Investor Messaging: getting the tone right

The investor relations profession has to deal with managing complex information across a range of audience groups with very different levels of financial literacy and investment sophistication.

How you speak to your audiences can have a significant effect on their desire to engage with what you have to say and their very understanding of your story.

Here are some insights and techniques that might help.

In future issues:

Is your IR website good enough?
Yes, but is it an Investor Brand?
One-way communication – or a dialogue?
The rise & rise of social media. You can run, but you cannot hide
Starting the dialogue: Investor blogs and their cousins
The megatrend of CSR

Previous issues:

How do you speak to your audiences?

Telling your investor story requires the right pitch along the simplicity/sophistication continuum, depending on your audience.

That’s why it pays to segment your audiences, by identifying the different groups that you need to communicate with, selecting which collateral and media channels to use for each group, and refining content, tone and complexity of message to suit particular interests and knowledge.

For example, an annual report with full financials is more likely to be pored over by analysts and financially literate investors (and will probably be preferred in print form). By contrast, a shareholder review may better suit a retail investor. The opportunity is to adjust the language and express the data accordingly.

Some questions for you:

Does your company tend to have one tone of voice for all audiences?
Do you consciously change content and language for identified audience groupings?
Does your IR site allow guided access for different audience groups, towards the most relevant content for their group? (More on IR Websites in future issues)

The right message to the right people in the right ways

Online, people select a website, not the other way round, so you can provide technical depth for the analyst and business journalist in dedicated sections of your IR site, each with content filtered to their specific needs, and then offer content and stories more focused to the retail shareholder elsewhere.

It is also possible, of course, to have a tone of voice that is squarely aimed at retail investors, but doesn’t appear to patronise the more sophisticated reader. Warren Buffett achieves this with his famous fireside chat style: 2010 Berkshire Hathaway Chairman's Letter

Some other touchpoints, by contrast, can well afford to be unashamedly technical in their language and presentation. Analyst Briefings would be a fine example.

We recommend the following ‘scoping’ structure for a strategic approach to developing your communication plans:

Develop an Audience Segmentation matrix;
Map your messaging methods, channels, content and tone of voice to the matrix; and
Develop your communication strategies around streams that work for the various audiences in your matrix.

Are you planning your message content and tone to suit your different audiences? This matrix format might help you get started.

Audience Segment	Key Messages	Tone of Voice	Prime Channel	Secondary Channels
Retail Shareholders
Institutional Investors
Government/ Regulators
Community Stakeholders
etc

Time’s up.

Mike Tisdall
Investor Communications specialist and Managing Director – Insight Communications

Next Issue: Presentation vs chat: getting the tone right

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