Heavy Lifting Is your communications team pulling its weight?

By Sue DurisM4 Communications
In today¹s economy, companies are looking for immediate ROI. This applies to your communications team as well.As a former high-tech product manager, I was always told to establish and continuously build credibility with the engineers if I was to be perceived as adding value.As marcom professionals, we must establish and build credibility with senior management. Submitting press releases and counting clips on their own are no longer measures of value.

Following these guidelines will help your communications team be perceived as a valuable component of your company.1. Be an information sponge. Know your industry inside and out. The Internet is a wonderful thing. Subscribe to news that is targeted to your industry. Research issues and trends impacting your industry and company. Subscribe to appropriate print and electronic publications. Register for discussion lists and newsgroups specifically geared to marcom professionals and your specific industry.2. Know your business and products as if you developed them yourself. Know the history of your business, mission statement, objectives, target markets, and value propositions. Review the company¹s strategic business and marketing plans. Know your business partners, why you chose them and how you go about choosing partners. Know your product lines and their features and benefits. Also know your competition. Be able to perform an objective competitive analysis on your products. Create a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of your business. Have one-on-one sessions with customer service, sales, marketing, and engineering representatives. This is a triple-win for you -- you obtain first-hand knowledge, you are building internal relationships and you are establishing yourself as a credible resource.

3. Know your customers. What is the typical customer profile? Interview customers to get an idea of who they are, how they perceive your company and your competitors, how they make their buying decisions, etc.4. Link your PR objectives to the company¹s business and organizational objectives. Having a clear understanding of your organization¹s business objectives is your first step in setting measurable objectives for your communications program. Of course, this is simplified when the communications team participates in setting the organization¹s overall objectives.Remember that an objective must:
· specify a desired outcome
· directly reference at least one target audience
· be measurable
· refer to ends, not means
· include a timeframe in which the objective is to be achieved
To help ensure PR objectives are effectively linked to business objectives, ask the following questions:
· What is management trying to achieve and what will help or hinder its success, from a communications perspective?
· How are stakeholders likely to respond to these objectives?
· What are management¹s expectations for how stakeholders should respond to these objectives?
· How can PR programs achieve these goals?
· What specific communications programs should be implemented to meet these goals?

5. Measure the success of your communications program.When management asks what it is getting for its PR investment, it wants evidence that communications activities have advanced business goals.As noted above, press release submissions are no longer an indicator for success of a particular communications program. A stack of clips is only beneficial when you changed behaviors and contributed to the bottom line.Consider the following:
1. Target your press releases to a specific campaign so you can measure the amount of revenues generated from that specific campaign.
2. Utilize web site traffic monitoring tools to determine if there are any traffic spikes due to published articles.
3. Enlist the help of a third party to measure your PR efforts.
Making these items a part of your daily communications regimen will not only build credibility, but you will be seen as a valuable resource while impacting the bottom line.