On Jan. 28, our executive team invited CMOs from across the country to share challenges they experience drawing line of sight between communications results and marketing goals and learn strategies that help simplify and improve the cooperation between the groups.
During our discussions, we recognized that the often-siloed approach to communications keeps it from integrating well with the marketing group and supporting the larger goals. And, measuring the impact of communications (especially public relations) on supporting those goals, as we all know, is exceedingly complex.
One key means of connecting marketing with communications is ensuring that product marketing, sales and communications teams are aligned and collaboration happens as frequently as possible. Sharing team goals, plans, schedules and successful outcomes across these teams helps everyone stay on the same page and benefit from each other’s successes and ideas.
This theory is all well and good, but what are some actions that can guarantee every team is benefitting and supporting the others?
- Have the comms team attend the weekly sales meetings
- Share the calendar of upcoming announcements and available assets with sales
- Have product marketing share market research that may be used as an asset by comms
- Make sure sales teams provide reference customers to communications teams for use with media or content
- Share links and short summaries of the strongest media coverage with internal sales reps to support prospect nurturing
- Leverage the product marketing team as subject matter experts with media and content opportunities
- Create news releases for sales purposes, that aren’t for wire distribution
Also, communications and marketing groups need to ensure the assets and channels they’re using are beneficial to everyone. Here’s a checklist that assures both teams are benefiting from communications efforts:
- Can you tie your campaign to a larger industry trend or event?
- Does your asset share something that helps the end-user perform better?
- Can you leverage your asset for multiple purposes, including whitepapers, media outreach, podcasts, etc.?
- Are you promoting assets across social channels?
- Have you created a profile on peer review sites, such as TrustRadius or G2?
- Are you willing to put investment behind your content asset to help boost performance, either with a publication or via social media advertisements?
Finally, our team shared some ideas on how to measure impact and ensure you’re leveraging the right assets on the right channels. Some asset types to consider for your next big campaign are aggregated research from your own data collections, customer generated insights and employee activations.
To learn more about how to better align your marketing and communications teams, email us here.
Interested in participating in our next CMO Happy Hour in March? Let us know!