For many years, marketing, corporate communications and investor relations have been loosely connected by a dotted line in many organizations. Today, however, as organizations undergo digital transformation, rethink traditional approaches to communication and strive to underpin all business strategy with a sense of purpose, I believe it’s more essential than ever that these divisions be fully integrated in order to achieve the kind of consistency and efficiency in messaging that key stakeholders expect. We’ve seen firsthand the convergence of these divisions with our own clients.
In an era where company transparency, speed and agility are becoming increasingly important, one of the best ways for organizations to adapt for the future climate is to combine best practices from all of these divisions. And at a time when content is king, and data and analytics drive decision making, there is a myriad of marketing lessons that corporate communications teams and investor relations teams can use to strengthen their individual and collective impact.
Here’s how:
First, Focus On Alignment
The power of alignment that can come from integrating marketing, communication and investor relations teams more closely cannot be underestimated. Today, organizations need to be more aligned than ever before as consumers, investors and employees are all looking to align their purchases, investments or careers with companies that share the same values. This means that a company’s voice and purpose as communicated by the marketing team should align with the company’s mission and core values as communicated by the corporate communications team, which must align with the company’s objectives and goals as reported by the investor relations team. In an era when consumers, investors and employees all demand transparency, a company’s brand values must be consistent with its corporate values in order to be recognized as a reliable and unified entity. Companies that can achieve internal and external alignment can benefit immensely, from improved reputation and customer engagement to bolstered acquisition and retention.
How Corporate Communicators Can Learn From Marketers
I’ve found that successful integration of these divisions can best be accomplished by sharing insights and lessons between departments. Corporate communicators can learn a great deal from marketers given their similar role in audience listening, engagement and response. Just as customer engagement has become an ongoing dialogue for marketers, engagement with employees and prospects has become an ongoing task for the corporate team, and communicators must now serve as active listeners, proactively monitoring conversations and feedback on company culture, hiring processes, work-life balance and more, all delivered by their employees on social media, job review sites and other platforms. In order to excel at these tasks, corporate communicators can leverage the many digital tools that marketers use to measure the performance of their communications, interpret data and then optimize their content to better engage their employees.
Further, integrating corporate communications and marketing more closely can foster a more customer-centric organization. By working together, these divisions can share insights from internal and external audiences, feed those insights back into other parts of the organization, such as product development or business development, and ultimately help the company respond with strategic decision making and positive content. By removing barriers in communication and boosting information flow between departments, integration allows the company to better understand the interconnectedness of its activities, ultimately helping to craft a more seamless presence.
How Investor Relations Teams Can Learn From Marketers
The job of investor relations teams is becoming more and more like the job of a marketer, as investor relations teams are now expected to deliver storytelling in their own right. Along with revenue reporting, today’s investors want to know about a company’s long-term vision, purpose, core values and highlights from the internal culture. Here, investor relations teams can gain insight from marketers in terms of how to tell a story that evokes emotion and positively influences awareness and affinity among stakeholders. Today, companies aren’t just selling a product or service; they’re selling a brand that has a purpose and a set of values. In my experience, these values are best communicated through stories that bring them to life, and today’s investors want to know that companies not only have core values but also that they’re actively practicing them. Storytelling can thus engage stakeholders with a uniform message that showcases the company’s values in action and shows how they’re profitable.
Looking Forward
By integrating the divisions of corporate communications with marketing and investor relations, companies can build a stronger core by breaking down barriers of communication, improving information flow and bolstering efficiency. Perhaps most importantly, they can better communicate their purpose by delivering a consistent voice to all of their different stakeholders, building trust and reliability internally and with the outside world.
