We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: If your communications and content aren’t strategically aligned to your organisation’s goals, you might as well just post about cats.
That’s why all bioscience organisations must have a communications plan that aligns with their wider business strategy if they’re serious about achieving their goals.
We’ve previously talked about what a communications strategy is, the issues caused by not having one, and how you begin building it.
But what if your organisation needs a comms strategy, yet your leadership team isn’t convinced or can’t see the value of putting time and resources into getting one into shape?
Influencing leadership to adopt a strategic communications approach
We get it. As soon as you’ve developed your business plan or organisational goals, you’ll be itching to crack on and tell the world.
But taking the time to develop a strategic communications framework will pay off in the longer term by enabling more effective comms and content that hits the spot with the audiences that matter to you.
Without leadership buy-in and agreement on a strategic communications approach, it can feel like there’s an internal tug of war over what to say and who to say it to.
Teams can end up generating lots of ideas for content or media activity, but collectively it doesn’t work together to help you get closer to achieving your goals.
For example, a research institute looking to secure more industry partnerships is better off focusing on targeting commercially-focused media outlets with stories that focus on the outcomes and benefits of partnering.
But if the goal is to generate public engagement or fundraising around a particular research project, it’s better to approach the mainstream media with a strong news hook.
As another example, a B2B CRO wanting more leads should be aiming to target senior decision-makers in the biopharma industry with valuable factual content that highlights their expertise, rather than generic company announcements.
A lack of leadership buy-in can also manifest itself as frustration because the results of PR or marketing aren’t what you’re after.
For example, if you’re wondering why only a handful of your newsletter subscribers are converting to sales, it may be because you’re more likely to grab the attention of your time-poor target audience face-to-face at a conference.
Finding an expert agency to support your life science communications strategy
If you find yourself repeatedly championing strategic communications but the message is landing flat, working with an expert agency to back your corner can be an effective way to influence change.
By working with an agency that specialises in strategic communications and content for the life sciences, you’ll find yourself having the much-needed advice and support to work through the necessary steps and frameworks to develop a comms strategy.
Regardless of the reactive and last-minute activities your team will inevitably be pulled into, an agency is there to keep progress moving forward on the bigger picture.
An agency can offer the right kind of strategic comms expertise and bandwidth you may not have in-house. Often comms teams are missing strategic thinking because their day-to-day is taken up with content development, social media or copywriting.
And for smaller bioscience companies, strategic communications may be little more than an afterthought in your business development manager’s job description.
Lastly, an external voice and opinion adds weight to your internal advocacy. Agencies are great comms champions – it’s what we eat, live and breathe after all – and we can make the value-add of strategic communications irresistible to your key decision-makers.
At First Create The Media, we often find ourselves in front of leadership, Trustees and Boards demonstrating the impact of getting comms aligned with an organisation’s bigger picture.
Each time we see their light-bulb moment when it clicks that they have distinct audiences to consider, and there’s work to be done to consistently create purpose-led content that hits the mark.
Why do you need a communications strategy?
The next time you find yourself in front of a colleague who doesn’t see how a more strategic approach to communications could lead to better engagement with prospects, more investment, or positioning your organisation as leaders, try these arguments.
- “A communications strategy can help us save time and money because we’re not wasting our efforts on content and comms that don’t take us towards our overall goals.”
- “We’ll be able to make more informed decisions with a communications strategy in place because it will outline what type of content we need to produce, and when and how to use it.”
- “Having a communications strategy will unify our organisational voice across all comms, content and channels meaning our audiences are more likely to remember what we need them to know.”
Need help championing strategic communications in your life science organisation?
As a communications strategy and content agency specialising in the biosciences, we regularly have comms managers, team leaders and directors working in the sector approach us with aspirations of having a strategic approach to external communications. But their missing ingredient is leadership buy-in.
Get in touch and tell us about your challenges to see how we can help you.
Read how we helped the Research On Research Institute (RoRI) align their story and messaging to their big picture, which involved securing buy-in from their Board to commit to strategic communications in the long term.