Don’t Confuse Goals and Strategy

I’ve seen it in boardrooms and team meetings – time and again. Someone says the company’s strategy is to grow revenue by a certain percent over the next year – or five.

That’s not a strategy. That’s a goal. Am I focusing too much on semantics? Maybe. But I’ve seen too often how conflating goals and strategy can lead to trouble.

A goal describes the destination. A strategy is your plan to get there. A goal without a strategy is hope. And hope alone won’t get you far.

So what are the basics for building a sound communications strategy that can legitimately support your business goals?

First, you need to understand the current state.

No need to reinvent the wheel here. Do a SWOT analysis. Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats.

Now do a PESTEL analysis. Assess the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal issues you face.

Make a grid for each. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated or exhaustive. Capture the biggest factors in each category.

Now do a competitive analysis.

How do you stack up against the competition? Again, not every little detail. Keep it high level. What are your advantages and disadvantages?

The goal of this exercise is to gain insight into the current situation to help you determine your path forward.

Next, do a commercial deep dive.

What are your company’s financial goals? Take a look at its profit and loss statements. Are there board expectations?

Now, ask yourself. Are your communications strategies and tactics aligned to those goals and expectations?

Can you demonstrate that your communications are driving measurable outcomes that have an impact on the overarching business goals?

If they are, terrific. If not, you’ll want to start looking for ways to better align. And that doesn’t mean every piece of communication has to have a sale or a dollar figure at the end of it. But it does mean you have to demonstrate how communications influences those very important numbers.

Next up. Do an audience analysis. Or stakeholder mapping. Whatever you want to call it.

It should include pertinent knowledge about all of the people who influence your success — who they are, what they care about, what their relationship is with you, how you typically interact with them. We’re talking customers, of course. Employees. Maybe investors. Regulators. Others?

Once you understand who they are and what they need from you, it’s time to think about your story. The thing that connects people to you.

There should be a big overarching story that everyone should know about you. And then some smaller, more specific stories, meant for each of your constituents, that echo and ladder up to the larger story. Story mapping, if you will.

What you want to aim for here is building an overarching narrative and sub narratives underneath it that speak to the needs of the various people you communicate with. Not based on what you want to tell them. But what they need and want to hear from you.

With your story in place, it’s time to think about your connection strategy.

Which channels or platforms, or combination of channels and platforms, do the people you want to reach use to interact with you? Focus on the most important ones. It’s better to be proficient in fewer channels than to spread yourself too thin over multiple channels that become hard to consistently feed.

You’re going to have owned, earned and paid channels. Give each a score based on its effectiveness at reaching your constituents and how much each costs — in expense and time. That will help you determine the best mix of channels for the job.

Now, take one more step. Poke holes in the strategy you’re creating. Imagine what could go wrong and bake that into contingency plans.

There are lots of details behind this general framework. But if you structure your thinking around these basic principles, you’ll know you’re on the right track.