Buzzwords are impossible to avoid when you work with marketing and brands. Sometimes you might know the meaning of them, while other times you use them daily without being sure what they exactly mean.
One buzzword you should know is DAM, or Digital Asset Management. But what does it mean? Take a look at our definition and explanation as to why it’s an important subject.
Buzzwords are impossible to avoid when you work with marketing and brands. Sometimes you might know the meaning of them, while other times you use them daily without being sure what they exactly mean.
One buzzword you should know is DAM, or Digital Asset Management. But what does it mean? Take a look at our definition and explanation as to why it’s an important subject.
Buzzwords are impossible to avoid when you work with marketing and brands. Sometimes you might know the meaning of them, while other times you use them daily without being sure what they exactly mean.
One buzzword you should know is DAM, or Digital Asset Management. But what does it mean? Take a look at our definition and explanation as to why it’s an important subject.
Are you responsible for your company’s brand and digital assets? Do you have a proper system for this, or is it a bit messy and unclear where all files are stored?
These are matters that may steal a lot of your time. Lets take a closer look at time thieves in regards to brand management and how you can arrest these thieves.
Are you responsible for your company’s brand and digital assets? Do you have a proper system for this, or is it a bit messy and unclear where all files are stored?
These are matters that may steal a lot of your time. Lets take a closer look at time thieves in regards to brand management and how you can arrest these thieves.
Are you responsible for your company’s brand and digital assets? Do you have a proper system for this, or is it a bit messy and unclear where all files are stored?
These are matters that may steal a lot of your time. Lets take a closer look at time thieves in regards to brand management and how you can arrest these thieves.
KPIs are key metrics that help you set goals and follow up measurements on your marketing efforts. You need this in place in order to see know and evaluate if your branding efforts are going as intended and keep you on track with your brand development strategies.
KPI stands for Key Perfomance Indicators and is a term commonly used in business to measure how things are going. For business goals KPIs represent a metric that is used to gauge how well you perform.
KPIs are key metrics that help you set goals and follow up measurements on your marketing efforts. You need this in place in order to see know and evaluate if your branding efforts are going as intended and keep you on track with your brand development strategies.
KPI stands for Key Perfomance Indicators and is a term commonly used in business to measure how things are going. For business goals KPIs represent a metric that is used to gauge how well you perform.
KPIs are key metrics that help you set goals and follow up measurements on your marketing efforts. You need this in place in order to see know and evaluate if your branding efforts are going as intended and keep you on track with your brand development strategies.
KPI stands for Key Perfomance Indicators and is a term commonly used in business to measure how things are going. For business goals KPIs represent a metric that is used to gauge how well you perform.
The term brand building is not unfamiliar to marketers, however many struggles to have control and keep up with their brand and also lack a seamless system that ensures brand consistency. The result is a messy brand that lacks structure and control.
There are many initiatives that will lead you on the right path towards brand control, but let’s start with the basics. You need to get control of your assets, let’s take a look at why and how you need to organize your digital assets.
The term brand building is not unfamiliar to marketers, however many struggles to have control and keep up with their brand and also lack a seamless system that ensures brand consistency. The result is a messy brand that lacks structure and control.
There are many initiatives that will lead you on the right path towards brand control, but let’s start with the basics. You need to get control of your assets, let’s take a look at why and how you need to organize your digital assets.
The term brand building is not unfamiliar to marketers, however many struggles to have control and keep up with their brand and also lack a seamless system that ensures brand consistency. The result is a messy brand that lacks structure and control.
There are many initiatives that will lead you on the right path towards brand control, but let’s start with the basics. You need to get control of your assets, let’s take a look at why and how you need to organize your digital assets.
In all honesty, does everyone in your organization know where they can find marketing collateral? Do they understand the look and feel of your brand and adhere to brand guidelines?
The answer is more often than not, no. It’s also one of the most common causes of unnecessary strain on the marketing department. Improper brand usage and endless questions about finding certain marketing assets or sending this or that file is a cause for marketing inefficiency and brand inconsistency.
