Helen Alexander | Freelancer Long Blog Post

Long blog post

Communication Strategy: The Best Guide on the Internet Literally everything you need to know about developing a communications strategy The point of communicating something is to get your audience to change the way they think or act, whether it’s getting a handful of people to each adopt a dog from an animal rescue centre or convincing hundreds of people to try a new product. If your audience is going to act on your message, your message needs to be clear, well-directed and speak to what you want to achieve. This requires careful planning. You need a communications strategy. In essence, your communications strategy helps you answer six questions: 1. The Challenge: What is the issue you are addressing? 2. The Solution: What do you want to achieve? 3. The Target Audience: Who do you need to reach? 4. The Message: What do you need to communicate? 1 5. The Plan: How are you going to get your message across effectively? 6. The Evaluation: How will you know if you’ve succeeded? While these steps are set out here in a logical order, they are not entirely linear. The insights you gain as you develop different parts of the strategy can impact on other sections. Keep this in mind as you go and make adjustments wherever needed. You might even find, once you have developed your action plan, that the proposed solution just isn’t viable and you may need to go back to the drawing board. This is part of the value of a communications strategy. It gets you to think things through clearly, logically and in detail. At the end of the day, you’ll have a document that explains exactly what you are trying to communicate, why, to whom and how. Meet Sam, Max and Liam One of the easiest ways to understand how a communications strategy all comes together is through examples. So let’s meet Sam, Max and Liam whose communication needs will illustrate how putting a communications strategy together can help you focus your plan, anticipate challenges and make data driven decisions. 1. Sam has started a small business selling jam. She is doing well in Vancouver and is starting to expand her business to other cities. She needs a clear communications strategy for her company and her expansion. 2. Max runs an animal rescue centre. In recent months the centre has experienced a drop in dog adoptions and an increase in cat adoptions. This means that there are more dogs coming in then the centre can manage. Max needs to get more people to adopt dogs. 3. Liam has an established business conducting environmental assessment surveys. He typically works for property development companies but would like to start offering his services to government. DEFINE THE PROBLEM Challenge → Solution → Audience → Message → Plan → Evaluate 2 What is the challenge? Every communications strategy seeks to address a challenge or make an improvement. ● ● ● Sam wants to expand her business. Max has too many dogs in his rescue centre. Liam wants to diversify his client base. Unless you are clear on what your problem is, you won’t be able to develop a clear strategy to help you solve that problem. Start your communications strategy by writing out a c lear problem statement and you’ll stay focused. This is especially true if you’re developing your communications strategy as a team and want to make sure that everyone starts on the same page and stays together. Your problem statement shouldn’t be too broad or too narrow. It needs to be clear and concise, and your stakeholders need to agree that this is in fact the issue that you need to be focusing resources on. You can follow this recipe to put your problem statement together: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Describe the ideal situation. What is preventing this ideal? Explain the impact of this problem (with evidence). Outline the proposed solution Explain the benefits of the proposed solution How does this relate to your organizational goals? Most organizations have clearly expressed goals which often take the form of Vision and Mission statements. These are high level expressions of what the organization would ultimately like to achieve (the Vision) and how the organization aims to achieve this (the Mission). Like everything else, your communications strategy needs to help you achieve your Mission and Vision. If you’re developing a communications strategy for the entire organization, the link between the strategy and the Vision and Mission will be explicit. If you’re 3 developing a communications strategy for a project or campaign that represents only a small portion of what you do, the links might be less direct, but they still need to be there. Sam knows what she wants Sam has developed a Vision and Mission for her home-made jam enterprise. Her M ission i s to create environmentally-friendly, wholesome and delicious jams from local produce. Her V ision i s that there will be a thriving local farming community as her product becomes available in all provinces in Canada. Sam’s company communications strategy needs to reflect the goals and values encapsulated in these statements. FIND THE SOLUTION Challenge → S olution → Audience → Message → Plan → Evaluation How are you going to solve the problem? You need to come up with a solution to your problem. The best way to frame this is as a positive goal or result: What do