Dangers and Desires

At the helm of ITPEnergised is Jonny Clark, an ambitious and visionary Managing Director focused on business growth. Jonny recognised that to achieve his business growth goals, certain aspects of the business required immediate attention.

The absence of a clear communication strategy meant there was a lack of consistency when it came to communicating with the target audience. The organisation had no clear line on how it differentiated itself from competitors, nor on why customers should care whether they worked with ITPEnergised or someone else.

Jonny chose to work with EC-PR because of our experience and track record in building marketing strategies and providing companies with a blueprint for how to achieve marketing and communications success.

Design

Developing a communication strategy means starting at the beginning and addressing the key questions surrounding the personality of the brand and how it wants to be perceived by the target audience.

A collaborative approach was needed here, with our role being facilitator. We proposed a fact-finding, research-led route to discover the values that lay at the heart of the company.

Campaign delivery

• Messaging Lab workshops
• Communication strategy
• Stakeholder engagement
• Validation research

Messaging lab workshop

The first step to building the new communication strategy for ITPEnergised was to hold Messaging Lab workshops. In these sessions, we worked closely with the organisation’s senior leadership team to discover how they viewed the company, what they felt the key differentiators were and who they saw as their main target customers.

Communication strategy

The resulting communication strategy featured five key components:

The value proposition

This inspired ITPEnergised to recall what drove them from the start. In working with them to refine their value proposition, we helped them create a simple statement that defined them as a company and differentiated them from competitors.

Target customer personas

Companies can get lost in the everyday melee, forgetting which kind of customer it is that brings them the greatest return, in terms of profitability and satisfaction. Through this exercise, ITPEnergised was able to define which type of customers they really wanted to focus their energies on attracting.

Positioning statements

The next stage on from defining target customer personas was to create a positioning statement bespoke to each one. This addressed the key pain points the customer typically experienced and explained how the company could offer solutions and reassurance to ease this pain.

Key messaging

Ensuring they were reflective of their positioning statements, we worked with ITPEnergised’s senior team to agree on their key messaging — what it was they wanted their customers to understand about them. This information fed into the communication strategy, providing angles for narrative.

Industry prioritisation

Like every business, ITPEnergised did not have endless marketing budgets. This meant they needed to drill down on the industries most important to them. Doing this gave them direction in where to focus their attention when it came to marketing activity.

Validation research

Engaging external stakeholders is an important aspect of building a communication strategy. That’s why we conducted validation research amongst a small group of ITPEnergised’s customers — to ensure the strategy was in line with their perceptions.

Distinction

The communication strategy we built now forms the backbone of all ITPEnergised’s marketing activity. It offers clarity and guidance on communication and gives the company a clear way forward, providing a much-needed structure that was previously lacking.

Much more than just a comms strategy

ITPEnergised’s Managing Director commented that thanks to EC-PR’s support, the organisation has been given a renewed sense of empowerment and pride in what makes their brand so special.

From our point of view, it was a privilege to be involved in a project with a company whose work is so important to the world we live in and we’re delighted we could make such a positive difference to how they view themselves.