Marketing and communications are often treated as interchangeable. They’re not, and confusing the two can actually create risk for a business.
Put simply, the aim of marketing is to create demand and bring in customers, while strategic communications exists to build trust and manage key relationships. When organisations ask one function to do both, both demand and trust can suffer.
When revenue drops or market share falls, the usual reaction is to run more ads and lead‑generation activities. This makes sense because marketing helps you get noticed, attract customers, shape offers and convert interest into sales. But it only addresses half the challenge.
The other half sits with the people who aren’t current or prospective buyers – it includes employees deciding whether to stay, investors deciding whether to back the strategy, regulators deciding how closely to scrutinise decisions, communities deciding whether the organisation has a social licence to operate.
Strategic communications is the discipline that manages these relationships by explaining decisions, outlining context, managing issues and ensuring stakeholders hear a consistent, credible story about where the organisation is heading and why.
During times of change, uncertainty or controversy, defaulting to “just do more marketing” can actually make things worse. Messages get louder, expectations rise and trust can start to erode, resulting in legal, financial or reputational risk.
Trust as a strategic asset
Trust used to be dismissed as intangible. Today, it’s measurable and material.
A growing body of research shows corporate reputation represents a significant share of market value and is linked to stronger profitability and a lower cost of capital. High-trust organisations recover faster from crises, attract talent more easily and secure approvals with less resistance. Low-trust organisations feel every shock harder and take longer to recover.
In practical terms, trust works like a shock absorber. When something goes wrong - a major outage, a regulator at the door or a cyber-attack - trust can somewhat soften the impact of how stakeholders react and be a deciding factor in the faith they have that you will act appropriately.
Strategic communications are therefore a core part of risk management and belong next to finance, strategy and governance - a completely different corporate function to marketing, with a unique role and objectives.
Different jobs, different dashboards
Marketing and communications also operate on different metrics.
Marketing speaks primarily to customers and prospects with success defined via leads, conversion rates, revenue and market share over the short to medium term.
Strategic communications speak to employees, investors, regulators, communities and media. Key metrics include trust, sentiment, advocacy and stakeholder support for key decisions, while the time horizon is longer and cumulative.
When these functions share a budget or leadership role without clear mandates, those dashboards can become blurred. Short-term demand tends to take priority, often at the detriment of investment in trust and not noticed until things go wrong and an organisation needs it most.
Alignment between marketing and strategic communications is key
When your business story is told in a clear and credible way, marketing goes further and communications builds trust. When a business is changing direction, whether that be on pricing, strategy, leadership or sustainability, marketing drives attention, while communications builds understanding and trust. The two need to work together so momentum is backed by credibility.
What leaders should do next
Boards and executive teams should be mindful of three vital actions:
1. Set clear mandates. Decide who owns demand and who owns reputation and trust and make those accountabilities explicit.
2. Treat communications as a core business function. Involve communications early, alongside decision-making regarding strategy, risk and finance.
3. Insist that one story be told (and role model the telling of it). Brand, sustainability, people and investor messages should all be consistent and all senior leaders should be saying the same things when addressing different stakeholder groups.
As investors, talent and communities are increasingly selective about who they support, capturing attention isn’t enough. While marketing can get you noticed, corporate communications makes sure you’re trusted once you have attention.