you want to achieve? Once you are clear on your overall or long-term objective, you can break it down into smaller medium term objectives. Break these down even further into short term objectives. Now your objectives should be tangible enough to make them actionable. The idea is that each short term objective you achieve will help you achieve your medium term objectives which will in turn help you achieve your ultimate goal. Articulate all your objectives as clearly as possible. One way to do this is to follow the SMART approach. Specific objectives include clear targets and do not include vague language. Me asureable means that you know how you will be able to show that the objective has been achieved. Achievable objectives are realistic. Relevant refers to the fact 4 that they are in line with your high level goals, mission and vision. Time-bound means that there is an explicit timeframe during which the objectives should be achieved. When you frame your objectives in this way you are better able to focus on the tasks that need to be done to achieve each objective and track progress towards your end result. Liam’s a smart guy Liam’s problem is that his client base is limited to property developers. His overall goal is to ensure that his company is sustainable and profitable. To help him achieve his goal of sustainability he needs to broaden his client base. In the short term, his aims to provide services to government. Liam uses a logic framework to map out what he needs to do to achieve his goals. SMART Objectives Ultimate Environmental Assessment Surveys is a sustainable and profitable company. Medium term By the end of 2 years EAS has at least 8 repeat clients from at least 2 different sectors. Short term By the end of 6 months, identified potential clients are aware of EAS . EAS is a ... By the end of 6 months, EAS has relationships with at least 6 key government. stakeholders What role does communications play? Once you know how you are going to solve your problem, you need to ask: what role can communications play in achieving my objectives? Some objectives are totally dependent on communications. Others are quite removed. 5 If you need to raise awareness, motivate, build consensus, educate, change attitudes, promote action or change behavior, then a good communications strategy is essential. Max needs to connect Max’s problem is that there are currently too many dogs for the space available at the animal rescue centre. Objective 1: Increase the number of dog adoptions by 20% in the next six months. To do this he needs to: ● raise awareness of his centre and the rescue animals ● motivate people to adopt dogs ● enable people to act o n their intentions Communications are going to be key to achieve this. Objective 2: Build 20 new enclosures on unused land by the end of the year. There is no real role for communications in achieving this objective. Who needs to be involved? Your communications strategy isn’t developed in a vacuum. There are various stakeholders you need to consult or inform as you create the plan. For example, your production team may need to know about changes in packaging or may need to increase production in expectation of increased demand. Your CEO will likely want a sign off on the strategy. Your finance team will need to be involved with the budget. External partners will need to know about a product launch. Identify the stakeholders and document what their involvement needs to be. Wherever possible include actions and dates. Remember that this stakeholder map is helping you develop your strategy with appropriate input. This is not your strategy for communicating with your target audience. 6 Max knows who needs to know Max has put together a stakeholder map outlining who needs to be included and when during his 8 weeks of preparation. Stakeholder Involve Executive Director x Inform Sign off x Action Date Discuss campaign ideas at key points Week 1,3,5 Present final campaign plan with designs for approval Week 7 Board x Present campaign to board Week 8 Finance x Inform finance team of upcoming expenses Week 3 x Submit requisitions as necessary Week 3-8 x Brief designer Week 3 Designer Printer x Send final designs to be printed Week 8 All staff x Engage all staff in the upcoming campaign Week 3, 8 Set your communications goals and objectives You’re clear now what the problem is that you need to address. You know that addressing it will help you achieve your high level goals. You’ve articulated clearly what you need to do to address it (your objectives). You’ve identified the areas where communication plays a role. Now it’s time to get to the meat of your communications strategy. You start by unpacking your communication objectives. You do this in the same way that you approached your company goals and objectives. 