Achieving success both externally and internally depends on effective communication plans. It requires organizations and its communications teams to navigate and measure corporate communication tasks. Leaders and executives need to understand the function of corporate communication, regardless of the size of the business.
Whether you’re a startup or an established enterprise, learning the primary role of corporate communication and integrating the corporate communication plan is beneficial for your business’s success. Also, you need to consult executive marketing and public relations agencies, such as Los Angeles Public Relations, to help you achieve your business corporate communications goals.
Let’s delve into the discussion to understand the definition and functions of corporate communications in a broader context and the strategies used to help your business thrive.
Table of Contents
What is Corporate Communication?
As said above, corporate communication is specialized method companies use to communicate with their internal and external audiences, including stakeholders, customers, regulatory bodies, employees, media, and the general public.
Typically, the structure of corporate communications has three branches:
- Management communication
- Marketing communication
- Organizational communication
All the branches are interconnected to build a practical and long-term strategic communication approach for a business. Note that the function of corporate communication is comprehensive and serves businesses through various channels.
Some of the most common channels public relations and corporate communication uses are:
- Reports
- Website copy
- Advertisements
- Emails
- Promotional materials
- Press releases
- Memos
- Press conferences
- Meetings
- Videos
- Interviews
- Illustrations
- Photographs
- Branding materials
- Infographics
Nowadays, the corporate communication leads as a corporate social responsibility (CSR). Giving back something to the society that’ll benefit the society. This helps create great social impact that helps the society and the corporate itself boost the performance and the profit.
We’ve written a blog on Corporate Social Impact that you can read if interested. Read about Corporate Social Impact On Organizational Performance and Profit.
Why is Corporate Communication Important?
Purpose of Corporate Communication
Sometimes, understanding the purpose of corporate communications is complex for businesses. Generally, organizations develop a thorough communication strategy to support their brand identity, collaborate with stakeholders, decrease deviations, and successfully build internal and external support.
However, corporate communication skills, goals, and policies do much more than just support brand identity. If developed strategically, it can improve customer loyalty and help businesses generate revenue and sustainability in their respective field.
These are the primary strategic objectives of the corporate communication department with communication professionals. The essential decision makers of the companies, such as CEOs, oversee the overall strategy.
Types of Corporate Communication
Corporate communication has two types that deal with different audiences.
Internal Communication
Internal corporate communication involves communicating with managers, employees, board members, and executives. It typically includes:
- Sending memos to employees from the management
- Arranging all-hands meetings between the departments
- Communicating with the team via Slack
- Making company announcements
- Sharing business news, new hires, and success
Internal communication has no specific format as it can be conducted informally and formally. Internal communication may involve a few or many employees, depending on the purpose. However, the way in-house teams communicate with each other internally is crucial.
Using the proper communication methods, tools and mediums are essential to motivate or encourage the workforce to contribute to the business goals. Corporate culture and employee engagement are also significant factors that can impact internal communication.
Leaders and executives need to find the right tone, method, and frequency to communicate with the employees to achieve corporate communication goals.
External Communication
As the name suggests, external communications are how a business faces or presents itself to the outside world. It requires a thorough communication strategy to deal with external audiences. If a business works without a communication strategy, it may affect the brand’s public image.
Remember that even a tiny misstep changes the consumers’ perception of the company and its products. Ultimately, it impacts the business outcomes. It is worth mentioning that external communication isn’t just about using formal announcements or press releases.
The digital era has revolutionized everything, and external corporate communication isn’t an exception. Today, social media for corporate communications is standard and vital in connecting businesses to their audiences. They can easily communicate to their target audiences through social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. A strategic and concise social media marketing plan do wonders for corporates.
That is to say, considering both informal and formal communications is essential to enhance your corporate communication strategy and build a positive brand image.
Functions of Corporate Communication
As mentioned earlier, in many companies or businesses, the communication sector manages or oversees the function of corporate communication. One way to understand corporate communications functions is to group them based on their role within the company.
