A good corporate communication strategy helps businesses share information and engage with audiences in authentic, meaningful ways. It also serves as a useful guide for marketers on how to respond in difficult situations.
Your organization will benefit from putting a lot of effort into building a corporate communication strategy. According to research:
- It takes about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds) for people to form an opinion about your brand. (8ways)
- 88% consumers say authenticity is important when deciding what brands they like and support. (Stackla)
5 Tips for Building a Corporate Communication Strategy
With a corporate communication strategy, your organization will be in a better position to attract and retain customers, handle challenges, and adapt to changes.
Let’s examine some of the keys to a successful corporate communication strategy.
1. Get Key Decision-Makers Involved
Marketing departments and PR teams are typically the ones that take ownership of building a corporate communications strategy. However, it’s critical that key decision-makers in other departments and across all levels of the organization are also actively involved.
After all, every single person in your organization will have a direct or indirect effect on your company’s brand reputation and brand awareness. By involving decision-makers from every department, you can break down organizational silos and foster a better understanding of how to best craft your messaging and tell effective stories about your brand.
2. Perfect Your Brand Messaging
An effective corporate communication strategy requires messaging that clearly and concisely communicates your brand personality and tone.
With proper brand messaging, you can ensure brand consistency and communicate your unique value proposition and brand promise, which should then motivate and inspire your audience to choose your business.
As you build your corporate communication strategy, it’s also important to keep in mind the distribution channels on which you will deliver your communications. These include organic channels like search engines, social media, and local listings, as well as paid media like PPC campaigns and social media ads.
3. Proactively Manage Customer Feedback
Companies with strong corporate communication programs are also usually excellent at proactively managing customer feedback.
This allows them to gauge and measure brand perception based on information that has been shared directly by potential and existing customers. This information is then used to shape their corporate communication strategy.
Unsolicited feedback may be found on your brand’s online listings, social media profiles, business review sites, and other third-party channels. By proactively monitoring and managing these sources (this sometimes requires the deployment of enterprise reputation management software), your company can better understand how people perceive and feel about your brand, and what they think of when they come across your products and services.
4. Act on Insights
After collecting feedback and gaining insights into your corporate brand image, you should empower everyone in your company, from the C-suite to the frontline, to respond quickly and address opportunities.
Act on the information you have to recover detractors, move passives, and activate brand promoters. Strive always to engage meaningfully with customers and stakeholders in cases where there is a crisis, or where your brand reputation may be negatively affected.
If your data tells you there are high-impact issues causing customers to walk away from your brand, act quickly and make the necessary changes or policy improvements.
5. Plan for Crisis
Sometimes, you might be thrown a curveball and find yourself having to deal with negative reviews, social media comments, honest brand mishaps, or a full-blown PR disaster.
A sound corporate communication strategy will help your organization prepare for any unexpected crises that come your way. It’s important to follow companies that have rebuilt their reputation and learn from brands that respond well under pressure and handle the situation.
In times of crisis, take responsibility and move into decisive action to solve the problem. Gather your team to ensure alignment in all types of communications. Most importantly, engage with your customers, especially the promoters who are willing to stand by your brand.