But there is hope…
The benefits of a brand portal
In all honesty, does everyone in your organization know where they can find marketing collateral? Do they understand the look and feel of your brand and adhere to brand guidelines?
The answer is more often than not, no. It’s also one of the most common causes of unnecessary strain on the marketing department. Improper brand usage and endless questions about finding certain marketing assets or sending this or that file is a cause for marketing inefficiency and brand inconsistency.
But there is hope…
The benefits of a brand portal
In all honesty, does everyone in your organization know where they can find marketing collateral? Do they understand the look and feel of your brand and adhere to brand guidelines?
The answer is more often than not, no. It’s also one of the most common causes of unnecessary strain on the marketing department. Improper brand usage and endless questions about finding certain marketing assets or sending this or that file is a cause for marketing inefficiency and brand inconsistency.
But there is hope…
The benefits of a brand portal
Your corporate communications team plays a critical role in shaping how the world sees your brand – yet their contributions are often misunderstood or undervalued.
In the last couple of decades, we’ve seen an explosion of choice in available marketing channels. Combine that with increasing competition and rising pressure to maintain strong, consistent brand equity across customers, employees and the general public, and the role of communicators has never been more important.
Think about the breadth of what your corporate communications function covers:
That is a lot of responsibility placed on one department. It is no surprise the industry is valued in the billions – and that teams are growing to keep pace. But without clear, focused objectives, even the best communicators can lose focus or direction.
That’s why setting tangible, business-aligned goals is vital to helping your communications team drive brand equity. Below, we explore five core goals to guide their strategy, along with practical metrics to track progress and performance.
Your communications team defines how your brand is seen – both internally and externally. It’s about more than delivering updates or managing media. It’s about creating clarity, building customer loyalty and trust, and protecting reputation in a fast-changing world.
This function typically splits into two core responsibilities:
It’s a high-stakes balancing act. As channels multiply and expectations rise, the ability to shape culture, reinforce values, and respond in real time has never been more important – or more challenging.
Yet Gartner reports that only 9% of today’s communication leaders believe they can shape company culture effectively. That’s a critical gap, especially in globally distributed teams.
Setting the right objectives is essential. It’s also critical to align them with business strategy and give your Director of Communications a seat at the executive table to ensure every message reflects your brand identity, vision, and long-term goals.
Here are some clear communication goals and metrics to help your team stay focused, impactful and aligned.
Your communications strategy should always have brand reputation at its core. Ensuring this goal is front and center helps embed it into every message and channel your team manages.
Metrics to track
Increasing employee engagement should be one of the key objectives of your internal communications team. Employees perform better when they feel a strong emotional connection to your organization and brand.
Metrics to track
Your people are your most powerful storytellers. A key goal for your corporate communications team should be to inspire employees to share company news, successes, and more. It’s one of the most effective ways to get people outside your organization to listen and respond.
Metrics to track
Corporate communications should contribute to overall brand marketing performance. By aligning messages with strategic campaigns, your team can help attract the right attention and drive action.
Metrics to track
In a digital world, issues spread fast. Having a goal focused on improving the speed and clarity of crisis responses ensures your team can protect your brand image when it matters most.
Metrics to track
These five goals offer a practical framework to help your corporate communications team focus their efforts and measure their impact. With a fast-evolving media landscape and growing global footprints, their role is only set to become more central to business success.
But objectives alone aren’t enough. To realize these goals, teams need the right infrastructure – tools that support clarity, consistency and speed at scale.
It starts with a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. By centralizing brand guidelines and assets, and allowing users to access them through a global brand portal, you’ll make it easy for everyone to visualize, understand, and follow your corporate brand.
Next you need effective content creation tools. The only way to achieve all five goals above is if your teams are empowered to create studio-quality content – without ever straying off brand. This is exactly what Papirfly’s templated content creation solution is designed for, ensuring every corporate communications message is on-point and on-brand.
Not sure what to look for in a DAM?
We’ve got you covered
Not sure what to look for in a DAM?
