7 Tips for Building a Successful Communications Strategy

With all the feverish activity that communications and marketing professionals label as branding and marketing, it’s important to remember that they are not two separate activities, but part of a continuum of communications.

For your communications strategy to be successful, the following aspects of brand alignment have to be present:

1. You’re different: Is your brand indistinguishable from similar brands, or are you significantly different?  Different enough that it makes prospective customers aware that your values and theirs are aligned and you can solve their problems?
2. You’re listening: Are you delivering what they are asking for?  Have you asked them what they are looking for? Are you engaged in listening and responding? (in relationships, we call this conversation)
3. You’re having a conversation: Are your marketing and communications materials, in any media (print, web and social) about how you help solve the customer’s problem? In other words, is your marketing about your organization, or how you make people’s lives better?
4. You have a collaborative approach: Does your story and messaging align with your mission and strategic plan?  If you’re managing your mission to measurable financial outcomes, your communications must speak to those outcomes.
5. Your leadership team and employees are engaged.  Does everybody understand your customers and your brand’s role in their story well enough that they can articulate it?
6. You’re focused: How many marketing messages do you have?  Can you communicate your brand story in 15 seconds?  How about in 5 seconds?  Simplify your message, keep it consistent.  (Aespire can help you create a consise and compelling one-liner or positioning statement that everybody in your company should memorize.
7. Are your customers engaged? Have you made your customers the center of your brand story? In your organization’s brand narrative,are customers positioned as powerful brand ambassadors to their personal network? Do they realize greater meaning in their lives because of your brand?



Strive to implement these seven tips to align your brand with your company mission and the team that supports customers. When you do, your business will be meaningful to the people who buy from and believe in your brand.