Media and PR
Communicating with the general public and media is one of the primary functions of corporate communication. It involves:
- Organizing product launches, news conferences, interviews, and developing materials such as flyers and banners for events.
- Monitoring the events, posts, news, and content for mentions of the brand, employees such as management members, stakeholders, and products
- Creating and arranging press releases to the public media forums to get coverage
- Making a strategic plan to address critical press misinformation or coverage
Marketing and Customer Communication
While businesses distinguish between their communication and marketing strategies, the line between the two domains has started to blur over the years. It happens because the corporate communication strategy needs to align with the marketing strategy to produce the results. It has significantly increased the collaboration and connectedness between the two domains.
Today, it is not uncommon to see a corporate communication team working with the marketing team to generate marketing material and facilitate customer communication.
Some tools the corporate communication team uses are;
- Brochures
- Marketing emails
- Newsletters
- Flyers
- Social media strategy
- Website copy
Crisis Communication
Crisis communication is also a crucial function of corporate communication that includes sending specific messages to deal with unanticipated events or crises. This corporate communication function helps businesses face crises and portrays an image that can benefit the brand. It prevents potential damage to the reputation of the brand and maintain the positive reputations.
If your business doesn’t have a corporate communication department, it is better to seek the expertise of PR pros to devise a strategy to help you tackle the situation. A professional PR team can:
- Organize news and interviews for business representatives to talk about the issue
- Advise brand representative on what to state and how to say when discussing the matter with media
- Communicate with lawyers, emergency responders, government regulators, and politicians if necessary
- Protect the corporate reputation of the brand and ability to market and sell products
The crisis may vary from business to business and depends on certain factors. It can include violence, business struggles, litigations, chemical spills, and product defects.
Strategies of Corporate Communication
A corporate communication strategy refers to the framework organizations use to plan out their communication with customers, employees, investors, and suppliers. When leveraged right, corporate communication strategies can help understand the company and enhance its corporate reputation with the consumers whose attitude and actions can influence success the most.
When devising corporate communication strategies, there is no one-size-fits-all solution that can work for every business. You may find many quick fixes; devising effective corporate communication strategies requires skills, knowledge, and experience.
Suppose you want your corporate communication strategies to suit your brand and address the communication problems unique to the business. In that case, investing time and research into the process is essential.
Here are some effective corporate communication strategies you can use to improve corporate communication function in your business.
Analyze social conversations, monitor your community’s engagement to learn from target audiences and understand their current interests, challenges, and issues.
Content marketing is the core of marketing. You need to be more mature in your approach to content. Make sure you have a solid content strategy to set your business up for success.
Connect social media strategies to corporate integrated marketing communication as creating, implementing, and monitoring brand messages and making customer relationships.
Branding includes developing a message by making good connections with a specific name and creating a lasting image that surrounds the services and services your organization offers. Make a corporate communication team focusing on corporate branding when dealing with the media and the general public.
Examples of Corporate Communication
Corporate communication performs various tasks, including managing PR and monitoring internal communications. Here are a few examples of a business’s corporate communication for different purposes:
Customer Communication
As marketing departments and teams work together to meet customer communication goals, corporate communication is often a collaborative effort. The departments work together to create advertising collateral from newsletters to emails to website copy.
Public Relations
The teams also use the public-facing facet of communication to generate the public opinion of a brand. Businesses often utilize news conferences, press releases, and interviews to generate news coverage.
Internal Communication
Corporate communication teams are not only responsible for managing outward communication but also internal messaging. Some common examples of internal corporate communication include creating an internal newsletter, blogs, and supporting employee advocacy.
Mainly, internal communication in businesses focuses on engaging employees to improve the overall impact on the workforce. The teams create programs and activities to help employees engage with each other and collaborate to meet the company’s collective goals.
Conclusion
The function of corporate communication is crucial when it comes to developing a strong and positive brand image in public and keeping employees and teams on the same page.
Its role is comprehensive and involves many responsibilities ranging from employee communication, stakeholder communication, corporate branding, and promotion to crisis management. Thus, you need a competent corporate communication team you can rely on for all these tasks.
