IS COMMS HAVING A CRISIS?
Laura Perkes
Public Relations Specialist, Communications Advisor & Author working with innovative and diverse organisations putting people & purpose first. Brand Storytelling I Thought Leadership I Reputation Management.
This newsletter edition has been inspired by all the posts I see on LinkedIn with a PR, Marketing, Social Media flavour.
It’s also been inspired by the myriad of job roles of the people posting PR, Marketing and Social Media related content.
When I say inspired, what I actually mean is ‘really fricking confused’, which is worrying, considering it's an industry I work in. So if I'm confused, then how the hell are you navigating the comms landscape?
LET'S PUT THIS INTO CONTEXT:
When I first started working in the PR industry, back in 2004, there were three very distinct ways that brands could communicate with their customers, clients, fans and prospects:
?? PR
?? Marketing
??Advertising
All three of these disciplines had one aim: to raise the profile of the brand and communicate about it externally
All three of these disciplines had very defined roles in terms of their function and worked alongside each other to drive the brand forward. All three disciplines fed into the overall growth strategy of the business.
'Back in the day' there were three main channels of communication:
In the early 2000s the internet exploded in the and the game changed.
All of a sudden there were more editorial opportunities for brands
All of a sudden advertisers were offered other opportunities to advertise to their key customers at a much more affordable price
All of a sudden marketers were offered a new way of attracting leads into a business and a new way of nurturing those leads.
For years, ‘traditional’ channels and ‘modern’ channels worked well alongside each other. Not everyone is an early adopter of new technology, so by creating a digital presence alongside the traditional print and broadcast channels, brands could dominate the market and use all platforms available to them, to communicate to their key customers, attract new leads and create superfans.
Then social media disrupted the narrative and the game changed again
I remember it well. I was working at an agency at the time and we were faced with a dilemma: should social media be the responsibility of the marketing team, or the PR team?
We decided that it would sit with the PR team as we were better suited to communicating with customers and creating relationships while simultaneously building trust and brand loyalty.
Plus, we would also be able to use our PR strategy to drive the social media strategy, ensuring that media coverage was shared externally via social media as well as through specific marketing campaigns created by the marketing team.
That was over 12 years ago and A LOT has changed since then (which could well be the understatement of the century!)
The juggernaut of social media meant that brands would work with specialist social media teams. It had earned its own place at the table.
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS:
The question still remains: does social media fall under PR, or marketing? Or has it become its own sub-genre?
From my perspective, it straddles both, hence why it's been able to carve its own place at the table. However, it still needs to be strategic. The social media strategy needs to plug into the PR strategy and the Marketing strategy if it’s to maintain or improve a brand’s market position and reputation.
With so many opportunities online there has been a massive shift in how we consume content
As such, any one person has the ability to become an ‘expert’
Any one person has the ability to make more sales
But if you’re a brand, this approach to running a business neglects the one thing that you’ve spent years building: your reputation and brand loyalty.
A DISCONNECT IN CONNECTION?
As platforms and channels evolve, naturally you’ll encounter glitches along the way
New channels bring fresh opportunities, but they also shine a light on weaknesses and uncover new threats to your business too
Many brands put a huge emphasis on social media to deliver their growth goals, forgetting that the point of social media is to be social
But does it build your reputation and brand loyalty?
Is it really driving the growth that your business needs?
Is it driving those needs sustainably, or are you constantly spending more money acquiring new customers because you haven’t built the loyalty needed to keep existing customers?
(At this point you may be questioning where the comms crisis is, as it appears that PR, Marketing, Advertising and Social Media still have defined roles and all plug into the overall business growth strategy)
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However, the lines are blurred in terms of the role and functionality of each discipline. Which is why it’s so important for your internal and external support teams to work together in tandem, rather than in silo (as an example: giving someone a slice of cake for their birthday is nice, but giving someone a whole cake makes more impact, becomes memorable and means they'll talk about you for ages afterwards!)
Each discipline can only take your business so far individually, but by bringing them all together to work towards the same end goal, you’ll remove at least 65% of the friction currently going on behind the scenes.
