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Sales & Marketing

Introduction to Strategic Communications

Course details

CPD Points

7

Cost

£545

Length

Full day (09:00-17:00)

Course Overview

This course will give a deeper understanding of the whole marketing mix and how successful PR campaigns can deliver business objectives. You will learn the strategies and tactics employed by global brands and put these tools into practice in a practical scenario, going away with the basics of a strategic communications campaign.

Course Content

1. Introductions and course overview

2. How do brands communicate?

  • The changing face of media and communications
  • Introduction to Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media (‘the PESO model’)

3. Demystifying campaigns

  • What does the term ‘campaign’ mean across different sectors of the marketing mix?
  • How can the PESO model work together to achieve campaign aims and objectives?

4. PR’s role in Strategic Communications

  • The communications eco system
  • The importance of messaging
  • Orchard’s six part model

5. Communicating effectively

  • Finding your message
  • Creating a message house

6. The vital role of measurement

  • Stakeholder mapping
  • Deciding your metrics
  • Setting SMART objectives
  • Ongoing evaluation

7. Overview of the media

  • What do media want?
  • Why should organisations engage with media?
  • How does a story get into the news cycle?
  • Why engage with media?

8. Distribution

  • Listening to your audience(s)
  • Adapting your messaging
  • Tools and techniques to help tell your story – press releases, events, video content, long-form features

9. Getting creative

  • Translating your message into creative campaigns
  • The importance of authenticity
  • The dos and don’ts of creative campaigns
  • Strategy vs. tactics

10. Campaign techniques

This section will explore the drivers of a selection of successful campaigns across a number of different sectors

11. Getting creative – group interaction

A task will be set, splitting the group into smaller teams and asking them to answer a creative challenge

12. Getting creative - your organisation in the spotlight

  • As individuals, each delegate will identify an opportunity to create a strategic communications campaign for their organisation
  • They will discuss and dissect this creative challenge as a wider group and with the tutor, and decide outcomes
  • They will then spend their own time ‘fleshing out’ the campaign to present back to the group in a format of their choosing
  • Feedback and suggestions for ‘builds’ on the campaign will be shared by the group

13. Summary and review

Course Benefits

A famous saying declares ‘There’s no such thing as bad PR’. Unfortunately, it’s not true. A number of PR campaigns – although not ‘bad’ as such – fail to perform as they should. Why does that happen and how can you avoid your organisation falling into the same traps?

Communications should be at the heart of business strategy. A creative and robust PR and communication strategy is borne out of understanding and aligning with a brand’s corporate objectives, and creating tactics that deliver.

This course will take you inside the world of strategic communications and dissect why certain marketing campaigns enjoy success and longevity, and others fail to make their mark. It will encourage you to consider the objectives of your own organisations, and take you through the creative process to formulate a campaign tailored to your own day-to-day challenges.

Next Steps

If you would like to book a place on this course please click on the ‘Book Course’ button to the right of this page and login or register for a user account to complete your booking(s). Any queries please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected] or call us on 01481 224570.

If no date is scheduled for this course at the present time please click on the ‘Register Interest’ button and login or register for a user account so that we can add you to our course interest register. This register allows us to contact our tutors and finalise dates for a course as soon as we have a few people who have expressed their interest, so the more delegates who register their interest, the sooner we can schedule a particular course.

Course Tutor

  • Lindsey Freeman

    Lindsey Freeman, Independent Consultant, Orchard PR

    Lindsey is an independent consultant who works with the Orchard team to help our clients define, develop and deliver their strategic business goals through creative communication campaigns. She is a former Broadcast Journalist who spent a decade in London working with leading PR agencies including Ogilvy, freuds, H+K Strategies and Saatchi & Saatchi. During that time, she steered the likes of Barclays, KFC, Volvo, Huawei and Kimberly Clark through countless successful campaigns and a number of high-profile issues.

Upcoming Courses

Some courses we run are scheduled based on demand. Please ensure you register your interest to ensure we know which courses you would like to attend.