Global, coherent and integrated B2B communication

By Ana Raposo, lecturer at the School of Social Communication and pro-president for Strategic Communication at the Polytechnic of Lisbon, and Marta Gonçalves, managing partner of SayU Consulting

The responses obtained in the "InterComm Report - B2B Communication Trends in Global Businesses (InterComm)", a study developed by the Lisbon Polytechnic Institute's School of Social Communication and SayU Consulting - Evoke Network, with the support of aicep Portugal Global, identifies three priority areas for investment in terms of company communication: reputation, internal communication and digital communication.

Reputation is a concept that cuts across all of an organization's activities and is directly related to issues of identity management or institutional communication. In order to ensure differentiation, it is even more important for companies to be able to define and highlight who they are, what their unique features and history are, projecting what can distinguish them from the competition in the eyes of the public. This is a factor about which organizations seem to be gaining a new awareness.

The impact of reputation is particularly important since it is the basis for gaining trust, as essential capital for doing business. The promotion of this axis ends up being a joint effort between commercial communication, which is obvious for these organizations, together with knowledge/technical communication, making visible what can be added to the B2B value chain, and institutional/identity communication, clarifying how the organization is different.

It was interesting to see the relevance of internal communication in this context because it makes it clear that customers are not the only audience to focus on. It is also necessary to think about the individuals who make up the organization: the employees. Companies have realized that communication doesn't just happen between employees, it has to be planned. In a context of dispersion, as a result of the teleworking dynamics imposed by the pandemic, companies have understood the importance of planning and structuring the when, where, how and what to say to their teams in order to guarantee productivity and business continuity.

The issue of digital communication also appears inevitable, although digital presents itself as a channel and the basic principles from the point of view of communication remain exactly the same: understand who I'm talking to, what objective I want to achieve, what message I'm going to convey. Only after this assessment is made is it possible to define whether communication should be developed in digital, working intelligently, relevantly and effectively. Only in this way can communication help to develop the business.

But digital doesn't solve everything. On the one hand, in certain businesses and industries that aren't traditionally export-oriented, some companies that can't take part in trade fairs, given the large amounts of investment required to develop these initiatives, have had an opportunity to enter some markets. But entry into a market is based on trust and confidence. CRISIS is relational. Creating a relationship at a distance is probably the biggest difficulty in developing these cross-border businesses.

Companies that initially had a defined identity now have an advantage, since the public already recognizes them. That's why there are so many companies concerned with telling their story and making themselves known. The responses to this study have made it possible to identify curious phenomena, such as the repositioning of tra

traditional, with a huge export history and which the public has never heard of. Why is that? Portuguese companies have realized something very important: if they were bought before, they now have to learn to sell themselves. And this goal of selling is something that can only happen within the framework of communication.

The future is clearly going to be hybrid. Companies have learned a lesson over the last year: there's no need to travel all the time or go to every trade fair because there are other contact platforms, organizations can make themselves known to their stakeholders through original and targeted content, team spirit can be maintained and interaction promoted, even at a distance.

Companies today are required to be able to address internal communication, digital communication, reputation issues - which are the structuring bases for all the other areas of communication intervention - media relations, sustainability, risk management and crisis communication, event management, and all the other actions that can be promoted with the aim of creating leads. It is essential to always try to demonstrate coherence, cadence and continuity, taking a strategic approach, mapping and managing all the stakeholders and, through these different areas of specialization, reaching them all.

Faced with various dimensions of communication and the growing importance of new channels, the most important thing is to learn to be coherent and to work with communication in a truly integrated way.