Create a Communications Strategy

I saw a post recently titled ” Twitter: Get 19,530 new twitter followers in 30 days?”. Sounds great, doesn’t it. I mean, who wouldn’t want to have thousands of people exposed to your expertise and your business, with all the potential business that could mean to you? Or how about the really cool new “Green Business” site that will reach half-a-million people with a massive PR campaign, and target literally millions of social media users? Sounds like a great opportunity, right?

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what your communications strategy is. Before you jump into these, and any other similar opportunities, it’s best to consult your marketing communications strategy, and see if they match up with what you are trying to accomplish in the marketplace. Unfortunately, many businesses are not properly prepared to make this evaluation. They usually have business plans and marketing plans. What many don’t do is go the next step – clearly defining and outlining the strategy for communicating to their audience. Agencies do this all the time – they have to, in order to understand what their client is trying to get across to their audience, and then accomplish that to their client’s satisfaction. But most often, and sometimes even when an agency is involved, this step is overlooked or glossed over.

When companies skip this step, their communications will be less effective, and they will waste money and time. Valuable resources in their company will probably be spent dealing with lots of useless, and sometimes even troublesome interactions and inquiries. In my experience, it’s like going on a trip without a map or a travel plan. You may or may not get there, and if you do, you could waste a lot of time and money in the process.

So, if you want to make the most of every marketing communications dollar, then don’t make a single investment without creating this simple “road map”. In fact, if you take the time to follow these steps at a product, division or company level, depending on your particular operation, you will be able to execute more effective communications more quickly, and will be able to read your results in a way that will indicate your level of success:

1. Outline your business situation

2. Succinctly state your top relevant business goals.

3. State the objective you have for this communication – make it specific and singular.

4. Define your audience with specific attributes and demographics.

5. Identify relevant competition.

6. List the top features that set your product or service apart.

7. Pick your primary benefit – just one, and not a feature.

8. Pick up to three support benefits (not features) that define and strengthen your primary benefit.

9. State a single net impression: this takes getting inside your audience’s head, stating what you want them to be thinking after encountering your communication. Remember, people retain less than 10% of what they learn.

Some companies derive benefit from also stating a “value proposition”, which takes the above information, and combines it into a succinct, clarifying statement.

10. Determine what action you want your audience to take after encountering your communication.

11. Outline the specific measurements you will take to determine if the objectives have been met.

12. Take the time to describe the physical form of your communications, and state a budget. And if this is a program-, campaign-, or company-level strategy that will include multiple communications, it can be very useful to list the subsequent communications projects.

This seems like a lot of things, but each should be succinct – if it takes much more than three pages, it’s probably too long. For single projects it should be one or two pages at the very most. The value is in the clarity of the content, not in it’s length.