We like to think of a business as a living, breathing thing that grows, transforms and evolves over time and, just like life, it has its ups and downs. Now, you know we’re big advocates for utilizing strategic communications to help meet your business goals, so whether you’re in the startup, growth, maturity, or renewal/decline phase, strategic communications plays an important role.
This is why we’ve come up with a blog series that examines how you can best use communications tools at each phase. So grab a pen and get your notepad out because we’ll be giving you the complete lowdown, starting with the startup phase.
Startups and Strategic Communications.
At the startup phase, you’ll have various objectives. Whether that’s attracting investment, hiring staff or boosting sales, there are ways to activate PR and marketing tactics to help you achieve those goals. What does that look like?
- Prioritizing your business goals: This is where you reflect on what your business is about, why it exists, who it is for and what its goals are. Refining the answers to these questions and prioritizing your business goals will help you create a strong foundation for your brand identity and story.
- Connecting to your audience: Once you’ve prioritized your business goals, it’s time to identify the right audience for each goal. This will help you choose the channels and tactics that communicate most effectively to the specific audience so you can achieve that goal. For example, if your top goal right now is to increase funding, you need to reach an audience of investors — and that’s probably not going to happen if you’re posting product review videos on TikTok.
- Crafting a compelling story and brand: Who doesn’t love a good story? Make sure your business has a good one! How your business came about and what it stands for is important. A strong and unique brand identity makes a business stand out. What are your business values? What are your brand’s key messages? Maybe you need to talk to professional storytellers, like us, to help figure it out. 😉
- Establishing a communications strategy: Now that you’ve completed this exercise for your first goal, repeat it for the rest of your top priority goals. Include other strategic elements like a content calendar, brand guidelines, asset library and crisis communication plan – whatever your needs dictate – and congratulate yourself on creating a basic communications strategy!
Well-executed strategic communications at the startup phase will help bring you into the next phase of the business cycle. Need to talk it out with experts? Give us a shout.
Check out the next blog on strategies for the growth phase.
