Every word, action and event carried out by your company is a form of communication. Effective communication determines how favorably customers perceive your brand and interact with your products. It can also help you engage employees and build a company culture that naturally promotes your brand.
However, in the tech industry, crafting clear messages can be particularly challenging. That’s because jargon and technical knowledge often create barriers to understanding between groups—usually when audiences span internal and external stakeholders. To overcome potential misunderstandings between employees and customers, tech companies need a strategic communications playbook to define how they communicate about their brand and products.
What Goes Into a Strategic Communications Playbook?
A strategic communications playbook is a written plan that directs brand voice around employee behavior and messaging. A strong communications playbook syncs with company goals and outlines how relational activities—primarily in (but not limited to) marketing and sales—are executed. Ideally, your communications strategy playbook offers guidelines for various scenarios involving who you are talking to, why you’re talking to them, how and when you’ll talk to them, what form of communication the content should take, and what channels you should use to share it.
For Great Potential, Mind the Gaps!
When created purposefully, a strategic communications playbook outlines best practices for brand communication that improve audience engagement and promote internal alignment. But beware—if your communications playbook has gaps, it’s not likely to serve its intended purpose. These are the two most common gaps to mind that limit the effectiveness of your tech company’s strategic communications playbook.
1. A Gap Between Company Communicators and Company Goals
It’s easy to develop a brand your customers will recognize by aligning communications with company goals. However, companies often fail to effectively share company goals with employees. In fact, recent research conducted by Chris Zook at Bain & Company, published in Harvard Business Review, revealed that only 40% of employees across organizations are aware of their company’s goals, strategy and needs.
When employees aren’t well versed in company goals and objectives, it’s difficult to see a connection between their tactical role and business strategy. Practically, that shows up in not being set up for success to communicate effectively with customers. It’s common for employees to learn about the company’s mission during initial onboarding or a one-time meeting. Under these circumstances, employees aren’t likely to absorb company goals or connect them with how they fit into strategic communications.
Your playbook should provide a roadmap for an internal communications strategy and department activities or workflows that nurture employee brand education and buy-in. When you can achieve a company culture that promotes employees feeling fully informed of and assimilated into business goals, you empower employees to become active strategists and sincere brand ambassadors who can communicate brand objectives back to customers.
2. A Gap in Knowing Your Audience
IT professionals, software developers, and other technology experts share a common language describing what makes a product superior to its competitors. Unfortunately, their end users speak an entirely different language. To a consumer, a product is a solution to a problem. When the solution is introduced by an expert used to communicating entirely in technical specifications, the most important information, if not the whole point, can get lost in translation.
Technological specifications sound impressive—and may even be the “why” behind a product’s usability—but they must narrate to the end user how the product can improve their lifestyle. For example, a long-winded explanation about pixel binning and shutter speed on a camera will not push the average consumer audience to add to cart. However, comparing your camera’s ability to capture a nighttime photo that is dim and blurry to one with perfect clarity and emphasized highlights is likely to make consumers see your product’s value.
When your playbook doesn’t include keywords, concepts or suggested messaging that resonate with your target audience, you risk never engaging your ideal customer. Your communications plan should include guidance on preferred communication style and the type and amount of information you want to share to grab and keep potential customers’ attention.
The most successful brands know how to speak the same language as their customers. That effort begins internally in a strategic communications playbook. By evaluating your existing communications plan for these common gaps, you can place your business ahead of the competition and improve your organization’s brand perception and bottom line.
