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What Is Strategic Communication?

Kristie Lorette
Kristie Lorette

Strategic communication is a well thought out plan for marketing and promoting a business. It entails promoting and marketing a brand, product or service in a way that is most likely for the sales to increase and the bottom line of the business to improve.

When putting together a strategic marketing plan, strategic communication involves all levels of the business or organization. The strategic marketing plan is a written document, and is a guide for the company and all of the employees to refer to in order to ensure that everything the company and the employees are doing is in line with the strategic communication plan in place.

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For example, if the communication plan is to introduce a product as the premier software for tax lien investors, then all of the marketing materials and promotions must be in line with this branding. Before any marketing or promotional materials go out of the company, the material should be reviewed so that it possesses the messaging that is intended.

Before putting a strategic communication plan into place, all parties in an organization must come together. A lot of strategic thinking goes into putting this plan together. This requires the heads of each department to determine how their department can contribute to the company reaching its overall goals.

Strategic communication may also be referred to as strategic marketing. Essentially, it is the strategic business techniques that are put into place and implemented in order for the organization to reach its business goals. For example, part of the strategic thinking and planning process is to determine which types of communication vehicles are the most likely to reach the audience of customers the business has targeted.

A strategic approach to marketing also requires that there are measurement tactics in place. Each time a strategic communication vehicle is launched, a plan for measuring the response rate to the tactic should be in place. This allows the business to determine its effectiveness. This also permits the company to tweak communications that go out to customers in order to increase response rates and sales.

In other words, strategic communication requires company members to logically think about how to bring awareness of the company, product or service to the people they are trying to sell the product or service to. After identifying how to reach these buyers, strategic communication is the process of putting together marketing messages that speak to the audience and propel them to buy.

Discussion Comments

bluedolphin

A brand that I'm fond of now donates a part of its sales to an NGO that helps protect the environment. They've been advertising this for a few months now. I saw it on many websites online, as well as in stores. I think it's a great strategy.

fBoyle

@fify-- I agree with you. There is more than one way to communicate a brand to its customers. Participation in various initiatives can be one way.

But even in these types of activities, there has to be strategic planning. Communications usually cost companies money. So they have to plan and program these activities well to make sure that it reaches a large number of potential customers and represents the company as it should.

A business' priority is making money, so marketing is not something that can be done without planning. It's an outcome based strategy and the company needs to have a measurable outcome. For example, they need to know that at the end of the communication project that a certain number of people got to know about it. They also need to know what affect this project has had on sales numbers.

fify

Some people think that strategic communication is all about marketing. They think that it just involves advertising. But I think that connecting with consumers in other ways is also a great way to get the brand's name out there. When people connect with a brand and identify with it, they will go out of their way to find out about their services and products even if they don't get affected by advertisement.

I believe that strategic communication should be about connecting with the consumer and there are different ways to do that like organizing events, donating to charities, promotions, etc.

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