3 signs it’s time to hire a strategic comms agency

For leaders of social impact organizations and companies, your daily focus is on the mission: Making the world a better place. But what’s equally as important – and can often make the difference in terms of whether you have impact or not – is how you communicate that mission to your customers, clients, and other audiences.
 
As you work to change the world around you, here are three critical signs that it is time for your organization to hire a strategic communications agency to elevate your positioning and branding:

You’re going through (or just went through) a major transformation.

Whether it was pandemic-related or a shift in leadership or operations, rapid changes can mean a change in priorities that isn’t reflected in old messaging. It’s vital to establish a strong strategic foundation that allows your organization to move forward intentionally, and not be held back by old positioning.

Your staff and stakeholders aren’t saying the same thing.

As companies and organizations evolve, grow, and shift, one of the most common occurrences is inconsistent messaging among employees and stakeholders. Maybe you have a mix of long-standing staff and newcomers; maybe different departments just see your mission and their job in different ways and have “gone rogue” in developing their own materials. But using outside experts to help your team unify your core message and value proposition is the most effective way to improve outcomes long-term.

You don’t have enough bandwidth.

Senior leaders’ focus is often operationally centered, focused on reacting and dealing with emergent issues. Because of this, by the time teams start considering a new website or marketing collateral, the problem they’re often facing isn’t just passé design: It’s inconsistent or outdated messaging that doesn’t reflect who they are, or who they want to be. Hiring a strategically driven agency enables you to focus on what you do, while adding capacity where it matters.

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Teaming with an agency that specializes in purpose-driven companies and organizations allows you to jump start your work and focus on the core of what makes you effective. In the same way a core message can help amplify your work exponentially, a strategic communications shop doesn’t just add capacity – it multiplies the effectiveness of what you’re already doing and pays dividends in both the short and long-term.