Five common strategic communications mistakes

The great Michael Jordan says it all: “The minute you get away from fundamentals, the bottom can fall out of your game.” The same applies to avoiding mistakes with your strategic communications.

When discussing strategic communications, we mean focused, goal-specific communications to a targeted audience with a specific objective—think launch strategy or influencer campaign.

This is different from corporate communications or PR. These are communications with broad goals that are long-term and often revolve around building and protecting a business’s reputation.

Before we look at mistakes, here are the fundamentals of solid strategic communications:

1. Crystal-clear goals that align with the organization’s business priorities.

2. A deep understanding of why, when, and how to engage your audience.

3. Consistent and straightforward messages.

4. Tight alignment up, down, and across the team.

5. A data-tracking system to monitor successes and failures.

According to MJ, if you don't get these right, the game is over before you even begin.

Flawed goals, flawed outcomes

Sometimes, it is OK to color outside the lines, but not when it comes to business priorities. You work within an organization. Your efforts might be seen as distractions or liabilities if your goals don't align with company priorities. If you aren’t helping improve the bottom line or helping achieve company objectives, will or should you get resources? If there is a conflict of goals, who wins? The best-case scenario? You are an annoying distraction. You do not want to be a roadblock, crisis, or liability. Always start with company priorities and build out from there.

Why aren’t people listening to me?

How many times have you seen the audience be a “business decision-maker?” What is the mental image that pops into your head? Now, switch the audience to chief information officers dealing with automation and robotics in global seaports whose primary concern is safety/cost/ROI/environmental impact. You literally get the picture. You know your audience. You may not know where that audience gets its information this morning, but with a good researcher, generative AI, and creative prompts, you will by early afternoon. You can understand your audience’s challenges. You will clearly identify the competition. You can articulate how your product, service, or program solves your target customers’ problems and opens up growth opportunities. Trust me, they will listen to you then. Or you could post something general on LinkedIn and hope for the best.

What do you mean you can’t find it?

Make sure your key messages are easy for your customers to find and understand. Do not make your customers or team chase information. We have plenty of voices demanding our time and focus. Reduce the risk of miscommunication or misinterpretation with concise messages. Your audience and your team need to understand what you are telling them. If you have three key messages, state them clearly and concisely. Each message gets a single sentence. It doesn’t count if your sentence has three hundred words, though. Provide supporting points and examples. Make it easy for your customers to understand and engage.

Are you organizing a three-ring circus?

When your internal teams are aligned on your priorities, goals, and messaging, the chances are high that they will be great advocates and allies. They work with you and find ways to amplify your messages in their own channels. They reinforce and strengthen your brand and strategy. Without alignment, you spend energy and resources managing inconsistencies, conflicting stories, and rogue content. Instead, unify your team members around a single, powerful narrative that includes their roles and opportunities.

In addition to aligning on your consistent and straightforward messaging, we recommend creating an organization-wide editorial calendar that keeps internal teams informed about the cadence of content, media opportunities, and relevant events and shows. They can see when to reach out to their relevant customers or amplify the messages and content across their social channels.

You can’t celebrate success if you don’t track it

Continuous data analysis tells you if you are reaching the right people and moving the needle in meaningful ways. You see what is working and where you can improve engagement. You can lean into what is resonating and test new strategies. Data feeds agility.

Create strategic communications that avoid common mistakes

Delightful knows the five common mistakes and many of the not-so-common missteps in strategic communications. Our creative, agile, and data-driven teams create and execute strategic campaigns that carry your unified messages across relevant marketing channels and customer touchpoints. We make sure you are in the game with a winning strategy.

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