. In a follow-up blog, I’ll respond as a coach and suggest some questions that prompt you to think about what might be underlying this situation and actions you might want to take to remedy it.
Here is a link to the second part.
A word of warning before I begin: There is no magic bullet. Change takes time. You can’t change other people, as they say, but you can change how you and your team operate.
My advice gives some suggestions about what you might want to do to operate more strategically as a marketing and PR team. You’ll need to practise this again and again over time. Be patient and stick in there. And of course, please take my advice and make it your own. If you like my suggestions, adapt them to be right for you and the context in which you work.
A final disclaimer: Remember that for a whole bunch of reasons, some organisations and people will always see marketing and PR as a support team. This might be outside of your control, no matter how hard you work to put it right. If that’s the case and this isn’t right for you, it’s worth thinking about whether a different organisational culture might suit you better. Perhaps how to make that decision is for a future blog. Watch this space.
ABC Framework
Audience
Business
Confidence
Audience
Understand your audience (consumers or customers) better than anybody else in your organisation or business. Make sure your understanding is grounded in research or data. Be the expert on their needs, wants, and lifestyles. Have authority on how they perceive your product or service. Know what media channels they consume and how they want your brand to be presented. Next time a colleague with no marketing or PR experience tries to give you advice about how to do your job, dazzle them with your consumer insights rooted in research and data. There is nothing more strategic than this.
Business
A plan is good, a strategy is better. A strategy that responds to your business or organisational goals is best. There’s some advice about how to kick-start your marketing strategy in this blog. A strategic marketing and PR team operates to meet the needs of your business. Make the link between the work you do and your organisational goals really explicit and communicate this to the people you work with again and again. It’s worth investing time in internal PR for your strategies and plans. It’s important that the senior colleagues who really matter buy into your strategy.
In some organisations with lots going on but not enough resources to support every initiative, it can be useful to agree on a method to prioritise what does and does not get marketing and PR support. Link this to your business or organisational goals too and show your workings in your strategy, or at least the appendix. A priorities workshop can go down well to bring other people on board with your strategic plans.
Confidence
Perception is reality. When your colleagues perceive you as a confident marketer or PR professional, they’ll trust your abilities to operate strategically. To earn the respect of your colleagues, always follow through on your plans. This goes without saying but is worth mentioning. Then report on outcomes, impact, and return on investment (ROI). Different marketing and PR strategies will dictate different ways of doing this, ranging from analytics to awareness tracking, but always make the link to audience and business goals. When something hasn’t gone to plan, be open and report on this too. Tell people what you’ve learnt and how you’ll do things differently next time.
Finally, a word on the importance of flexibility. While I would love to say that if you follow these steps, no one will ever ask you to post something last minute on Facebook that isn’t on the social media schedule, I can’t make that promise. Sometimes it’s OK to say yes to something in support of another colleague even if it feels unstrategic. Be judicious. Use your judgement. If you’re adaptable when it matters, this will pay off in goodwill too.
I’d love to hear from you if you give this a go or want to chat about how I can help your team to be the most strategic it's ever been. Drop me a line, I can’t wait to hear from you.
Cover image created using DALL-E.
Update 27 June 2024: link added to second part in this series.