We’ve got you covered.
Not sure what to look for in a DAM?
We’ve got you covered.
A corporate brand communication team manages how a brand is perceived both internally and externally. They handle media relations, brand messaging, crisis response, and internal updates. They also ensure brand consistency across all touchpoints.
Strengthening brand equity builds brand recognition, customer loyalty and long-term brand value. By aligning communications with brand reputation goals, teams ensure every message contributes to a unified and credible brand identity.
Effective internal comms help keep employees informed, aligned, and connected to the brand’s purpose. This boosts retention and morale – and ultimately drives performance.
When employees share brand messaging authentically, it expands the reach and credibility of your brand. As brand ambassadors, your team members help to amplify news, culture, and values with trusted voices.
Corporate comms teams can use Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems and templated content creation tools to streamline communication workflows, ensure brand consistency, and enable rapid, on-brand responses – especially during crises.
No matter how big a retailer grows, the way consumers think and behave should always shape the way they adapt their communications, stores and customer journeys. Consumers are overwhelmed with choice; buying decisions are becoming harder to make and shopping experiences are becoming ever-more sophisticated both in-store and online. Introducing marketing personalisation into the mix is something that was once considered complex and costly, but today personalisation isn’t just a benefit to consumers – it’s an expectation.
Furthermore, 49% say they have purchased a product that they did not plan to buy after receiving a personalised recommendation from a brand.
Think of each personalisation as an interaction, each one slowly building a relationship with the consumer. As more is learnt about the individual, their experience becomes heightened both online and offline. The brand becomes familiar, a trusted ‘face’ amongst the noise that always appears to have their best interests.
Soon familiarity turns into purchases, and as the post-purchase communication continues, this breeds loyalty. But how far exactly does personalisation need to go in order to achieve this? Where is the line drawn between meeting customer expectations and perhaps a step too far?
When data is used responsibly – and for the benefit of the consumer – retailers can create a seamless, enjoyable shopping experience. Whether it’s building brand, making recommendations, or ‘handholding’ the customer through their purchasing journey, small yet significant touches can work wonders to make the user feel special, understood and encouraged to buy a product.
Collating information about an individual such as age, location and shopping habits can help you shape their experience. Many of these experiences are now the norm, and those who aren’t implementing them online are missing out on some great opportunities.
Here are our top 5 tips for personalising your customers’ online experience:
Having a customer’s name present in your navigation not only makes them feel acknowledged, but assures them that their experience is going to be tailored to them.
Reduce abandoned purchases by giving your customers a second chance to see their desired products on other sites they visit.
Send offers and products relevant to the individual, notify them when their favourite items are back in stock and send follow-up emails post-purchase to make sure they’re happy.
Amongst all the other data that can be collected about a user, one of the easiest to obtain is their location. Firstly, a user shouldn’t ever have to select which country they’re from – it’s simple enough to recognise and prevent them from having an additional step to reach the website. Secondly, being able to promote location-specific offers can be valuable. For example, if an area is affected by torrential weather, you might look to promote your wind-proof umbrellas on the homepage as opposed to sun cream.
There’s nothing worse than making carefully curated selections, getting distracted and then coming back to an empty basket. Keeping products available to a user reduces the chances of them abandoning the purchase altogether.
According to a Salesforce study, 51% of consumers expect that companies will anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before they even make contact. This is where hyper-personalisation will likely take centre stage, and consequently take personalisation in retail to the next level.
Hyper-personalisation uses insights from user behaviours and artificial intelligence to interpret real-time and historical data about an individual. Ads, emails, website content and in-store experiences can all be hyper-personalised with relevant content based on individual browsing history, location, CRM data and more.
It’s worth mentioning that, even though hyper-personalisation in retail can and will be incredibly effective, it’s not something that can be implemented overnight. Your organisation will need to have the right skills to hand, an effective way of centralising and managing data flow, and have plans in place for ongoing maintenance of these intricate marketing efforts.
The level of thought, planning and management is extensive, and though the results will justify the expense for many, it has left lots of industry experts asking is retail really ready for hyper-personalisation AI at all?
