This was my job for a while, so I'll answer mostly from experience
here. I'm not sure how large your company is, or what you do, but
there are some general principles that will help you develop a
strategy regardless of size and industry.
I was the central point of contact for all corporate communications
for a small technology company for a while, so everything the company
released went through me to make sure that the messaging and the tone
was consistent. This included web copy, press releases, letters to
investors, advertisements, white papers, and direct marketing
material. Ideally, it would have included technical manuals as well,
but I'm only one person, so it wasn't feasible.
Anyway, here's a point-by-point list of what I think you need:
1. At the superficial level, keep your terminology consistent. Make
sure you don't call things by different names. Develop templates and
frameworks and a solid style guide, so that you don't have to start
from scratch every time you write a press release, and so that your
customers can concentrate more on the material you're presenting than
on the presentation. This is the easy part.
2. Maintain a consistent, accessible, friendly tone. This requires a
lot of initiative and talent on the part of your staff. They have to
be capable, intelligent, creative, and most of all, happy. In a
hostile or unhappy environment, people just don't write good copy.
They're too busy watching their backs to take chances and to create
the sort of goofy, compelling material that you seem to be looking
for. And that consistency in tone requires some consistency in staff.
If you have a lot of turnover, you just aren't going to be able to
maintain this.
3. Don't be shortsighted. Companies that really inspire customer
loyalty and foster good will are those that offer their customers
something, regardless of immediate profits. Depending on your field,
provide reference materials such as generalized how-tos, glossaries,
and white papers. This serves a couple of purposes: It establishes a
community of people in your industry who've learned from you and are
grateful, and it creates an image of your company as being experts in
the field. As long as your information is solid and accessible, people
will use you as an appeal to authority. They'll reference your
material in their own work, and it'll help spread your name. And down
the road, they will be more likely to pay for your goods and services
because they like you and they trust you.
4. Maintain a central contact who approves and guides every corporate
communication the customer will see. Depending on the size of your
company, this could be one person or a tightly knit group. If you're
hiring someone to do this, don't be tempted to hire the cheapest
person available. While marketing and communication may not be your
primary line of business, it's a huge factor in your success.
5. Think about the tone you want to adopt. This will depend on a
number of factors, including what exactly your company does and who
your target market is. Google has a fairly general market, and they
address it well. The same approach, however, might not work for a
telecommunications company or a company seeking government contracts.
You may want to hire a marketing consultant before you even begin
here. They can provide you with profiles of your potential customers,
do surveys, and provide you with suggestions and insights that will
help you develop a solid marketing strategy.
6. Hire good people and keep them. Maintain an open, friendly
corporate culture. Note that this is much more complex than simply
writing a mission statement that says you have this already. Pay your
employees fairly so they're not always looking for something else. Be
flexible, and foster an open, honest environment, and don't tolerate
backstabbing no matter what.
7. Give your customers what they want and need. This sounds simple,
and if you do it well, it will look like it was simple. Customers
aren't motivated to seek out advertising pitches about your company.
If you really want to create a solid image for your company, give your
customers and potential customers information that they need, and make
it easy for them to find it. A lot of companies respond to lack of
interest in their products with an endless flow of fluffy prose about
how great their company is. This seems to work for the soft drink
industry, but it doesn't really extend to more technical fields. To
use your example, Google advertises itself by providing services and
information that people want, not by writing press releases about how
cool they are.
8. Don't fragment your company. Your website designers, graphic
artists, writers, industrial designers, engineers, administrative
staff, marketing staff, and anyone else you have should be working
together, not in parallel. Maintain an open environment in which
people are comfortable asking questions of coworkers in other areas of
the company. This might be a non-issue for smaller companies, but
these things can sneak up on you if you're not paying attention.
Here are some resources that might be of help:
Inc.com's Marketing resources, including articles and how-tos on
marketing strategies, demographics, etc. Use this to get more
background on general marketing concepts and how to go about creating
that corporate image you're looking for:
http://www.inc.com/guides/marketing/
Raycomm.com's Technical Communications resources, which provides a
central resource, including resumes, job postings, a mailing list, and
articles, for technical writers, marketing writers, and other
professionals in the field. Use this when you're ready to either start
developing your marketing copy, or when you're ready to hire someone
to do it for you:
http://www.raycomm.com/
Jakob Nielson is The Man in the field of usability. His website is an
excellent resource for material on how to create accessible
information. This is the sort of common sense stuff that makes
everything look easy:
http://www.useit.com/
Usable Web provides links to tons of information about website
usability. (The web is pretty much the 'front line' for most companies
now, so it's probably your first major marketing project.)
http://usableweb.com/
I didn't use any search terms. Most of the stuff here is from personal
experience, and the websites listed are ones I know well. However, if
you want to search on more, you might try search terms like "marketing
communications," "usability," "content development," and "marketing
strategy."
That's a nutshell overview. If I've left out anything important, or if
you have questions, please ask.
Good luck,
Lisa. |
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