Demonstrating Value: What Internal Communications Can Learn From Finance and Marketing

Demonstrating value is an age-old challenge for internal communicators. While greater professionalization has shifted perceptions of the function in recent years and leaders are more bought-in than ever, 92% IC professionals can't prove its value. 

But as communicators, we can also be our own worst enemies when it comes to demonstrating the value we bring, often focusing on busyness over business. 

So let’s see what we can learn from the departments doing it best: Finance and Marketing. 

How Finance shows value

1. Focus on business outcomes

This might sound obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how often communicators – including myself – use activity as a measurement in itself, rather than its impact. Whether it’s page views on the intranet or number of attendees at a town hall, internal comms teams can struggle to think in terms of results.

The takeaway

We need to connect every element of our strategy and plan to a clear business outcome. For example, distributing manager toolkits will add value by helping leaders champion our internal messaging. This, in turn, will increase awareness of our company goals.

2. Causation not correlation 

We have a habit of highlighting correlation, not causation. For example, we cite studies connecting engagement with productivity, but we don’t show how our downstream work on improving communications directly caused more productivity.

Finance professionals are incredibly savvy at linking their initiatives, even if seemingly unrelated (such as risk management), to growing revenue and decreasing costs.

The takeaway

As IC professionals, we need to show how our actions result in change. Don’t just assume this will be obvious to your stakeholders. 

3. Talk the language of the business  

To demonstrate value, you must understand how your business creates value. That means having a solid grasp of all the ways your organization makes money, the strategic levers it has to play with, and its operations – office-based and frontline alike. 

When you understand these, you can translate your strategy and plan into the language of the business, making it easier to understand and buy into. 

The takeaway

Before creating each element of your strategy and plan, ask yourself, "What business problem is this helping to solve?" Once you have your answers, write them in words your leaders will recognize.

4. Stay on strategy 

Internal communicators are often deluged by stakeholder demands, making it easy to get trapped in a busyness cycle. This means we assume that we’re demonstrating value just because we’re delivering something. 

But to be recognized as valuable by the C-suite, we need to stay on strategy. If our strategy is aligned to our business and has its seal of approval, then we have a mandate to filter out unnecessary asks and focus on what’s going to move the needle on performance. 

The takeaway

Keep your strategy easily accessible – this will help you and your team manage communication requests. 

5. Know your numbers 

Having a foundational knowledge of core financial skills – such as budgeting and forecasting – is essential to running an effective internal communications function. 

But we need to go further. 

Numbers tell a story about where and how value has been added. By digging deeper into ours, we can start to determine patterns, identify anomalies, challenge our assumptions, and adapt our efforts in response. 

In doing so, our strategy becomes insight-driven, helping us demonstrate even greater value to our organizations. 

The takeaway

Ask a member of your finance team to help you shape your value-add story. I’m sure they would love to! 

How Marketing shows value

1. Data-driven

The best marketing teams are data-driven. They analyze every facet of the customer journey, visualize it in charts and graphs, and connect this information to business outcomes. 

From the estimated number of eyes on adverts to downloads of ebooks, marketing teams track their efforts in minute detail, map each of them against business objectives, and use financial language (such as "customer acquisition cost") to explain their results. 

The takeaway

Map out what data you have on your employees. Does it give you enough to demonstrate your value? If not, what other information do you need?

2. Think in journeys 

Marketers obsess over customer journeys. They map out these routes, nudging consumers along them with specific activities that target particular stages. 

For internal communicators, we traditionally want our audience to “think, feel, or do”. 

But by thinking in employee journeys, we can tailor our communications to various points along the way – giving us greater flexibility and more opportunities to deliver impactful messages.

The takeaway

Plot the employee journey, and build your internal communications narrative to align with the stages of the journey. 

3. Use channels strategically  

Armed with an in-depth knowledge of their target audience, marketing teams understand the importance of choosing the right channel. Whether it’s social media, email, or PR, marketers use channels strategically, selecting the most appropriate one for their message. 

By contrast, internal communicators often hear the familiar refrain: “The audience is everyone.” We end up sending the same message across multiple channels – creating noise, confusion, and fatigue. 

The takeaway

Have a clear and well-researched channel strategy to optimize reach and impact. This channel etiquette guide will help. 

4. Always a work in progress 

The lifeblood of marketing is built on continuous feedback and iteration. Marketing teams use real-time data to address issues, get back on track, and pivot into new messages or channels. 

The result? Marketers regularly discover new ways to add value, which they can demonstrate back to leaders.

Internal communicators who can integrate this ability to monitor, assess, and act on data at speed are better positioned to show how their strategy is responsive to business needs. 

The takeaway

With every internal communication initiative, see how you can solicit feedback from employees in real time through pulse surveys, word of mouth, focus groups, and polls. 

5. Shout louder

It’s a fact of corporate life that if you want to secure resources, it’s simply not enough to add value in a vacuum. We must promote ourselves and the value our function brings, even if it feels awkward. 

By nature, marketing folk tend to be good at marketing themselves. But internal communicators often prefer to let their work speak for itself. 

The problem is, the work – and its impact – need to be explained. 

The takeaway

See every meeting and presentation as an opportunity to highlight value, using data to support your argument. 

Internal communicators add huge value to organizations. 

It’s time to steal with pride from the best, step out of the shadows, and earn the recognition (and budget) we deserve for contributing directly to business results.