Despite the cries of the tabloids, many retailers are managing to entice customers to their physical stores and bringing different levels of personalisation along with them. These opportunities may be viewed as restrictive compared to the digital world, but there are many ways to keep people engaged in-store. In some ways, the physical environment provides a much more effective space to convert. The customer is right there in the flesh and the marketing materials are supported by real salespeople.
Here are our 5 tips for in-store personalisation marketing:
The more you understand your stores’ locations, the greater the opportunity to enrich the shopping experience. Too often, retailers try and fail to bulk send marketing promotion materials from their head office. Harnessing detailed data such as weather reports can ensure stores present relevant promotions. But when you have hundreds of stores in locations across the world, it’s a monumental task to stay on top of this.
What many big retailers are choosing to do is put the power back into the hands of individual stores with brand activation software, which provides pre-defined on-brand templates for digital signage, printed materials and POS, so that stores can react accordingly to topical and local events.
Encourage managers and employees to walk in the shoes of customers – give them scenarios they can re-enact to test whether signage and wayfinding are sufficient. Introduce customer surveys to see whether they noticed certain products or promotions as they navigated the store and incentivise them with offers or prize draws.
Additionally, you could assess product placement by A/B testing your displays. For example, if you keep your merchandising blueprints on record, by changing it over time you can monitor how many products were purchased based on each display over a certain period and analyse why you think this could be. These are just a few ways you can help to validate your store layouts and campaigns.
Technology makes it fairly straightforward to send personalised offers or information when a customer enters your store. If they have your brand’s app installed, are connected to the store’s WiFi or they are on your SMS geofencing list, you can instantly know when they are near or in the area. How much data you hold about the individual will dictate whether you can send them a generic offer or a more personalised recommendation.
There are lots of different ways to introduce multichannel marketing to your customers, and two effective ways of getting physical visitors into the funnel is by introducing email-based receipts and electronic loyalty/points cards. The virtual receipts enter customers into an ‘opt-in’ email marketing funnel, while a loyalty card allows you to learn about their buying habits to further tailor your promotions.
Utilise collective data about your online audiences to adapt in-store promotions. For example, if a specific trend is selling well online in Edinburgh, it could be worth exploring this further in-store.
Either bringing personalisation into your existent marketing and customer journey or elevating what you already have will only serve to help you connect even further with your audience. The perception of a retailer can switch in an instant, from a negative encounter with a sales assistant through to a discount code being invalid, every element of a retail experience – online and in-store – will shape the way people feel about your brand and your products, and ultimately whether they go on to buy them.
Brick-and-mortar retailers need to do the best they can to ensure that they can be both proactive and reactive in their in-store marketing. As previously mentioned, personalisation in retail is no longer a point of differentiation, but an expectation. And as technology becomes more sophisticated, so will the consumer.
The key to success is insight, and having the tools in place to effectively act on this insight. Brand Activation Software makes it possible for businesses to create pre-defined templates that can be tailored by employees with specific messaging, imagery and more. These marketing materials include everything from website banners, digital in-store signage, email templates, social media assets – the list goes on. Tools such as this one make the seemingly impossible task of personalisation in retail not only achievable, but simple.
Brand Management can be a lot to handle, and marketers are often stuck in a time squeeze where daily tasks such as brand maintenance have the tendency of consuming more time than you have. Instead of spending time on value-added brand strategy tasks you know are necessary if you are going to reach your brand goals and growth, you are stuck in an ad hoc loop.
Luckily there is hope. With the right branding tools in place, working with brand management strategies becomes easy and efficient.
Every day we are in contact with hundreds of different brands. Either through websites, TV, social media platforms or in stores, brands and content take up space – both consciously and unconsciously.
Continue reading “Branding 101: the importance of brand management”
Brand Management can be a lot to handle, and marketers are often stuck in a time squeeze where daily tasks such as brand maintenance have the tendency of consuming more time than you have. Instead of spending time on value-added brand strategy tasks you know are necessary if you are going to reach your brand goals and growth, you are stuck in an ad hoc loop.
