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Every successful business starts
with a plan that details where the company expects to be in
terms of revenue within three to five years and broadly touches
on how it will get there.
An articulated communications
strategy can help support your company’s efforts in meeting the
goals of its business plan. A communications strategy, including
marketing and public relations, is responsible for building the
awareness and credibility that leads to sales needed to reach
those business objectives.
There are three basic ingredients
to any successful communications program—positioning, awareness
and third-party credibility (confirmation of your company’s
claims and qualifications through press coverage,
customer/partner endorsements, and other outside support).
Communications programs should be strategically aligned with
business goals to ensure that the right messages are reaching
the right audiences.
These programs should not focus
solely on market influencers such as the press and analyst
communities. These communities are receptive to broader
corporate messages. To be successful, you must also incorporate
narrowly and specifically tailored messages to key customer and
partner targets. We refer to the recipients of broad messages as
“macro-targets” and the recipients of narrow messages as
“micro-targets.”
Macro-Targeting
Macro-targeting is the approach
to business communications with which most people are familiar.
Macro-targets are media, analysts and other broadly based market
influencers who can validate your business model, enabling the
generation of a high level of awareness for your company. Your
business receives the important third-party credibility that
comes through coverage of your messages in various publishing
outlets (magazines, analyst reports, briefings, etc.).
Establishing a positive
reputation in the market is the first step to generating sales
leads. Remember, the goal with macro-targeting is to build
confidence in your company, making it easier to get in the door
with sales prospects, partners, etc. People do business with
those they know and trust.
Yet, keep in mind that messages
targeted toward the media and analyst communities may be too
broad for the specific contacts that form your
business-development target base. The media and analysts are
typically looking for trend analysis, instructional overviews or
hard-news announcements with a short shelf life.
When you get to the point of
looking for an introduction to a specific business entity for
the purpose of developing partnerships, prospecting for
customers or seeking investment, that’s when you need to add
micro-targeting to your corporate messaging and positioning
strategy.
Micro-Targeting
Micro-targeting is the strategy
you take when you want to focus on specific people,
companies and organizations that can more immediately affect
revenue enhancement and your overall success. This more
sophisticated level of business communication enables your
company to go beyond high-level messaging and provide important
information to a focused target audience with the goal of
opening the door to facilitate business meetings.
All businesses thrive on capital,
customers and partners. These three things drive revenue. This
is where micro-targeted messages become essential. They answer
the “why” questions: Why invest in us? Why buy from us? Why work
together?
Develop messages that show
specific synergies between your company and the target audience
in question. That means taking the macro-level messaging you use
for public relations purposes and concentrate it for the narrow
segment of prospects that will help you drive your company’s
revenues.
The important thing to keep in
mind is that you have to use macro-targeted and micro-targeted
communications together. If you work with a public relations
agency to help generate media placements, they have already
helped you with your macro-targeting.
Your agency may also have access
to people in the business community that can help you meet your
capital, customer and partnership goals. Getting to the meeting
stage with those people requires close cooperation with your
agency in getting the micro-targeted messaging right.
Let’s face it, prospective
clients or partners are more likely to meet with you based on a
recommendation from someone they know as opposed to a cold call.
And your agency in all likelihood knows what type of message
resonates best with the goals of the companies in its network
that you’d most like to reach.
Context is everything.
Contextualize your business proposition with what you know of
your prospect’s business. Reaching the media with macro-level
messages gives you general credibility, and delivering your PR
results to your sales prospects on an ongoing basis gives weight
to your micro-targeted messages.
So remember, establishing your
communications program with both macro- and micro-targeting
components will be most successful when you can relate your
messages directly to your audiences (broad or specific).
Marc Hausman is president and CEO of
Strategic Communications Group, Inc., a public relations agency
that provides integrated communications and business-development
services. Contact Marc at
mhausman@gotostrategic.com.
Reprinted with author permission.
This article previously published on
MarketingProfs.com
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