Since many of us are being forced to make cuts in staffing and resource access, this blog specifically addresses how to manage your marketing and communication department activities with more limited resources. Ultimately, the goal should not only be about reducing headcounts and dividing up tasks but seen as an opportunity to rethink how to move forward, setting a marketing and communications department up for growth and eventual prosperity.
So, let me get started. I believe there are six strategic areas that every marketing communications department should touch in some fashion. They are: Brand Strategy, Paid Outreach, Customer Interactions/ecommerce, Earned media, Partnerships and Technology Transformation.
Brand Strategy is something you should always be mindful of; it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be working on it every day, but it is your true north; it is the direction in which you are moving; it impacts everything that you do from a marketing and communications standpoint; it needs to be reviewed, assessed, and updated on a regular basis; and it encapsulates your values. Without a strong brand strategy, you are moving forward without a rudder.
Paid Outreach includes all the efforts where you pay to push out your communications – through traditional media, digital media and social media (yes, boosting your post is paid outreach, not earned). Its major goal is to raise awareness among all those important audiences you don’t necessarily reach through your current efforts. Paid Outreach expands your universe and gets you in front of people who don’t get exposure to you. Regardless all your other efforts it’s the quickest and most efficient way to reach people.
Customer Communication and Ecommerce. I put this as third since these are your most dedicated fans, and they deserve a good portion of your time. Some products and services have relatively short repurchase cycles, while others take much longer, but regardless, all your past customers are truly your best future, and if you’re in a relationship-oriented business, as most nonprofits are, it behooves you to stay in touch with these folks.
Earned Media involves both media relations and social media. It takes a lot of effort, more than most people who aren’t doing it realize. And I’ve seen many businesses that become too reliant on it and overdo it. Sure, you produce impressions without out-of-pocket costs, but it takes a significant amount of effort to create innovative content and generate many interactions. That is wonderful, but social media must be tempered. I am not a Luddite — I believe in social media and media relations, and I think that if you have a massive budget and you can go out and connect with influencers and get paid placements, then it’s worthwhile. But most organizations don’t have a massive budget.
Partnerships, on the other hand, are an area in which people under-resource. Every organization has partners, whether for commercial or mutual alliance goals. Especially at this time, there are numerous opportunities to collaborate with partners, whether it’s working together and sharing resources, taking advantage of something they do that you don’t do well, offering them something they can’t do and thus gaining some credit among their audience, or finding some overlaps among allied businesses. Partnerships are probably the one area that people should focus on right now. I can give you 1,000 lovely little phrases about how we flourish together and divided we fall, but I’ll spare you. The point is that your partners can be a huge asset to you now and it is a marketing and communications opportunity area everyone should be looking into with more intentionality.
The final one is, for lack of a better description, technological transformation. And this isn’t just about pushing you to use generative AI. It’s basically about going back and looking at every aspect of your marketing department to see how you can function more effectively. (Note that I did not say cheaper, but more effectively). It is about increasing your use of virtual meetings and automated tools. It is about pulling more out of your data that is inherent in your existing reporting, whether it’s more in-depth analysis of your CRM, using the other features in your reporting software, doing a sentiment analysis on your social media posts, testing content and comms distribution channels. I promise you, you can make your department run more effectively if you are more intentional about using the technology that already exists in your organization.
It goes without saying that you can’t do all these at the same time and it’s unlikely that you’re going to get to all of them over the course of the next year. What you need to do is to go back and prioritize. And don’t prioritize based on what you’re doing right now, but what will help your top line. I think for starters Brand Strategy is obviously important, but Customer Communications is vital. And then, squeezing more out of Partnership opportunities – it is low hanging fruit. If budgets allow, increase Paid Outreach. It’s worth noting, as your competitors cut back on Paid Outreach you can increase your presence and share-of-voice. If you want to go ahead put time and effort into Earned Media go for it but just note it’s not the end all or be all especially when your challenges require that you find ways to grow.