Luckily there is hope. With the right branding tools in place, working with brand management strategies becomes easy and efficient.
Every day we are in contact with hundreds of different brands. Either through websites, TV, social media platforms or in stores, brands and content take up space – both consciously and unconsciously.
Continue reading “Branding 101: the importance of brand management”
Brand Management can be a lot to handle, and marketers are often stuck in a time squeeze where daily tasks such as brand maintenance have the tendency of consuming more time than you have. Instead of spending time on value-added brand strategy tasks you know are necessary if you are going to reach your brand goals and growth, you are stuck in an ad hoc loop.
Luckily there is hope. With the right branding tools in place, working with brand management strategies becomes easy and efficient.
Every day we are in contact with hundreds of different brands. Either through websites, TV, social media platforms or in stores, brands and content take up space – both consciously and unconsciously.
Continue reading “Branding 101: the importance of brand management”
Your global employer brand is the core of how you attract, recruit and retain top talent worldwide. It is the message, value and vision that tell your target audience why they would want to work for you over your competitors.
For the top global companies, developing an effective employer brand strategy is essential in connecting with potential recruits and your existing team members on a global scale.
With so much choice of workplaces available to today’s skilled employees, having a global employer brand that truly connects and resonates with your preferred target audience is how the best global brands reap the most talented recruits.
Take Vodafone for example -nan organisation we’ve been proud to work with for several years now to deliver greater, more consistent employer branding. One of the most recognised brands around, they have devoted a lot of time and effort in crafting their global employer brand identity to appeal to their ideal employee persona.
From transparency over their vision as a company to creating aspirational employer branding materials, Vodafone recognises the advantages clear strategy gives them in how they acquire talent. And this also takes into account how they interact with their local markets.
Unquestionably one of the greatest challenges facing top global businesses is communicating and disseminating their central brand and identity to their employees and prospective recruits worldwide. Crossing boundaries means new cultures, new languages and new customs.
Employees are individuals, and never is that more apparent when you move from country to country. Brands that take a “one-size-fits-all” approach to their global employer brand strategy risk alienating individuals whose needs, motivations and cultures differ from the messages they are putting out there.
Nowadays, job seekers need to be treated like consumers, and the cost of an employer brand that doesn’t consider their distinct customs and traditions will:
While the essence of your brand values shouldn’t change from location to location, as this will undoubtedly cause confusion as to what your global employer brand stands for, it needs to have been framed in a way that engages your local audiences.
For instance, say part of your company’s core values is an approach that’s incredibly team-oriented and encourages collaboration. That might be more significant to your market in one country than in another. Instead, you should adapt your messages to champion a different core value that is more relevant to that specific audience – that’s part of a good employer branding strategy.
Your global employer branding team should be given time to develop a clear understanding of the local markets that you operate in, performing whatever external surveying work and analysis necessary to understand what they want out of a workplace culture and how your brand can accommodate this.
As mentioned, thorough research into the individual markets you operate in is essential to discover the cultural considerations affecting the area. This will take time, but it’s vital in identifying elements that your target audiences consider crucial in the work environment of an employer of choice.
Remember, your global employer brand strategy towards your local markets should begin and end with the employee experience. Most employees will look to have their own individual needs met, and an appreciation of a market’s culture and society gives you a greater chance of meeting their requirements.
Take time to break down the persona of your ideal team member:
Once you’ve determined a top-line understanding of this through interviews with staff members and qualitative research, go to the extra level in referencing the various cultural nuances and features that distinguish one location from another. That way, you will be able to attract talent in a much more effective way.
Next, the best global brands will utilise their existing employee base as brand ambassadors to connect with local audiences in an organic, natural way. Content shared by employees typically receives 8 times the engagement of content on a brand’s official channels, largely because it feels more personal and credible.