7 If your campaign is complex, you may want to look at longer term and more immediate objectives. A simple campaign will only need short-term communication objectives. What are the high level goals that you need to achieve through your communications? This could be raising awareness, it could be changing long-term behavior, it could be persuading someone to perform single act. Once you’re clear on your goals, you need to a rticulate your communications objectives in a SMART way. Tailor your communications to address the kind of response you are seeking from your audience. If you are seeking to inspire a once-off action (like adopting a dog), your communications needs are different than if you are seeking to inspire repeated actions (like changing brand loyalty). Write your objectives in results language to keep your focus on what you want to achieve. Ask yourself, “What result (or outcome) do I want?” Sam knows what she needs to achieve Sam has put together SMART objectives to help her achieve her Vision and Mission. One of these is that she wants to establish a customer base in 5 stores in Toronto, representing 15% of her overall sales. To achieve this outcome she needs to identify stores, negotiate with them, distribute her product to the stores and so on. She also needs to let potential customers know about her product and convince them to buy it. Communications objective 1: Within 2 weeks of the launch, at least 6000 locals will know that new exciting jam products are available in specific neighbourhood stores. Communications objective 2: W ithin 6 months of launch, at least 1000 people will buy our environmentally-friendly, wholesome and delicious jam rather than competing brands. 8 HOW COMMUNICATION WORKS Communications models Understanding how communication works will help you focus on the elements that you need to consider in your strategy. Many successful companies rely on one of two underlying communications models: ● ● Aristotle’s model: Sender → Message → Receiver Lasswell’s model: Sender → Message → Channel → Receiver These focus on who says it, what is said, how it is said, and to whom it is said. As you develop your strategy you will spend considerable time considering who your target audience is (receiver), what your message is (key messages) and which channels to use (tactics). Don’t forget to also think about who the sender is! Your audience needs to know and trust you. As you develop your message and choose your channels, you need to consider what these choices say about you. You should also consider: ● ● The impact of what was said (the feelings and thoughts that the message produces) The factors that might affect the way the receiver interprets the message (social factors, language factors, power dynamics etc.) behavior change Insight into how people change their attitudes and behavior can also help you craft your message effectively. People are complex and are influenced by many things. Everyone knows that telling a smoker that smoking is bad for them isn’t likely, in and of itself, to change behavior. Remember that: ● ● ● ● 9 Change is a process. People change at different rates. Personal characteristics and environmental factors affect personal change. A once off change in behavior is vastly different from sustained behavior change. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE Challenge → Solution → Audience → Message → Plan → Evaluation Who needs to receive your message? To be effective you need to have a clear idea of who your target audience is. Don’t assume that you know! ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Who they are? What do they do with their time and money? What do they care about? Where do they they get their information? What influences them? What are their prejudices? What is their income level? How can you make their lives better? It’s not always easy to answer these questions. Your target audience may be like you, or they may be completely unlike you. Use whatever data is available to you to clearly identify with whom you really need to communicate. If your understanding of your audience is vague or if there are significant gaps in your profiles, do some m arket research: ● ● ● ● Interview people Run a focus group Observe people Use social media When you’ve got your answers, create a few target audience profiles to give you a real feeling for who your audience is. Start by writing down everything you know about your target audience. Then picture a typical individual from this group and imagine what they do each day, who they speak to, what they buy, what they listen to or watch. Write this up in a couple of paragraphs. You can even add a photo 10 to make the profile more real. A few profiles like these will help focus your attention on how to target messages appropriately, and will highlight if there are any gaps in your insight. Sam understands her buyers Sam has been observing who buys her jams. It hasn’t really surprised her to note that the majority of her customers are women. She had expected her buyers to be middle-aged women with reasonable incomes. What she hadn’t expected was the number of young women who like her product. So Sam has decided to target her communications towards two distinct groups: middle-aged women and young women. She’s interviewed some of her customers and checked out the social media profiles of people who follow her company. Now she has written up a few profiles like this one. “Jessica is 24 and has lived in Vancouver her whole life. She recently completed her studies and is working in her first job at a small financial services company. She is unmarried and has no children. She enjoys reading, going out with friends, and baking. She never reads a newspaper but often listens to radio and watches reality cooking shows on TV. She uses SnapChat and Instagram in addition to WhatsApp to communicate with her friends.” DEVELOP