The foundation of targeted communication is a thorough understanding of all facets of a company. Therefore, at the beginning of our collaboration, we get to know the company far beyond its pure product world: The people, the values, the corporate culture, but also production, processes, and machinery make up the company in its entirety. It is crucial to immerse oneself in the company and experience it with all senses in its full complexity: Even noises and smells play a role. This makes the company’s DNA tangible, so to speak. With this preparation, the next step can be initiated – strategy coaching as a basis for identifying a company’s unique selling propositions, target groups, and buyer personas, and generating content that differentiates it from competitors.

The strategy coaching begins with a joint kick-off aimed at identifying the company’s competitive unique selling propositions that give it advantages in the market. This is, of course, particularly important for new clients, but it can also lead to a re-evaluation of seemingly established perspectives for existing clients. The fresh external perspective opens up new insights, often benefiting the company and sometimes uncovering surprising findings.

At the kick-off, it is crucial to involve several stakeholders from different departments: management, sales, production, marketing, purchasing, R&D, and HR. This integrates various areas with their own perspectives on the company and its self-perception into the process. Only from all these facets combined does a complete picture emerge that is significantly more comprehensive and authentic than all briefing materials put together. This approach creates transparency, acceptance, and trust to embark on the joint journey and later support and represent the measures.

Here, all participants are invited to think outside the box and utilize the agency as a sparring partner. During the strategy coaching, the company’s core values and competencies are captured in a specially developed value circle, which serves as the basis for developing a future-oriented communication strategy. Likewise, an inventory of previous measures is taken based on a pre-developed questionnaire to align them with the strategy. Does the appearance still adequately reflect the brand? Has the company’s self-perception kept pace with current developments? Furthermore, visual worlds and their perception are queried and analyzed to gain an impression of the participants’ visual preferences. Finally, a comparison is made with the components that are of communicative value in the development of targeted content.

The results from the kick-off workshop are elaborated in detail and summarized in a presentation with a proposed action plan. “We don’t chase every trend; instead, we carefully examine and analyze which communication best supports sales and thus works for the company,” explains Jörg Schroer, Managing Director and Creative Director. “A future-oriented and target-group-specific communication strategy only works on the basis of a shared understanding. It leads to healthy growth. And that is the goal of our strategy coaching – which, by the way, is suitable for both new clients and within the framework of an existing client relationship.”