Chapter 1

9 Resources

What is CommTech?

CommTech has a Progression Path

CommTech represents and requires a new mindset – that the work of Communications is not limited to messaging and storytelling in pursuit of shaping opinion and fostering good will. Rather, our work can shape the actual behavior of the company and the people who matter to it — moving them from belief to action to confidence to advocacy. Furthermore, our work can foster a web of relationships with and around our firms and the people they comprise by turning seemingly random connections into addressable networks. Therefore, CommTech knowledge and facility will be critical success factors for all Comms roles. The Comms team will jointly own hard KPIs (such as recruitment, sales and compliance) with other functions, and their insights will inform the business strategies and choices of Marketing, Sales, HR and Operations.

CommTech is a mindset, but it’s also a journey. As part of The CCO as Pacesetter, Page as developed three-stage journeys called Progression Paths that lay out how CCOs can advance their work in four critical dimensions of their role: brand stewardship, culture change, societal value creation, and CommTech. These begin at the Professional level and progress to Pathfinder and, finally, to Pacesetter, which is where the work is highly systematized across the organization, and goes beyond the creation of highly effective campaigns to the ongoing transformation of the organization. For more on these Progression Paths, please see https://paths.page.org.

 

Let us take you through the three stages of a CommTech team:

Illustration of the three stages of a CommTech Team

PROFESSIONAL: Content is king.

  • Listening yields insights.
  • Create, distribute content tailored to the channel
  • Monitor social platforms for keywords, sentiment
  • Audience determined by platform and channel
  • KPIs: Content engagement (views, likes, shares, retweets)

 

PATHFINDER: Campaigns that move stakeholders to action.

  • Establish Agile teams
  • Target by digital behavior
  • Design journeys that lead to outcomes
  • Content for each touchpoint
  • Launch, iterate, optimize
  • Paid is essential
  • Detect, address fake news
  • KPIs: Audience engagement (open rates, click-throughs, conversion)

 

PACESETTER: Optimize for performance and transformation

  • Hyper-targeting
  • Dynamic content
  • Continuous optimization
  • Identify opportunities for on-brand activities
  • Source of rich enterprise data
  • KPIs: Net Promoter Score, user reviews, job offers accepted, leads generated and progressed

 

To put a little more flesh on those bones:

  • Practitioner
    Practitioner
    Get audiences to see our message
    Key Activities

    Get audiences to see our message

    Focus on editorial production per Channel

    Key Team Roles & Skills

    Editorial Content Creators

    Analytics

    Focus on monitoring what people say about our brand on Social Media

    • Tracking what’s happening to our brand based on reactions to our brand
    Issue/Crisis

    Identify when it happens

    • Data based proof of the dimensions of a crisis
    • Reply with classic crisis management
    Audience Definition & Targeting

    Audience is determined by platform: focused on reaching as many people as possible on each platform (Twitter, Linkedin, News etc.)

    • Macro-Targeting
    Definition & Tracking of KPIs

    Content Engagement (Views, Clicks, etc.)

    • How well is our content perceived
  • Professional
    Key Objectives

    Give audiences all the content elements they need to act.

    Key Activities
    • Focus on creating coherent campaigns/journeys
    • Focus on creating content campaigns/journeys
    Key Team Roles & Skills
    • Editorial Content Creators
    • Designers
    • Analysts
    Analytics

    Focus on identifying risks and opportunities for our campaigns & brand

    • Trying to identify what’s happening to our brand early on based on the very first reactions to our brand
    Issue/Crisis

    Early warning system

    • Data based identification of a crisis on a specific channel, before it spreads across all channels
    • Reply with crisis communications – aligned across all channels
    Audience Definition & Targeting

    Audience definition & segmentation based on bigger groups

    • B2B, B2C, Men vs Women, Young vs Old, Banking vs Health etc.
    • Segment-Targeting
    Definition & Tracking of KPIs

    Audience Engagement

    • how well are we moving audiences forward in their journey (CTR, OR, ER)
  • Pacesetter
    Key Objective

    Find the most effective way to get audiences to act

    Key Activities
    • Focus on performance creation & optimization
    • Focus on ongoing testing and optimization to push outcomes on different levels
    Key Team Roles & Skills
    • Editorial Content Creators
    • Designers
    • Analysts
    • Performance Marketers
    • Technologists (Developers etc.)
    Analytics

    Focus on identifying and leveraging insights into our audience’s needs and wishes

    • Trying to anticipate what’s going to happen to our brand based on trends and discussions in our key audiences (not necessarily about our brand)
    Issue/Crisis

    Anticipation based on patterns

    • Data based anticipation of issue/crisis risks based on activities in key audiences, before they are addressed at our own company and brands
    • Prevent issues/crisis with preventive audience engagement
    Audience Definition & Targeting

    Audience definition based on personal behavior of individuals in audience segments

    • Micro-Targeting
    Definition & Tracking of KPIs

    Business outcomes and costs per business outcome (cost per conversion etc.)

    • How efficiently are we contributing to the bottom line
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