Slice’s strategy team works to understand which target audiences are most important to your business, the stories your brand needs to tell, and what goals you should focus on to drive your audience forward. Through comprehensive research and auditing, our team provides a strategic roadmap focused on harnessing the power of “surround sound” communication to move people through the 5 Types of Attention model. In addition, our communication strategy team provides you with the necessary tools and a plan you can trust to accomplish your goals.
Building an Effective Integrated Marketing Strategy
Marketing strategies exist to support the growth of your business. In order for your business to grow to scale, you must meet your audience where they are with the right content and messaging to garner their attention. Learn more about the steps we take to help you build an effective integrated marketing communication strategy for your business.
Audience Identification
Understanding who your target audience is is the most pivotal step in creating an effective marketing strategy. It’s important to look beyond just demographic statistics and really understand their psychographic characteristics. Once you have a full picture of who your audience is, what they do, what platforms they’re active on, and what they care about, you can market to them in a compelling way.
Competitive Audit
Every effective marketing strategy includes a competitive audit. Our strategy team helps you determine which companies or individuals are competing for your target audience’s attention and researches the current competitive landscape. The team uncovers invaluable insights from industry leaders and potential partners during this stage and clearly deciphers what’s working (and not working) before distilling this information for our clients. Most importantly, we share with our clients how they can leverage this information to be “different,” because we believe “different is better than better.”
Key Messaging
Establishing a consistent voice and tone is extremely important, yet brands often don’t create one or follow through with it. Our strategy team will help you determine whether your company is the type to use five exclamation points!!!!! Or are you very matter-of-fact? Do you communicate in a more casual, humorous way? Or do you prefer a more formal terminology-heavy approach? Finding where your brand lands on these sliding scales will help create a custom voice and tone that will resonate with your target audience. Our strategy team exists to help you decide where you stand and help you remain consistent.
Tactical Recommendations
Once you know who your target audience is, what channels they’re most active on, and have an established voice and tone, you’re ready to put it all together. Our strategic roadmap includes a variety of tactical recommendations aimed at achieving your business goals through our surround sound tactics. Our communication strategy team will provide recommendations on optimizing your social channels, enhancing your messaging through PR, and creating and maintaining email marketing efforts.
Our Marketing Communications Strategy Capabilities
In order to successfully market to a target audience, brands need to have relevant and engaging content that is served where their audience is. Whether it be through social media, email, or public relations, the best marketing strategies incorporate a variety of content tailored to each approach.
First Cut Session
This is our kickoff workshop. During this working session we address the four big questions: who, what, how, and why. Through both verbal and written exercises, the strategy team identifies your key audience, where you currently stand in the industry, who you are competing with, and determines your goals.
Corporate Communications Strategy
After our First Cut Session we use all the insights we’ve gathered to create an in-depth presentation with our recommendations. This strategic roadmap outlines key findings, situation analysis among competitors, key messaging, content recommendations, and surround sound campaigns to help garner the correct type of attention you need to meet your business goals.
Employee Engagement Strategy
Most of the time we work with companies who overlook a critical audience — their employees. Many companies have made the shift to focus on their internal audiences to retain top talent, recruit for new positions, and maintain a healthy relationship with their workforce. That’s why it’s important, now more than ever, to invest in your company brand, showcase your work culture, and garner attention from new employees.
Editorial Calendar Development
In order for your content to resonate with your audience it has to be timely and relevant. Using the five types of content — written, visual, audio, video, and experiential — the Slice team workshops six months worth of topics and themes that strategically align with your overall business goals and messaging.
Standard Operating Procedures and Policy Planning
Establishing clear guidelines and operation routines helps companies remain efficient. Unfortunately, setting these standards is often overlooked and results in issues down the line. Slice helps companies institute standard operating procedures (SOPs) and guide internal policies, such as one’s social media policy, to mitigate miscommunication and align all employees.
Quarterly Strategy Reviews
Each quarter, the Slice team executes a full analysis of our marketing efforts and compares quarter-to-quarter and year-over-year. Doing a deep dive into data and analytics, we analyze trends, highlight the best performing content, communicate goals, and make strategic recommendations for the upcoming quarter.
Need Help with Your Marketing Communications Strategy?
Creating an effective strategic plan isn’t a one-and-done project. As industries and trends change, so should your strategy. Contact our team to get started on your roadmap today!
