Every business needs a great communications strategy. This is a detailed plan on how your company will reach out to the public and to potential clients. This document is shared within the company — though it is often confined to the marketing and public relations departments.
A great communications strategy will determine how well and how favorably your company is presented to the public.
So then how exactly do you make sure that your company has a well-written and effective communications strategy?
We’ve put together this simple guide to show you exactly how.
Effective Communications Strategy: A Simple Guide
Here are the easy steps to follow to make sure your company has an effective communications strategy:
1. What Are Your Objectives?
What are you hoping to achieve with your communications strategy? Think of your objectives as the goals of your company. These goals should be broken into long term goals and short term goals.
These goals should be in relation to what your company wishes to achieve with regard to communications.
These can include creating brand recognition as a short term goal; for a long term goal, you can set a metric to how much you wish your company’s recognition to grow (i.e., increase blog readership by 10%, or be known as the #1 company in our industry by the end of the decade).
State your objectives clearly before moving on to the next step.
2. Who Are You Talking To?
Now you need to establish who your audience is. Identify who your target demographic is. This can include the following:
- Age group or age range
- Geographical location
- People belonging to a particular culture or subculture
- Specific professions
Furthermore, you want to decide which media outlets you want to reach out to. Maybe you wish to reach out to a selection of prominent business magazines? Maybe there are trade publications that you want to reach out to? Have a shortlist of publications and media outlets to reach out to.
3. Define Your Company, Differentiate Your Company
You want to define clearly what your company does and how it stands out amongst your competition.
In your communications strategy, present your company and its strengths. This is also the time to highlight any achievements that your company has — ranging from awards to testimonials.
You also want to articulate how you stand out amongst your competition. This is where you showcase unique aspects of your business. This is where you can show off how your company ranks amongst the competition.
4. Decide on Your Content Creation
The next step is to decide what content to create. You may be eager to jump into every avenue, but the best approach is to focus on short term goals and long term goals once again.
As a short-term goal, you may decide that your initial content efforts will be setting up a blog and an email newsletter. These are the easiest and most cost-effective ways of communicating with your audience.
If you do opt for an email newsletter (and we strongly believe that you should) then you should consider email archiving — so that you have a backup of all emails sent.
As a long-term goal, you may decide to venture into audio and video. You can start a YouTube channel that shares the achievements of your company as well as any related material. An audio podcast could also complement a video channel.
5. Decide on What You Are Going to Say
Now that you have established your target market, your content avenues, and how to initially present your company to the world — you need to decide on the specifics of your content output.
The best approach for this is to create a content calendar within your communications strategy. This will be a calendar in which you outline when your content will be released and what it will consist of.
To give you an example, let us say you run a copywriting agency. You want to introduce this agency to your target market. You want to then educate them on why they should choose your agency. Additionally, you want to discuss trends related to copywriting — always ending with a Call-To-Action to promote your agency.
Here is how you can outline your content calendar in your communications strategy:
- Week 1: An introductory blog post and email on the copywriting agency and what it offers. Highlight your strengths and your advantages over competitors.
- Week 2: Content should reflect one particular service which the company wants to market. Maybe a discount or special promotion can be shared at this time.
- Week 3: An informational on the importance of copywriting. Focus on a specific area, such as the necessity for great website copy.
- Week 4: Talk about the importance of an aspect of copywriting which your agency is skilled at. For instance, you can talk about the importance of SEO — and then sell your SEO services to the readers (potential clients).
Try to plan at least three months in advance for your content calendar. You can make changes as necessary, but it is imperative that your communications strategy serves as a blueprint for your content output.
6. Reach Out to Your Target Market
Finally, you want to reach out to your target market. This is a repetitive process. No matter how big your business grows and how much your client base expands, there should always the continuous motions of reaching out to your target market.
The strategies and procedures for reaching out to your target market should be outlined in your communications strategy.
Here are a few great strategies on reaching out to your target market:
- Cold emails and cold calling
- Door-to-door promotion and word-of-mouth
- Targeted Ads, such as Google AdSense
- Content produced specifically to reach out to target market
- Posting on directories, forums, social media groups
Make sure your target market is always aware of your company and what it can offer them.
Execute
Now that you have prepared your communications strategy — it is time to execute it. Effective business communication is the only way to grow your company and make it a key player in its industry.
Read more articles on how you can maximize your business’s potential right here on our site!