Global businesses with the best employer branding – encouraging and rewarding a company-wide culture of employee advocacy – stand to receive the greatest benefits when appealing to other team members and prospective recruits across their local markets. As your employees promote and interact with others in a meaningful way, others will gain a stronger appreciation for your identity and values.
Whether this is achieved by an incentive programme or by adjusting your marketing strategies to incorporate more “team-focused” content, inspiring your current employees to spread your brand’s message can be a powerful way of attracting candidates.
Brand consistency and frequency are also key to translating your global employer brand to your local markets. While you will likely need to make alterations in terms of language and imagery used, the essence of your brand identity should never waver. Honesty and transparency are important in developing a genuine connection with your target markets.
Therefore, the ability to create and share marketing materials that consistently communicate your brand’s personality to each of your local markets is crucial. Having access to a sophisticated brand management solution makes a real difference in maintaining the core elements of your brand’s identity across all locations, with the function to tailor the imagery, language and layout as necessary to a specific audience (something our systems at Papirfly are capable of providing).
This branding software will also ensure that your local teams can frequently craft and create collateral from the ‘single source of truth’ found in your brand guidelines. This is vital in maintaining regular engagement with your audiences – not just to those you are interested in recruiting, but in reinforcing the shared familiarity with your brand among your existing employees. If these communications are not actively maintained, you risk missing out on attracting top talent and reducing your employee retention.
Essentially, when it comes to protecting and maximising your global employer brand, it is a case of think globally, act locally. By taking the time to address cultural nuances in each of your markets and adapting your marketing to appeal to these, as well as harness the power of your existing employees to reach these groups, you place your organisation in a much better position to attract, recruit and retain talent against other top global companies.
So, how are some of the best global brands appealing to their local markets? Here are some examples that might inspire your approach:
As highlighted earlier, Vodafone in recent years has placed a deeper emphasis on pushing their global employer brand as a means of attracting top talent. After conducting extensive research, they identified eight ‘proof points’ that give people worldwide a fundamental picture of what it’s like to work at Vodafone. From there, this core message is adapted to each market to effectively translate the message, with the company utilising our own brand management solution to create and disseminate this material.
Utilising a hero campaign on being ‘more than just your job title’ on a worldwide and local scale, Unilever’s global employer branding team work closely with their local outlets to tailor their messages most effectively and inspire their current staff members to push their identity out on their own personal channels.
L’Oreal’s innovative approach to a transparent, consistent and candidate-driven recruitment strategy allows them to compete with the top global companies in securing talent. They present universal employee value proposition pillars to their markets worldwide with an appreciation of the cultural disparities.
Dell has committed to recruiting to recruiting an employer branding team, with leads in each of their regional markets, giving them a clear indication of the cultural nuances, trends and events that will inform how their materials will work in those areas. By receiving this insight and experimenting and analysing their campaigns, they are constantly refining how to tap into their local audiences.
Finally, Verizon’s employer brand marketing takes an unwavering approach to championing the achievements and happiness of team members in all local markets, to present everyone in their organisation is engaged with their brand. This magnification of their brand presence through organic, employee-driven content and diverse, current-event messages helps them stand out among the best global brands for prospective job seekers.
We hope this article has helped you recognise the value of adapting your global employer brand around your local markets. While we live in a world that is globalising more and more each day, being able to adapt your message to appeal to the specific cultures, languages and traditions of each market will give your organisation added impetus in your mission to acquire talent and improve employee retention.
Your global employer brand is an investment in your company’s future, and it’s crucial you give it the capacity to fully engage your existing and prospective employees. With our brand management platform for employer branding teams, we empower your teams to go after their local markets frequently, consistently and successfully, with the option to tailor each message for each audience. All with no specialist expertise.
Start empowering your workforce and connecting with your audiences across the globe today.
There is a significant amount of value in your communications – but how do you determine how much?
