Making Marcomms count at the top table
I am one of a small group of people who are both Chartered Marketers and Chartered PRs. I’ve also managed large interdisciplinary teams, so have first-hand experience of the vital role marcomms plays, as part of a strategic management function that drives results. I understand the pressures and challenges you face.
Value of marcomms: content and conversations
In the public sector and in many agencies an integrated approach to PR and marketing is common. Practitioners work across media relations, public affairs, behaviour change campaigns, digital, SEO and customer relations. The Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned (PESO) model provides a blueprint for activity.
Marcomms has never been as critical to organisations in providing the content that drives conversation offline and online as it now. The work you do is critical in building organisational trust and encouraging advocacy through the use of behavioural insights, providing the campaign content to get people to know, feel and do.
Senior management can clearly see the return on investment (ROI) from sales or fundraising. It’s why marcomms must own the commercial value of reputation and brand and be able to show the contribution marcomms makes through setting SMART objectives, using online tracking to link content to action and being able to monetise that contribution within Google Analytics.
Opportunity and threat of automation and AI on marcomms
Artificial Intelligence has the potential to transform marcomms. Already a wide range of tools both paid for and free are available to automate regular online activities. Sophisticated dashboards can be built in Google Analytics to track the contribution of marcomms to ROI. These tools can be used to assess social sentiment, identify keywords and tags and schedule activity.
True AI will do far more. It will be able to undertake many of the tactical activities currently provided by practitioners from tracking impact to number crunching the stats, from analysing data to managing customer relations. This will enable Marcomms professionals to focus on more strategic activities. That is exciting but may be a concern as change can be unsettling. We need to support our practitioners to make that transition.
There are three key ways I would support marcomms practitioners:
1. Champion the strategic role marcomms plays in delivering economic value.
2. Provide affordable accessible training and qualifications, such as the new Specialist Diploma in Digital and wider business training to develop strategic skills.
3. Provide greater support to the sectoral groups and volunteers, as well as regional, national and international, so there are more opportunities to learn and network where people live and at convenient times recognising busy lives.
Take a look at my vision, pledges and plans in my other posts and then please vote #mandyforpresident