YOUR MESSAGE Challenge → Solution → Audience → Message → Plan → Evaluation What is your key message? The core of your communications plan is your message. This is where it all comes together. Your key message needs to be clear and concise, linked directly to your objective and speak to your target audience. Your key messages will infuse all your communications, whether you’re tweeting or sending out a press release. This is the core of your campaign: what you want to say and why. When you’re crafting your key messages, ask yourself: ● ● 11 What is the main point I want people to walk away with? When people see or hear my message what do I want them to do? ● ● ● Does my message include all the information I need to convey? Does my message spell out how the audience will benefit? Will my message motivate my audience to think or do what I’d like them to think or do? Craft your messages carefully The number one rule is to keep your messages short and simple. A concise, easy-to-understand message will go a long way to achieving your aims. For the rest, you need to be guided by your objectives and your target audience. Your tone, the vocabulary you use, the catchiness and the cleverness of your message will all depend on your target audience. Tailor your message carefully to appeal to your audience. Haul out your target audience profiles and ask yourself, how will my target audience respond to this message? Take note that: ● Messages should be catchy a nd framed so that the target audience can relate to them and identify with them. ● Be diplomatic i f necessary to avoid conflict, take into account the traditions, culture, norms and values of the group to whom you are speaking. ● Messages should be simple, attractive and make clear the benefits to the audience, through words or images. ● Messages should be easy to read and understand. So use language that is understood by your audience, and choose fonts that are readable. ● Make sure you use the a ppropriate local language or dialect and relevant geographical or cultural references. Think carefully before you create messages that instill fear or self-disgust in your audience. These types of messages sometimes work but can also alienate your audience and have 12 long-term negative consequences. Controversial approaches also need careful thought. They can succeed massively or fail dismally. Test your message Once you’ve come up with a few draft messages, it’s always a good idea to test them. There are many different ways to do this. You could: ● ● ● Get a group of people together who represent your target audience and ask them to respond to the various messages. Use different headers on your newsletter and see which version gets a better response. Use one ad in your shop one week and a different one the next week and see if there are any differences in sales. Always try and identify and make provision for other factors that could influence your results. For example, don’t test one ad on a Tuesday and another on a Saturday if your sales on these days are typically very different. Liam needs to refine his wordsmithing Liam has drafted an introductory email to individuals that he has identified in government. He has drafted three possible email subject lines. 1. EAS is looking forward to meeting you 2. Introducing Environmental Assessment Services 3. Don’t g et cheated. EAS provides trusted environmental assessments. The first subject line isn’t very clear. At this stage the recipient is unlikely to know EAS and may just send the message to junk mail. The second subject line is short, simple and to the point but isn’t very evocative. The third message contains two parts. Part one sounds like marketing speak and may create the wrong impression. The second part is clear and informative. Liam probably needs to combine elements of 2 and 3 to get the subject line that will get the kind of attention he is looking for. 13 DEVELOP YOUR PLAN Challenge → Solution → Audience → Message → P lan → Evaluation Plan your tactics You know what you want to achieve. You know what you need to say. It’s time to work out how you are going to do it. Your tactics are determined largely by your budget and your target audience. In many cases, your financial resources will be set before you develop your communications strategy. In these instances you need to fit your strategy to your budget, for example when deciding which communications channels you are going to employ. These days there are numerous channels to choose from, including: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● Email Press releases Direct mail Social media Radio ads Television ads Google ads Facebook ads Remember when you created your target audience profiles? One of the questions you considered was “Where does she get her information from?” This is where the answer to that comes into play. If you are targeting commuting businessmen, newspapers (offline and online) might be the way to go. If you’re targeting young adults, social media options are a better bet but you need to choose which ones carefully. Advertise on Facebook and you’re probably speaking to their mothers! Many online channels are free or inexpensive to use. If you’re on a shoestring budget these options can really work for you. On the other hand, it’s expensive to buy space on traditional channels (TV, radio and print media) but these channels have massive reach. You can avoid some of the cost by getting creative. Host a radio competition. Arrange to have opinion pieces published in the papers. 