Identifying the key corporate communication metrics that an organisation should be judged against has been an ongoing challenge across the marketing industry. During a PRWeek Breakfast Briefing in late 2018, Allison Spray, Head of Data and Insight at Hill & Knowlton Strategies, explained the situation quite clearly:
“I’ve worked across a lot of different (marketing) disciplines, particularly on the media-buying side, and when I look at how drastically they’ve moved in the past ten years compared to us, that’s when the gulf really becomes apparent”
While she was specifically referring to PR, this is arguably a constant across all forms of corporate communications. This is how your organisation communicates with its various audiences both internally and externally, from your employees and stakeholders to customers and the general public.
The days of evaluating the effectiveness of different communication systems on column inches and Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) no longer apply. But, it is still highly important that you are using meaningful corporate communications metrics to track its usefulness to your brand.
But what is less emphasised is the importance of tracking how effectively it is fulfilling those goals, or how substantial the cost of poor communications can truly be. A survey of 400 multinational corporations in the US and the UK revealed that communication barriers cost an average of $64.2m in lost productivity.
Unquestionably, that is money that can be put to better use, as well as an illustration of the hours wasted by employees as a result of ineffective communications. In fact, according to research by Mitel, ineffective communication amounts to 1 DAY of working time lost per week. Their report also revealed that:
In addition, a survey by Hollinger Scott revealed that 41% of teams don’t have any means to track their corporate communications in relation to user activity and how much content is being seen and interacted with.
Just having a corporate communications strategy in place is not enough – measuring the effectiveness of communications is essential to ensure that this monumental part of your day-to-day life is functioning as efficiently as possible.
While the ability to measure effective communication is crucial, that doesn’t mean that a settled way to track these metrics has been fixed in place. The Barcelona Principles have attempted to offer a benchmark for measuring communications, but it is not comprehensive.
That is largely because the aims of communications aren’t exactly definitive – it is all about brand perception. And while communications metrics like email opens, event sign-ups and the columns you receive in an industry magazine can indicate your strategy is delivering results, it is difficult to be certain.
This has led some to argue the necessity of tracking internal communication metrics in particular, as this is above all a role designed to drive behaviors to fulfill business outcomes. That can be difficult to quantify through typical marketing KPIs.
Other potential barriers facing teams struggling to track their corporate communications metrics include:
But what corporate communications metrics and KPIs will signify if you’re reaching your targets or falling below expectations? As noted earlier, this is still a question which is yet to have a fixed answer.
Fundamentally, how you choose to measure effective communication within your organisation will depend on your specific business objectives. An effective approach to judging the quality of your communications is to place them in the context of what your business and its partners are looking for and judge against those, using these to identify any issues and barriers to these aims.
This places the measuring of communications at the doorstep of your senior leadership team – when both key executives and your communications team are in-sync in terms of what they intend to accomplish, it makes the job of tracking metrics far more straightforward.
It could be that your company wants to foster a stronger sense of brand identity within your workforce? Or that there’s less dependence on email with a stronger emphasis on your intranet or social networking tools? It will depend on what you are seeking from your communications efforts.
However, we can safely say that in order to effectively assess these, there is a mix of quantitative and qualitative corporate communication metrics you should incorporate into your analyses.
Did you know that 74% of employees feel they miss out on company news and information? Establishing how aware your teams are to the communications processes you have in place or how knowledgeable they are of the content you’re putting out there is a critical internal communication metric to track.
Establish a benchmark and then survey and talk to your employees to gain a consensus on whether they’re receiving the communications you are sending out, and if not, why? By measuring awareness and interest, you get an understanding of where your communications might be lacking.
Plus, incorporate elements like event sign-ups and other links onto your communications to help determine if employees are actively engaging with them. While they might open an email, this will allow you to track if people are following the actions you’ve suggested and truly engaging with your content.
While on their own these do not paint a complete picture of the effectiveness of your approach to communications, the open, read and click rates of your emails and other messages will illustrate if people are paying attention to what you have to say. With the average read-rate of company-wide emails sitting at around 37%, this will provide an indicator of the success of your internal communications.
