What is The Role, Value & Benefit of Strategic Communications?

Strategic Communications is defined as the purposeful use of communications by an organization, brand or institution to fulfill a mission or achieve a desired outcome.  

The Role of Strategic Communications

Strategic Communications enables a brand or organization to be purposeful about how they communicate with the external world and how information is shared within the organization. The following are a few roles that strategic communications can help with.

• Crisis Communications: Strategic communications helps an organization navigate a crisis situation to know how to respond in an effective manner without damaging long-term reputation.
• Internal Communications: Strategic Communications enables an organization to be effective through the use of internal communications designed to enhance employee engagement, build a shared vision, promote organizational culture, reward desired behaviours and drive the required performance culture.
• External Communications: Strategic Communications creates space and support for the business. It ensures that the brand is visible and present in the spaces that are most important for the achievement of its objectives

The Value of Strategic Communications 

Strategic Communications enables businesses, brands and organizations to achieve the following:

• Brand Visibility: A strategic approach to communication enables brand visibility. It takes an intentional approach to building brand personality, articulating the brand narrative and disseminating to targeted audiences consistently over a long period of time. It makes sure that the reputation of the brand is protected at all times.
• New Business Opportunities: Strategic Communications opens doors to new business opportunities. Having a strong brand narrative and and credible online presence or digital footprint (supported by social proof) lends credibility and is more likely to attract partnership and investment opportunities.

The Benefit of Strategic Communications 

The long term benefits of having a purposeful approach to communication in any organization or institution or for a business are tremendous – with internal and external implications.

Internal

1. Engaged workforce: – strategic communications will make an organization much more engaged than it would have been otherwise. When implemented properly, it provides platforms for listening and feedback between management and staff and enables continuous improvement.
2. Brand Champions:  Effective internal communications gives employees a sense of belonging by keeping them engaged and informed; building bridges between the organizational hierarchy; solving problems etc. Thus creating the environment for staff to become willing brand champions.
3. A unified and collaborative culture: When implemented strategically, internal communications has the ability to help create a unified and collaborative culture by creating awareness of desired behaviours and providing platforms to reward and recognize with full management support and role modelling.
4. Shared Vision: Internal Communications helps organizations create a shared vision – where everyone is working collaboratively together towarsd the same goal and understands how their work contributes to the big picture and fits into the other departments/roles/functions in the organization.
5. Effective organization: A structured approach to internal communications enables large organizations to be effective i.e. everyone doing what they should at the right time, in the right way for the right reasons, and with the right results.

External

A purposeful approach to communication helps businesses and organizations to achieve the following:

1. Public Goodwill:  The public is more accepting of visible brands that are known and have become an active member of the community. Having a strategic Public Relations & Communications plan makes a company more acceptable to the society in which it lives. This is very important for businesses and brands who interface with the public and whose activities require support from host communities and the public at large. e.g. churches, NGOs, faith-based organizations, schools, hospitals, entertainment centres or any business with a physical location presence.
2. Crisis Resilience: Having a structured approach to communications makes a business or brand more resilient to crisis because they already have a trained, skilled team of communications experts or specialists who know what to do in a crisis and what not to do. Waiting till crisis hits before securing access to communications specialists is not a purposeful approach to communication.
3. A strong Brand: It is impossible to fully leverage on building strong brand equity without a strategic approach to communication. Strategic Communications helps to amplify the impact of your brand by sharing the narrative to audiences and communities far beyond its immediate reach or physical touchpoints. It creates room for future business and also maintains support for the current operations. A strong brand is built by good performance, strengthened by excellent behaviour and amplified by strategic communications
4. Loyal customers: Customer loyalty is a function of how you communicate and engage. It is impossible to have good customer relationships without maintaining a good communications and engagement philosophy and practise. Strategic communications helps to identify customers as a key stakeholder group for ongoing cultivation and takes a non-transactional approach to communicating and engaging with them.
5. Good reputation: A good reputation is built by performance + behaviour + communication. Communication is what enables others to learn about a company’s performance and how they relate with their customers, communities and members of the public. Communications enables your reputation to travel far and wide.

Sola Abulu & Associates (SA&A) is a strategy and communications training and consulting firm dedicated to enabling businesses, brands and institutions to achieve their desired objectives through strategic communications, organizational effectiveness and reputation risk management.

Enrolment is ongoing for the  8th Cohort of the SA&A CPDSO-Accredited Strategic Communications Course scheduled for  Thursday, August 28, 2025 from 9AM – 4PM West Africa Time via ZOOM.

Register here to join the session: https://www.solaabuluassociates.com/signup-interest/ or send us an email on training@solaabuluassociates.com