How to Align PR and Communication Goals With Business Goals

What is your business trying to achieve right now?

Are you entering a new market? Launching a product? Attracting new customers? Building investor confidence? Strengthening your reputation?

Whatever the goal is, communication has a role to play in helping you get there.

Too often, however, businesses treat PR and communications as something that happens after the important decisions have already been made.

The product has been launched, so the communications team is asked to announce it.

The company is entering a new market, so PR is asked to “create awareness.”

A crisis happens, and communications is brought in to manage the response.

But communication works best when it is part of the business strategy from the beginning.

Speaking during a recent webinar hosted by SquirrelPR, Joyce Imiegha, Founder and Lead Strategist at Renée PR, made this point clearly:

“A lot of times, people seem to separate communication objectives from business objectives, but truthfully, one fits into the other.”

 

And that is an important lesson for any organisation trying to grow.

Communication Is Not Separate From the Business

Think about a company that wants to expand into a new African market. The business goal is expansion. But communication has to answer some important questions:

• Does the new market understand what the company does?

• Does the audience trust the brand?

• Do potential customers know why the company is entering the market?

• Are investors, partners and other stakeholders confident in the move?

• Is the company being talked about in the right way?

These are communication questions, but they directly support the business goal. The same applies to a product launch.

The business may want to increase adoption. Communication then needs to do more than announce that the product exists. It needs to help people understand the problem the product solves, why it matters and why they should consider it.

The business goal should influence the communication goal.

What Happens When They Don't Align?

When business and communication teams work separately, problems can appear quickly.

1. People May Not Understand What You Offer

You can have a great product and still struggle to attract customers if your message is unclear. If customers cannot quickly understand what you do, who you serve or why your product matters, communication is not supporting the business goal.

2. Your Reputation Can Work Against You

A company may be trying to expand, attract investment or launch a major product while its public communication tells a completely different story. Inconsistent messaging can create confusion and weaken trust, especially when customers, journalists, investors and other stakeholders are all getting information from different sources.

3. Your PR Efforts May Produce Attention Without Results

Getting media coverage is useful. But coverage on its own is not necessarily the business outcome.

If the business is trying to reach investors, for example, appearing in publications that those investors do not follow may not be particularly useful. If the goal is to enter a new market, communication should reach people in that market. If the goal is to build authority in a particular industry, the organisation needs to be visible in the conversations and media platforms that shape that industry.

So, How Can Businesses Align Communication With Business Goals?

It starts with involving communications early. Before launching a campaign:

• If the goal is market expansion, communication may need to focus on awareness, trust, local relevance and stakeholder confidence.

• If the goal is product adoption, the communication should explain the problem being solved, demonstrate the product's value and reach the audiences most likely to use it.

• If the goal is investor confidence, the story should communicate business progress, credibility, leadership strength and the company's long-term opportunity.

• If the goal is reputation building, the focus may be on thought leadership, credible media coverage, consistent messaging and demonstrating expertise over time.

The communication strategy will look different depending on the business objective. That is why there is no single PR strategy that works for every organisation.

Communication Should Have a Seat at the Table

The role of communications is changing. It is no longer enough for PR teams to wait for the business to make a decision and then figure out how to announce it. Communications teams should understand the business well enough to ask:

What are we trying to achieve, and how can communication help us get there?

That means being involved earlier in major decisions, understanding the audience before creating the message, choosing media opportunities based on the business objective, not simply chasing the biggest publication, and measuring communication by more than the number of headlines generated.

When communication and business goals work together, PR becomes more than a way to get the word out. It becomes part of how the business moves forward.

Building Better Communication Strategies With SquirrelPR

Once your communication goals are clear, execution becomes much easier when your team has the right tools.

SquirrelPR helps PR and communications teams manage key parts of their media workflow, from finding relevant journalists and distributing press releases to monitoring coverage and understanding media performance.

Teams can use the platform to identify journalists who are relevant to a particular story, distribute announcements to targeted media contacts, and monitor what happens after the story goes out.