Trust and credibility are essential for any corporate communications (CC) campaign, whether you want to inform, persuade, or engage your target audience. But how can you build and maintain these qualities through your CC campaign? Here are some tips to help you create a trustworthy and credible CC campaign that resonates with your audience.
The first step to building trust and credibility is to know who you are communicating with. You need to understand their needs, preferences, expectations, and challenges. You can use various methods to research your audience, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, or analytics. The more you know about your audience, the more you can tailor your CC campaign to their interests, values, and pain points.
Maintain honesty and avoid making overcommitments. To build your credibility function as an advisor rather than adopting a marketing approach.
The most important is authenticity, genuineness and transparency. These serve as the initial building blocks for establishing trust and credibility. Following closely, case stories, which offer real-world examples illustrating experiences, hold significant importance as well. Also, we must remember that trust and credibility take time to build, and consistency is key. We have to be patient.
Being transparent in communication and know what the Market (Target Customer) needs are. And use more data driven communication which will add value to their existing relationship with the organization. Add weekly progress about products/services/ and also can add success stories. Appreciate the customer contribution.
In my experience, consistency in messaging across communication channels and to different audiences is crucial to maintaining trust and credibility. The key to consistency lies in transparency and authenticity. An organisation that merely keeps track of previous messaging to maintain consistency may eventually make mistakes. Genuine and authentic messaging will always resonate with the target audience and will lead to consistency with minimal effort. In addition, crisis communications and how a company handles crises can also impact trust. Being transparent, accountable, and swift in addressing issues can help maintain or even enhance credibility.
Corporate Communication requires you to have a very good understanding of views, sentiments and response by segment or stakeholder group. Each group may have some issues cross-over but message delivery might be diffeerent. Issues monitoring and trend analysis needs to be well organised delivering insights -- real time. AI Apps can assist.
The second step is to define what you want to achieve with your CC campaign and what you want to say to your audience. You need to have clear and specific goals that are aligned with your business objectives and your audience's needs. You also need to have consistent and relevant messages that support your goals and convey your value proposition. Your messages should be clear, concise, and compelling, and avoid jargon, exaggeration, or ambiguity.
Think about your message - how would you say it to a person in your target audience if you passed them in line for coffee? Complicated language makes others work too hard to understand you. The clearer and more conversational your language is, the more your audience will understand it, the more they’ll pay attention, and the more trust you’ll build. Say what you mean, not what makes you sound smart or clever.
In my experience, it is extremely important to know your audience and be able to communicate in a language they understand or can relate to. How do you get to know your audience? Interact directly with them in their environment and when conducting research it is important to conduct in depth interviews with a small sample of your target audience.
Being a professor and having taught segmentation, target marketing and profiling it is surprising how even welll funded firms do not do this too well articulated. Getting the basics or these principles right assists in clearer key benefit claims by segment... or even at one to one level.
A message filled with confusing facts, complicated language and jargon will never serve its purpose. To have an effective message, the objective of the campaign needs to be clear and defined. Another element to be considered is the visual appeal. Visually delightful campaigns increase resonance.
One key aspect of knowing your audience is segmentation. Not all your customers or stakeholders are the same. By dividing your audience into segments based on demographics, psychographics, or other relevant factors, you can create messages that are highly targeted and resonate with each group. For instance, what appeals to a young urban professional might not be the same as what resonates with a retired senior citizen.
The third step is to choose the best channels and formats to deliver your CC campaign to your audience. You need to consider where your audience spends their time, how they consume information, and what they respond to. You can use a mix of channels and formats, such as websites, blogs, social media, newsletters, podcasts, videos, webinars, or infographics. You should also use a variety of content types, such as stories, testimonials, case studies, facts, or data, to appeal to different learning styles and emotions.
When putting your channel mix in place, think outside of your own/earned channels as well. Some ideas: -Parnerships with industry associations that are relevant for your audience -Parnerships with influencers or thought leaders that can speak about your brand -Sponsored articles on media outlets your audiences follow (digital or print) -Ads on platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Netflix besides Google ads, social or display net works. Besides this, don't forget your employees can be your biggest ambassadors. Establishing an employee ambassador program for example on LinkedIn, if that channel makes sense for your campaign (especially in b2b), is something that can help with one campaign but continue on building your brand beyond it.
Also remember while crafting your CC campaigns you're serving your campaign to an attention deteriorated audience. Your "Hooks" "Attention Headline" and a little bit of gamification/animation to convey the message should be & will be the success basement
Defined objectives guide us to the channels we think would be most effective. With a slew of channels, it is very easy to get confused and feel lost. Discussing with the team and brainstorming helps in choosing the right platform for optimum results.
Your content will only succeed when it resonates with the right people and is delivered through the right mediums. Regularly update your strategies based on feedback and performance data to keep your campaign relevant and effective.
The fourth step is to be transparent and authentic in your CC campaign. You need to disclose your sources, motives, and affiliations, and avoid any misleading or deceptive claims. You also need to show your personality, voice, and values, and avoid any generic or impersonal content. You should also invite feedback, questions, and dialogue from your audience, and respond to them in a timely and respectful manner. By being transparent and authentic, you can build rapport, trust, and loyalty with your audience.
Maybe if legal considerations were all sorted and there are no immediate needs to rectify like dangerous acts.. being expressive and authentic in communication is a good approach.
A piece of advice while responding to queries and feedback, don't use that ORM chat bot, be a human being to address the concern and queries of your customers. It's better to be a late human reply than an instant bot reply.
The fifth step is to provide value and quality in your CC campaign. You need to offer useful, relevant, and engaging content that solves your audience's problems, answers their questions, or satisfies their curiosity. You also need to ensure that your content is accurate, credible, and up-to-date, and that you cite reliable and authoritative sources. You should also proofread, edit, and format your content to ensure that it is clear, error-free, and easy to read.
Your employee deserves best in class CC campaign. Don't compromise on the quality, be it messages, creativity or images. Three TIPs I can offer here: - Spend 30mins everyday to learn about creative campaigns around the world. Get inspired. - After finalizing the creative, give it one last review on how to make it even better - Keep the copy simple. Even a 10 year old should understand.
The sixth and final step is to measure and improve your CC campaign. You need to track and analyze the performance of your CC campaign using various metrics, such as reach, engagement, conversion, satisfaction, or retention. You also need to collect and evaluate the feedback from your audience, such as comments, reviews, ratings, or testimonials. You should use the data and feedback to identify what works and what doesn't, and to make adjustments and improvements to your CC campaign accordingly.
On to the next one. It's tempting and really easy to jump straight into the next big thing, once you've delivered your campaign. Take some time to review your pre, during, and post campaign comms. Identify the 'hero' activities, messages, and channels that had the biggest impact. And note the elements of the campaign that didn't quite land. Also measure impact by audience, business unit, and region if you're Global. So you're better informed and equipped for next time. And remember if you've smashed it, share your results with the business to demonstrate your value add, and celebrate with your team. Everyone loves some recognition.
Conveying a complex business message in a story format works every time. People love stories. Revolve your CC campaign around people, how the solution is helping people, business and communities around you.