THE POWER OF PR
I’m going to focus on PR for a sec…..mainly because it’s my specialism, but also because this is where things start to get complicated and confusing
PR is an abbreviation of ‘Public Relations’ - the ability to communicate about your brand, products and services to your 'public'
Therefore, if everything you say and do is PR, then technically, marketing and social media fall under PR (but you’ll fight me in the comments for making that statement so I’ll leave it there…..)
Public Relations is often misunderstood, with Founders, CEOs and MDs believing that PR is all about securing media coverage (AKA publicity). Publicity plays a role in PR, but they’re two very different disciplines (I wrote a blog about it last week, which you can read here as it defines the differences between PR and Publicity)
If PR is everything that you say and do, then every channel and every tactic that you use to communicate to your key customers, prospects and superfans, falls under PR.
However, few decision makers want to give the power over to their PR team, so instead of the PR team overseeing the implementation of all internal and external comms and driving the business growth strategy, each discipline gets to create its own strategy
Rather than having an over-arching comms strategy, most brands will have:
With each team focussing on implementing their own strategy, there’s no capacity to consider how its working towards the overall business strategy - or how its performing alongside the other disciplines strategies
Exhausting, isn’t it?
So now let's throw comms into the mix and see what happens!
I believe that the term ‘comms’ has been introduced as an umbrella term to encapsulate all forms of internal and external communication. It’s the most vanilla, inoffensive word that isn’t going to create an ego-driven shit storm between each individual team, who are each fighting to be top dog and prove that their discipline is the best (I may not have worked agency-side for 11 years, but I would bet my house on this being worse now than ever before)
Putting my own ego aside, I can understand why comms roles have been created - not only to keep those unruly creatives under control ??, but to oversee the ever-evolving channels, platforms and disciplines that brands can leverage to their advantage.
(I haven’t touched upon influencer marketing or affiliate marketing as I'd be here all day dissecting different comms tactics!)
If there's all this confusion around each discipline and its blurred lines, then how are you, the Founder, CEO or MD supposed to know what support you need to bring into the business?
For the sake of simplicity, this is where I’d recommend working with a Comms Consultant, who can swoop in like Superman and save you from making terrible mistakes that will risk the reputation of your brand.
A Comms Consultant knows enough about each individual discipline and how they work alongside the others collectively. (PR will drive traffic into your website, Marketing will capture leads and nurture them, ads will follow them around social media until they become a customer or a superfan)
I would argue that the term 'comms' has muddied the water, as PR literally means 'communicating with your public', but it's something that I've accepted and embraced (hence using Comms Consultant in my title). And as my husband would say: it it what it is.
IN SUMMARY
There’s a lot to unpack in this newsletter and I hope that I’ve explained it well enough to avoid any further confusion as to which discipline you need to focus on in your business (clue: it’s actually all of them, #sorry) and how to define the role that each discipline plays in delivering your overall business growth strategy, individually and collectively.
Depending on the stage your business is at, your need for each of these disciplines will vary;
? As a start-up you won’t need PR straight away, but you will need to define your brand, your messaging and your target audience before you start communicating with them.
? If you’ve been in business for a few years and have social media, marketing and advertising all wrapped up, but haven’t yet invested in PR to raise your profile, extend your reach and improve your market position (while maintaining your reputation and brand loyalty), then PR is the next natural step for you.
? If you’re a well-known brand that already works with internal and external support on PR, Marketing, Social and Advertising, then you’re more likely to need ad-hoc support from a consultant when it comes to developing and overseeing your comms strategy
OR you may need to invest in a Comms Audit to ensure that each comms tactic is delivering ROI and driving ROI without eating into your profits (or dividends!)
Regardless of the stage you’re at, there’s one thing that need to be prioritised: your business strategy. Define the milestones you want to hit and when you want to hit them (this will help you make better hiring decisions and set realistic KPIs)
Once you’ve done that, then you can bring in a Comms Consultant who will create a comms roadmap with you bring the business strategy to life, using each comms tactic at the right time, whether that's using internal or external support
As a PR Specialist and Comms Consultant myself, there are many ways in which I can support your business growth strategy:
?? An in-person Strategy Day with my ops team
?? A thorough Comms Audit that looks at the performance of your comms tactics and how well they’re delivering on the business objectives
?? Creating and executing bespoke PR campaigns?
If you’re interested in finding out more about how we can support your business growth plans, either email me on [email protected], or schedule a consultation call with me