Communicating Through Multiple Channels: Talk The Talk, Walk The Walk

How do you manage your marketing communications?

We're living in a transitional time. Advertising, marketing, public relations – they're all evolving. The lines are blurring. While the end goal remains influence and persuasion, the tools and techniques — and the channels we use to deploy our messages — are multiplying and becoming more intertwined.

New opportunities to affect meaningful and influential communication emerge everyday. There's a proliferation of tools, an avalanche of techniques.

If you have a product and you want to market it effectively, you have to get on board the train of changing times. And, whether you're in strategic marketing, creative development, advertising or public relations, here are some questions you should be thinking about:

Do you push out your marketing messages via ads, press releases, text messages, e-mail blasts, direct mail, your Web site? Do you engage your audience via Twitter, Facebook, blogs, chat rooms or any of the many forums available today?

Are you serious about learning? Serious about evolving your approach to communicating your marketing messages? Do you take what you learn from audience engagements and fold that into strategic discussions? Do you see an audience member's comments or questions as an opportunity to learn?

Do you reach out and learn through interaction with others within your company who might touch your target audiences in ways different than you do? Do you see technology as a tool to help you learn?

Does your corporate culture focus on the top “creatives” as the wellspring of ideas? Do you say all the right things about everyone getting involved in the creative process, but never find the time to put that into action?

Do you value all your company's intellectual resources? Does your company use its human capital wisely? Are your employees encouraged (and trained) to think strategically at all levels?

Do you consider what your receptionist can bring to a marketing discussion? Your sales team? Any front line employee? Your Web designer? Your customer service department? Is the advertising department huddled together as an elite brain-trust talking among themselves — or do they reach out and seek others' input? Does top management involve PR professionals at the beginning of an issue or once the program is in place and it needs “publicizing?” Who's on your top strategic team? Is it a blend of several disciplines?

When managing your message, do you recognize that your message will probably need to evolve? Do you act on that realization?

Round and round we go. . .push, pull, collaborate, refine, engage, evaluate, consult, interact, share and refine again.

Effective communications and marketing hinges on the collection of ideas from many resources and the execution of ideas through multiple channels.

We live in fast changing times. Don't just talk the talk, walk the walk.