How to reset your communications and marketing teams
Associations who have successfully come through the peak of the pandemic, are now finding their communications and marketing strategies in need of an upgrade. This makes sense, as the market, membership, and consumer behaviours and expectations, have shifted hugely over the last few years and as such, brands, messaging and even positioning can appear tired, less impactful, and in need of a refresh.
Communications management guides the strategic, deliberate, sustained and measured two-way relationship an organisation has with its stakeholders. So, when our stakeholders change, so too must our communications.
But how to go about this in a way that engages the team, stays in budget, uses your existing resources, and reaches a new height of effectiveness?
Where are you at?
Many Associations saw their communications dictated by pandemic-related updates and news flashes. This was a valuable contribution by Associations, however, as a result some marketing teams have become disconnected from their communication goals and even the strategic plan.
Communication strategies written pre-pandemic are now out of date, irrelevant, or even forgotten, and this may manifest as an ad hoc social media feed, tired looking graphics, dwindling enewsletter open rates, or a dated website.
Most CEOs I’ve spoken to talk about a need to ‘reset’ and ‘refocus’ the marketing effort, and the best team structure and skills needed to get the communications back on track.
The work of communications in a crisis or prolonged time of stress is different to communications work in a ‘normal’ state. Some marketing teams are still caught in the short-lead, reactive ways of working, typical of the last few years, and need to stop, reflect and reset.
The workforce challenge
Associations need to ask: Do I have the right team in place? Do I remove, replace, outsource or invest in my people?
The answer lies in an overlapping number of issues that need to be considered individually and then as a whole. The below framework will help Associations determine how to structure their teams going forward.
1- Where are you headed? – your strategic plan
Professional communication managers know and understand your purpose or ‘why’, your audience profiles and what it is communications can do to help the organisation achieve its strategic plan.
They then use communication tools to activate the strategic goals, such as brand, member communication, engagement, sponsorship, product development, marketing, PR and advocacy.
2- Strategic communications roadmap
The next step is to develop the communication goals –signposts about what success looks like, and what difference we want to inspire.
A communication goal could entail articulating your value proposition to your membership group and stakeholders, advocating for the profession you represent to state and federal MPs, or reviewing and rebuilding your offering to members at each stage of their professional journey, etc.
Goals set the destination and impact for the work, then you look at how the work will be done.
3- Communication strategies
This is where we all want to get to, work descriptions as actions. I.e., to raise the issue, we are representing to a certain audience group, we might run an awareness week campaign or a PR campaign. These are the strategies that determine what skillset, experience and resource level we need in the team.
4- Now you can assess the team
Only by knowing the scope of the strategies, informed by and connected to the strategic goals, can we start to unpack what and who you need in your communications and marketing team.
The professions of communications and marketing have grown and evolved rapidly. The scope ranges from being a copywriter, PR specialist, designer, photographer, strategist, SEO and SEM specialist, event organiser, videographer, speech writer, and everything in between. Each of these skills is a specialist area, so I encourage leaders and CEOs to honestly consider: What are the skill expectations you have of your team, and are they appropriate to the level of experience and package you are offering?
5- Remove, replace, outsource, or invest?
The skills and make-up of your team needs to be assessed against the communications strategies you want to implement. What can they do, want to do, or want to learn to do? Here are some questions to ask yourself.
- What do you need in-house and what could be outsourced?
- When communications is looking after publications, marketing, events, membership engagement, sponsorship and the website, have you allocated enough budget to do this right?
- Do your team want to learn more skills, or are they resistant to training?
- Are you willing to invest time into staff training? Or do you need results immediately?
- What do you understand of what it takes to do this work? (It is important to understand the process to do something such as write, build and distribute an enewsletter to know how to cost it).
- What value does your organisation place on this function? Does your Marketing Manager address the Board or present and deliver on an annual budget?
These issues matched with the attitude and energy of your team will help you consider the best way forward and deliver a communications and marketing program that will help you achieve your strategic goals.
