MarTech Interview with Nancy Coleman, SVP of Corporate Communications at DigitalOcean

Typically, marketing and comms teams need to align on various aspects to build a unified brand voice; Nancy Coleman, SVP of Corporate Communications at DigitalOcean comments further while sharing a few best practices:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Nancy, tell us about yourself and more about your new role at DigitalOcean.

As a brief overview, I’ve been in integrated communications, PR and marketing roles for over 25 years, most recently joining DigitalOcean as the SVP Corporate Communications in April. Prior, I was the SVP of Corporate Communications at Skillsoft and the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Maxar.

At DigitalOcean, I’m looking forward to bringing this purpose-driven organization’s story to the forefront – reaching key audiences and driving positive engagement – while working closely with the executive team to navigate internal and external communications and expanding DigitalOcean’s social impact program.

What are the five fundamentals of B2B corporate communications that you feel most B2B brands miss out on implementing?

First, clear and consistent messaging to all stakeholders is table stakes — but it’s crucial. Maintaining a cohesive brand message across all communication channels builds trust and recognition among a company’s target audience.

Second, strengthening internal communications and alignment is often underestimated. During the pandemic, I think the value of and appreciation for transparent and frequent communication increased. As many companies have made the permanent switch to remote and distributed workforces, it’s harder than ever to help all employees feel connected, motivated, and aligned with rapidly changing priorities. Employee alignment with your brand’s vision, values, and priorities is proven to be a driver of employee engagement as well as a more consistent customer experience.

Third, keep it simple. In many technology companies, the role of communications is to simplify complex information and tailor it to the specific needs of various audiences. There’s such an overwhelming amount of information coming at people all day long. Great communicators understand how to effectively translate messages through the lens of various audiences and meet them where they are, not where we wish them to be.

Fourth, preparedness for crises is absolutely essential. Early in my career, I avoided crisis communications planning because many scenarios seemed too unlikely, or worse – too scary to contemplate. But after just a few real-life comms crises when I needed to lean on a prepared plan, I became a convert. Developing a robust crisis communication plan will help to effectively manage and mitigate potential crises, takes some of the emotion and guesswork out of game time decisions, and ultimately, mitigates the risk to your brand’s reputation.

Lastly, continuous evaluation and adaptation are critical. Regularly assessing the effectiveness of any strategies, adapting to market changes, and optimizing your communication approach ensures that you’ll stay ahead and achieve long-term success. Measuring ROI of communications programs is not easy, but it’s also not impossible. There are many tools out there designed to help measure how comms aligns with and supports business outcomes. Knowing how to speak to the value of the team’s work is what I call “PR’ing the PR”. Being able to do this effectively is a fundamental skill for B2B communicators.

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For marketers who also dabble in similar tasks/roles such as communication, what do you feel they can do to create more unified messaging/processes with the rest of the brand’s marketing team and campaigns to boost a more uniform outlook in a crowded market?

For starters, everyone across marketing and comms should be working from the same playbook. A foundational brand strategy, brand guidelines and messaging architecture are the basic elements that are required to create a consistent voice in the market.

Tech companies are constantly undergoing change so it’s important to be adaptable to external and internal factors while keeping the brand’s purpose, brand promise and values front and center. Through my years of helping organizations navigate change and launch brands, I’ve always found the most success when I’ve kept the focus on creating stories that meet at the intersection of a company’s purpose, brand and values. Stories that underscore a company’s purpose (their reason for being) tend to be the ones that people remember and stories that illustrate your values connect with people emotionally.

For new entrants into this and similar roles, what tips and thoughts would you share?

Start by examining your brand’s mission and values, listen – really listen – to your team and customers and avoid platitudes at all costs. Our customers and employees reflect back to us a clear picture of who we are and what our brand stands for in the market. After all, a brand is less about what we project out into the world, and more about how our customers, employees and investors consistently experience our brand in every interaction.

I would also encourage those early in their career to be familiar with the principles and best practices for change communication. Everyone in tech is experiencing change at an incredible pace which makes it hard for communications professionals to keep up. So it can be tempting to overlook or skip communication steps when helping an organization navigate change. But when we don’t effectively earn buy-in around a change through intentional communications strategies, leaders lose trust. And as we all know, it’s hard to build trust, but it’s much, much harder to rebuild trust after losing it.

Demonstrating and talking about your company’s commitment to being a responsible business is no longer a nice to have. Existing and potential employees expect it. Many customers require it in the bid process, and investors are closely following the evolving reporting requirements of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance). So I recommend including corporate social responsibility as part of your corporate communications program and your overall narrative. It’s been a gamechanger for me in my career.  In fact, at DigitalOcean I’m diving into this headfirst, working closely with the Social Impact team. We’ll be supporting initiatives with deserving non-profits around the globe with DigitalOcean products and people to fulfill DigitalOcean’s Pledge 1% commitment.

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Take us through some of the thoughts you have in mind on the future of B2B corporate communications and how AI will impact roles and processes in this area?

The future of B2B corporate marketing is poised for transformation with the recent advancements in AI technology. AI holds a lot of promise for marketing roles (think improved online responsiveness and personalization through chatbots and virtual assistants, advanced data analytics, and even some content generation and curation), however, I believe that communications will be less impacted by AI in the short term.

While marketing is becoming increasingly automated, I think effective corporate communications is more of a human art than a science and therefore more insulated from the rapid transformation impacting other professions.

While AI may enhance the efficiency of developing “first drafts” of messaging and media pitches, human expertise and perspective will remain vital in strategic thinking, relationship-building, and ensuring that communication is authentic and consistent with a brand voice and tone which can be highly nuanced.