Similar to email opens, reads and clicks, used as standalone corporate communications metrics visits to a company-wide intranet can only tell you so much. But tracking unique page views, how often employees log in to the platform, how long they stay on there, and so on, provides an indication of how valuable your staff view these and if a change of approach is required. Remember – only 13% of employees strongly agree that their company communicates effectively with them…
Alongside how often your employees are logging into and engaging with your intranet or shared company platform, it can also be valuable to identify the peak times they are using it. Knowing the times of highest traffic will indicate when’s the right time to schedule company announcements or news updates in the hope of getting the greatest engagement.
Across all forms of marketing, timing is essential – to attract the largest possible audience to your internal communications, it benefits you to release them when they’re most active on your platforms.
Another quantitative measure. If you have one or several corporate videos on your site or as part of your communications, following their play-rate and view counts will inform you as to whether they are resonating with and appealing to your audiences. Gathering this and other data at regular intervals (weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc.) will allow you to spot any trends and react to these in a timely fashion to protect your ROI.
As well as how often employees and customers are engaging with your communications content, it’s important to determine where they’re coming from. With Brits spending in excess of two-and-a-half hours every day on their smartphones, knowing if they’re following this trend when engaging with your materials will highlight whether a mobile-first approach will appeal to your audiences more than focusing on an alternate avenue.
If you’ve recently introduced a new social app for your employees, how many have downloaded it? Consider this if you’ve also introduced an employee recognition programme – how many people have actually signed up? Checking the adoption rates of these platforms designed to improve productivity and the effectiveness of communications will give an indication as to whether they’re actually providing a return, and also how well your communications are received overall.
It might mean that an alternative approach is required, or that the processes involved in setting up this platform are too complex or time-consuming for employees to get involved with. Again, it’s about identifying any issues early and reacting to them appropriately.
The power of transforming your employees into impassioned brand advocates cannot be overstated – it is a natural, sociable way to connect audiences to your company’s identity. Tracking how often your content is being shared, liked, and spread out by your team members is a powerful demonstrator of how connected they feel to your brand, as well as how familiar they are with your various communication platforms.
Identifying any issues with these corporate communication metrics will inform where, when and how you post content going forward, and hopefully lead to you utilising this powerful resource to its fullest.
People who maintain a strong bond with their place of work are unlikely to want to leave it. And, judging how one of the primary reasons employees depart is due to a poor relationship with their manager, it stands to reason that your employee turnover numbers will be a useful communication KPI. The more turnover you endure, the less likely your staff are engaged with your company-wide communications.
When employees feel informed and understand what is going on in their company, they feel a deeper level of respect and trust towards it. This leads to better productivity, efficiency and achievement. If your communications are not as effective as they could be, you stand to miss out on those benefits.
If your company has a benefits programme or regularly holds workplace events, tracking how many of your team has signed up to these, and how quickly they do so, will provide insight into how effective your communications are. If the benefit is useful and doesn’t require a great deal of employee effort to get involved with, if enrolments are still low, this corporate communications metric can illustrate your current approach isn’t reaching people, or engaging them properly.
Both the number of press releases and other external communications your company is sending out and the response to them can be a strong indicator of how effective they are. If they are getting into well-respected publications and websites with high domain authority, you will gain a clearer sense of how strong your content is on these platforms.
Furthermore, whether it’s the trending hashtags page on Twitter or you’re featured on Google Trends, that is another (if not, aspirational) way to determine if your communications are having the desired impact.
Finally, often the effective measure of your communications team is how quickly they can respond and handle difficult situations. Crisis communications form a central component of your overall communications strategy, and so it’s crucial you are tracking how quickly this content is reaching your audiences, and if their response to this is as you’d hope for.
This is just an indication of some of the communication KPIs that you should refer to when you are judging how the value of your communications to your organisation. The all-encompassing nature of these messages and their relationships with your various audiences, both within and outside your company, places a high priority on whether these are working as effectively and efficiently as possible.
The bottom line is that the quality of your corporate comms directly affects your bottom line. The question is, can you afford to NOT be tracking the impact your corporate communications strategy is having? Hopefully, these 9 examples will help to point you in the right direction when figuring out how solid your approach is.
