8 steps to create a simple and effective communication plan

"Patterns relax me. They feel like a plain after a hard climb."

I read plenty of books. Business books, fiction, non-fiction. I have attended an MBA, a strategic marketing program at INSEAD and many useful shorter courses such as Gruppendynamik by Dr. Rosenkranz. I have obtained certifications that acknowledge my expertise in SAP, LEED® and ISO9001. I speak 4 languages fluently and have passed level 2 of 6 in the quest to learn Chinese.

Nonetheless, I still feel like a scholar every day. I still look for new insights and new perspectives. And I still feel enthusiastic when patterns reveal. The latest pattern I have discovered and that I am sharing with you today is about communication plans for small and medium sized enterprises.

At the end of the next 8 steps you will have a powerful one-pager with a list of activities ranked by return on investment and a prioritization of execution.

Step 1 - Prioritize the issues you want to address and identify the opportunities behind these issues. The outcome of this is a slide of max 7 points.

Step 2 - Define the message. What to say. This is typically known as the story, too. It's about choosing amid many messages that are all correct, the one message that makes your offer attractive in terms of aspiration and context.

Step 3 - Define the people you want to tell your message to. To whom to say. This can be as easy as "existing customers/ friends of existing customers/ strangers" or as detailed as profiling personae. If your customers are companies, profile them as if they were people.

Step 4 - Define the way you want to tell your message. How to say. Here it helps to think about the support and the media that will carry the message.

Step 5 - Define the moment when to tell your message. When to say. All business have their own Takt Time not only when referred to production, but you can extend this concept to sales, too. Customers buy at recurring times (cycles). These cycles are a good starting point to define key moments when your customers attention is highest.

Tip: You can refer to my previous article "Questions to stress-check your communication project" to address step 2 to 5.

Step 6 - Create a matrix with the message and its sub-messages as columns and the individual activities as rows. Flag with an "x" where message and activity match. Count the "x" horizontally. Ideally one single activity should serve more than 3 messages or sub-messages. This ensures some level of economy of scale for each activity and helps you rank activities according to their return on your investment.

Tip: To receive an example matrix, just click on the link below and send me a request via email. Get your matrix template

Step 7 - Prioritize. Assign points from 1 to 3 to each message and sub-message for following categories: When you're done, sum the points to rank and prioritize messages and sub-messages:

• margin (1 = lowest; 2 = neutral ; 3 = highest)

• speed of return on sales (1 = within 6 months ; 2 = within 3 months ; 3 = within 1 month)

• organizational effort necessary to implement it (1 = high effort ; 2 = medium effort ; 3 = low effort)

• strategic value (1 = low ; 2 = neutral ; 3 = high)

Step 8 - Plan & execute. It's up to you to proceed with a simple chronological to do list or a gantt project plan.

Remember to keep a logbook of what worked well, what did not work well and which changes have you put in place to fix it. These are valuable learnings that will guide you to continuously better communication plans.

If you enjoyed reading my post give it a thumbs up. And if you really liked it, leave a comment and encourage me to continue to share my learnings.

#StrategicCommunication #CommunicationsPlanning #Communication