We share a short summary of the stages in creating a strategic communications plan for your organisation, as well as some tips to help support the process.
For an organisation, strategic communications is essential.
It helps the customer and public understand the positioning, messaging from the organisation as well as form an understanding and perception of the organisation’s value to them. This can drive greater engagement and acceptance by the customer of the organisation’s offerings to them.
A communications strategy when combined with a project and action plan serves as both a strategy paper and roadmap over time. This aligns the position, messages and activities for both internal and external stakeholders in support of the organisations business goals and objectives.
This strategic communications plan sets out the narrative, positioning, and messages that a brand has, and selects the best channel to execute actions (for example, content, formats, locations, etc) within. These actions are taken in order to do outreach to decisions makers, customers, stakeholders and influence, promote or defend the brand and outcomes.
The plan will benefit from involving team members across the business units as well as the function (e.g. marketing, communications, PR, etc) units in order to achieve buy-in, co-ownership and ensuring a diversity of opinions that will reflect business priorities around goal-setting, expectations and resource management.
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We are Brand Utility is a strategic communication and business consultancy. Our principal consultant is a registered management consultant, certified and recognised by the Institute of Management Consultants Singapore.
We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
Broadly, we find that many strategic communications processes follow a similar pathway – decision on scope, research, analysis, planning and execution. This article will cover these stages.
Deciding about the scope of the strategic communications plan
This step answers the question about how wide-ranging or narrow does the strategic communications plan need to be in support of a business goal.
Are you considering an organisation-wide master plan, a business unit product launch plan or to support an internal talent management programme? Understanding the scale that the plan has to tackle provides insights into the resourcing i.e. project team, budgets and time required.
The parameters must be properly defined as it will influence all the subsequent steps, data and information gathered, and also the execution thereafter.
Tips
Assemble a cross-function team with representation from the business groups or units that will benefit from the strategic communications plan
Ensure that these representatives are aware of the purpose and empowered to provide input from their groups and units
Allow the communications function to lead and drive the process as they will be the ones responsible for implementation
Decide on a timeline for the planning to be completed and execution to start. Having a clear milestones can help efficiency while staying on schedule.
Conduct research and consultations with stakeholders Data and information can help the project team understand impressions and perceptions of both internal and external stakeholders. The research can stretch across audits, traditional research methods, interviews, focus groups and reports. The cumulative data and information received will help the project team make both strategic and tactical choices in the plan. For external business goals, it is important that the customer is represented in the plans that are being made. This is a non-exhaustive list of the type of research that can be done:
Marketplace/landscape research
SWOT+
Gap analysis
Competitor research
Communications audit
Audience insights and matrix
Brand audit
Traditional media and social media audit
Risk audit
Use the data and information to create a situational analysis A situational analysis combines all the various research and audits done in the previous step into a coherent understanding and perspective. It provides insights into the opportunities, threats, underlying risks and steps involved in amplifying positives and mitigating negatives. We recommend at this stage to present the findings from the first three steps to management and co-owners of the strategic communications plan.
With the information, their earlier assessments across various factors, for example, target audience, narrative, product timeline, pricing, etc., might shift. The strategic communications plan can take these shifts into perspective, and address them specifically in the activities. Create the strategic communications plan The plan fundamentally must cover the following areas:
Reiterate the business goals, objectives and timelines
Define the communication goals and objectives in relation to the business
Identify key stakeholders i.e., audiences and customers
Align the narrative, positioning, key messages to each stakeholder group
Create or map activities in an ‘action + detail + timeline’ format for each stakeholder group
Combine all timelines into a single view using a calendar template
Fix broadly what the outcomes of the plan should be and how these outcomes will look like, in relation to the business unit or group
Decide on a list of indicators to measure the effectiveness of the activities and state clearly when the measurement will be done, whether by stage, date or completion
List all the risks and assumptions that were factored into the activities and how these activities might change if the factors occur
Execute the plan As mentioned earlier, it is critical to secure buy-in from internal stakeholders. Post-completion of the plan and prior to execution, it is important that management, unit and group stakeholders are briefed on the plan, agree with the measurements and timeline for measuring (critical!) and also what the outcomes will be. Once approval and buy-in is secured, it’s time to execute. This is where the communications team responsible for project management and implementation will work to transform the plan into reality. There will be steps taken to adapt if the execution seems to deviate from the plan. There will also be steps changed if a risk factor is encountered and the mitigation step is opted for. When the activities are completed, it is crucial to include a step for assessment. This will help future project teams learn about activities that could have been done better or adopt again if the measurements were better than expected. The assessment also signals to the business that the project team is data-focused, and can re-use tools that are proven effective, as well as learn from their mistakes.
We are Brand Utility is a strategic communication and business consultancy business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
We offer strategy and tactics to support growth outcomes - revenue, scale, regional expansion and market entry – for our clients.
Areas of support include:
Strategic communications: Approach to market, brand concept and map, positioning, messaging, story and narrative, thought leadership
Marketing: Campaign/programme planning, story-based marketing execution, digital marketing, community amplification, content planning and production, go-to-market execution
Lead generation and growth marketing: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website.
Photo by Felipe Furtado on Unsplash
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