14 Invite journalists to events. These kinds of interactions are likely to be free and will get you wide coverage. Your pre-existing media relationships will play an important role here. Set your budget You need to keep your budget in mind the whole time that you are putting together your communications strategy. But it is only once you have decided on exactly how you are going to implement your strategy that you can create a detailed budget. Clearly show each different cost in your budget. Not only will this help you get your budget approved by management, it also allows you to easily tweak the budget and requires you to think through the nitty gritty so that you don’t forget any important steps. For a far reaching or high profile strategy a detailed budget may become very complicated. Be sure to roll up the details into a high level budget that is easier for management to engage with, but which is supported by detail. Be careful to budget for all aspects of your plan, including the steps before and after implementation (for example, market research and your evaluation). Where possible draw on previous campaigns and strategies. Get quotes. Try to think of any hidden costs. Provide yourself with a contingency. Anticipate risks Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. If you spend some time thinking what could go wrong beforehand, you’ll save yourself a world of stress. Pull out your timeline and your action plan and think through any possible risks related to each phase and task within the project. But don’t stop there. Look into the future and try to anticipate issues that could occur. If you’re running a large high profile campaign, you may want to take political and environmental risks into account. A smaller campaign will likely focus more on production details and the like. Once you’ve completed your risk management plan, go back and amend your action plan and timeline. 15 Sam asks herself “What could go wrong?” Sam wants to cover all the bases and has spent some time thinking through possible difficulties and risks that could affect the successful launch of her product. Some are communications related, others not. Risk Severity (1 - 5) Mitigating action that can be taken Crisis plan Budget implications Severe weather hampering delivery 1 Have product ready to ship a week early. Watch weather reports. Ship smaller Additional quantities of product transport by rail and truck the costs remainder in later. Product is sold out more quickly than anticipated 2 Have extra stock stored in Toronto to be shipped where needed Bad reviews in local media 3 Engage local media with samples before launch Additional storage fees Seek and push positive reviews Timeline Develop your communications strategy timeline by starting at the end point. So first thing, you need to know when your launch date is going to be. This may be a soft launch (no big funfair, just sliding into things), or it could be a massive launch event. This date is the key to creating your timeline. Then work backwards from the launch date by thinking through what needs to be done before launch, and giving each task a lead time. Your tasks will depend largely on your tactics. It could include things like creative brainstorming, writing, editing, photo shoots, filming, recording, 16 printing, events planning, uploading copy to websites or social media and other forms of distribution. Don’t forget to build in a buffer to allow you to deal with unforeseen circumstances. And remember to include time for sign off if your CEO or Board of Directors wants to see the final product before launch. As discussed earlier, keep key stakeholders informed throughout. The last thing you want is to have the Managing Director see the final product and hate it when there is no time to change anything. Remember to create your timeline based on real timeframes and not assumptions. Contact service providers to find out what their lead times actually are. The more concrete the information that you work off, the less risk. Sam needs more time Sam plans to launch her products in Toronto on 1 November, just in time for Christmas. There are various elements to her campaign including developing displays to place on shop floors. Working backwards from the launch date, Sam works out how much time she needs to prepare the floor displays. She works out that she needs 1 week to get the displays distributed to each shop. She needs 14 days for printing. She needs a day to check the final proofs. She needs 1 week for design and development. She thinks that if she starts at the beginning of October she’ll be OK. What Design starts Final Proof Printing Distribution Launch When 3 Oct 10 Oct 11 Oct 25 Oct 1 Nov But when she speaks to the designer, he tells her that he needs at least 14 days for design. And the printing house says they have numerous Christmas orders waiting and will only be able to deliver on the 28th of October. Time to rethink! 17 Create your action plan It’s finally time to put together an action plan, setting out who needs to do what and when. It may be tedious but it’s worth breaking down each part of your strategy into action items, allocating each item to a person and specifying a deadline. This kind of detailed approach ensures that you don’t forget important “invisible” steps (like getting permits, pre-ordering ingredients, clarifying processes etc) that can bring the rest of the plan to a grinding halt. Go through your strategy and create a step-by-step task list. Highlight any dependencies. Remember to include action items relating to involving and informing stakeholders. You may feel that this level of detail is unnecessary in a strategy document, and you’d be right. However, the process of putting together the action plan often surfaces issues in your strategy, gaps in your budget, or changes needed to your timeline. Treat your action plan as an addendum if you like, but make sure that there is a feedback loop between your strategy and your action plan. CREATE AN EVALUATION PLAN Challenge → Solution → Audience → Message → Plan → Evaluate It is very important to be able to measure whether your campaign has been successful. Otherwise how will you know whether you have achieved your goals? And how will you know whether it is worth using this communications strategy again? You need to develop an evaluation plan that sets out: ● ● ● What you are going to measure How you are going to measure it What you are going to do with the information Reach and impact The metrics that you choose will typically fall into two groups: reach and impact. 18 When you look back at your SMART organizational and communications objectives, you can map your metrics onto these. Your reach metrics will typically speak to your communications objective. Your impact metrics will usually relate to your organizational objectives. Reach Measuring reach tells you how many people have seen (or heard) your communications, and possibly whether the communications have reached the right audience. While reach seems fairly simple on the surface, there are in fact many metrics that you can use. For example, you send out a launch email to everyone on the company’s mailing list. That’s a group of 7500 people. ● ● ● Did all the emails reach their destination or did any bounce? (metric = bounce rate) How many people even bothered to open that mail? (metric = open rate) Of those, how many clicked through to your website? (metric = click rate) Impact Impact measures whether your communications have made any difference, specifically whether they have made the difference you were aiming for. ● ● ● How many people who read your email actually bought your product? How many people who liked your Facebook page went out and adopted a pet? How many of your clients who saw your new product listings tried any of them? Measuring impact is typically much more difficult than measuring reach. You’re not just trying to find out who saw your message, but how the message changed them. Choosing metrics Choosing what to measure and how to gather the data related to reach is fairly simple. Modern technology and online analytics and tracking services make gathering your reach data and unpacking your statistics reasonably easy. Most online newsletter tools, like MailChimp, do this as a standard part of the service. Google Analytics will unpack your website stats for you. Facebook and other social media platforms will also give you statistics on who has visited, followed and liked your page. 19 Media monitoring services are also available to help you track mentions of your company or product in traditional and online media. And traditional media agencies will be able to tell you what their readership, listenership and viewership are. But remember, if a newspaper tells you their readership is 75 000 people and you place an ad in that paper, it doesn’t mean all 75 000 people will see, let alone pay attention to, your ad. While deciding what to measure for your impact may seem obvious, deciding how to measure it may be less so. Be careful when you choose your impact metrics. Don’t be over-ambitious. Try to keep the metrics and the data gathering methods simple. Be realistic about what data you can get. And don’t try to stretch the conclusions that you can draw from your data. Data driven decision making Your evaluation plan also needs to include what you do with the data once you have it. This is a step that often gets left out. Your evaluation data can tell you whether your social media campaign was more effective (or efficient) than your traditional media approach. Your web stats can tell you which geographical region you are reaching most effectively. This analysis is very valuable and should be communicated to the appropriate stakeholders. Remember to include this step in the stakeholder and evaluation components of your strategy. Max Max wanted to increase the number of dog adoptions by 20% in six months. His communications objectives relating to this were to: ● Increase the public profile of the centre through traditional media, reaching at least 200 000 people in six months. ● Getting over 2000 people to attend adoption days at the centre and at other venues throughout the city through social media promotion. Objective Comms Target Metric Data Source Date 20% increase Adoptions Adoption records End of 6 months Raise awareness 200 000 Listenership Radio Stats Monthly Promote 100 people Facebook Facebook Weekly Increase adoptions 20 adoption days 21 interested in each event event attendees stats