Companies that are looking for increasingly better results need to have their strategies defined in advance. Communication planning is included in this process!
It is very important to ensure credibility, coherence in positioning, recognition of the company in the market, as well as attracting and retaining new customers. But do you know how to prepare one?
In this content, you will learn the concept of communication, how it works and its importance. In addition, I have gathered the best tips, which we apply here at Enjoy Minder, to help you plan your business.
Let’s go?
What is communication?
Communication, according to Chiavenato, is the exchange of information between individuals to make information common. It is one of the fundamental processes of human experience and social organization.
In our daily lives, its objective is to successfully transmit a message between a sender and a receiver, which allows for family, professional and social understanding.
The act of communicating made social coexistence possible, expressed through writing, gestures, speech or even posture and dress.
Imagine a group of people gathered together without communicating in any way. Impossible, right? All human activities depend on the ability of people to interact in order to be successful!
Today, with the Internet and new technologies, there are countless possibilities for communicating — whether through social networks, video conferences, chatbots…
In companies, communication is a very important strategic tool for achieving the organization’s goals. It is through communication that the brand conveys its message, using resources such as videos, emails, applications, among others.
But I need to remind you that communication does not always originate with management or senior positions in a company. Information is exchanged in many ways, without any correct order, between people from different sectors and hierarchies!
This is why a good communication structure needs to be set up, so that information flows in a way that is as aligned with the company’s organizational culture as possible.
Continue reading and see how to put this plan together!
Why have a communication plan?
Having a communication plan is not just a detail: it is a way of ensuring that your company’s strategies will follow a logical line, with actions that communicate with each other and are carried out with a common objective in mind, cooperating towards a good result.
Understand, below, some of the benefits of investing in planning!
Increases predictability
Planning communication improves forecasting. This is because, within planning, there is an action schedule that serves as a guide for your team.
It needs to be followed to ensure the plan is executed in the best possible way!
This makes it possible to predict what the next steps will be and plan to deliver pending tasks during this period, avoiding possible delays and ensuring good team performance.
Organizes the company’s routines
Without a doubt, the communication plan also helps to organize the company’s day-to-day activities.
With it, you can better visualize what needs to be done, when deliveries will be made and what type of result to expect from each of the actions performed.
This way, your team won’t get lost in their day-to-day activities, as they will have a pre-established action plan and already know where to go.
Increase your market knowledge
Among the reasons for having a plan is gaining knowledge about your market niche .
This happens because, to develop the plan, you need to study your market and delve deeper into the knowledge of your target audience.
And, of course, the more you know about them, the better prepared you will be to conquer your space, generate more leads or improve your ROI and conversion rate!
Furthermore, by knowing your customer, you gain an early view of new developments and trends. This perspective allows your company to act proactively, before the competition, and take better advantage of current opportunities.
Clarify your competitive edge
Communication planning also allows you to define your competitive edge through a study of your company, its positioning, its products and services, consumers and, most importantly, the competition.
The clearer your competitive edge, the greater your chances of creating good communication. The sales connection becomes convincing and presents the real benefits of what you offer to your audience.
When this happens, it becomes much easier to sell!
How to make a communication plan
The communication plan serves to, in a very simple way, know who to talk to, what to talk about, how much you will spend on it, who will do it and what objectives you want to achieve.
By creating a well-structured plan, your company will be able to communicate more powerfully and get closer to its desired goals!
Let’s understand what is needed for this:
Study the market and your company
The first thing you need to do is understand your company’s current situation and the market in which it operates. Start by describing what your company does and how it communicates. What works well? What needs improvement?
Also analyze political, economic, social and technological situations, as these are aspects that can affect your business both positively and negatively.
Analyzing the matrix known as SWOT (Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses and Threats) is also essential to understand your level of competitiveness in the market and where your focus should be!
Understand the reality of your business
What is the reality of your company? To answer this question, it is a good idea to conduct an internal audit to understand what stage the organization is at and whether there is a communication plan currently in place.
This is the time to evaluate how it is positioned in the market, what its mistakes and successes have been in recent months, etc. To do this, the ideal is to:
- Conduct internal research and create focus groups;
- Encourage a brainstorming meeting with your communications team;
- Collect information from other areas of the company to analyze internal communication and employees’ perception of the institution.
Analyze your competition and your audience
In addition to understanding your company and your market, it is also essential to monitor the competition and discover what their steps are.
So, consider:
- Analyze the behavior of your competitors and list their best and worst practices;
- Evaluate how to learn from each of the noted actions;
- Monitor your audience’s behavior: purchasing habits, whether they have common doubts and questions in their daily lives, etc.
Trust me: joining the sales or customer service team and following their routine is also a great way to find out how your consumer interacts with your business!
Keep in mind the company’s goals
Wouldn’t it be strange if a store clerk used the technical terms and formality of a lawyer? Anyone who deals directly with the public needs clear, close and friendly communication.
Customers who were served by this attendant would certainly leave confused by the unfamiliar terms and dissatisfied because they were unable to communicate.
For organizations, it works in a similar way. Communication is one of the areas that most needs to be aligned with the company as a whole. It needs to be in harmony with its identity and positioning!
Furthermore, it needs to be in line with your goals. What is your company looking for? You will only achieve good results if you know what results you expect and, consequently, how to achieve them!
So be sure to create a link between your organizational goals and your communication strategies.
Have a specialized team
Communication is a company’s golden asset. It protects its image, reputation and credibility. Therefore, it needs to be in the hands of professionals who know how to conduct it responsibly and who can generate results from it.
You will need to be clear about what your weaknesses and main needs are, and then look for professionals or partner companies that fill the identified gaps.
After all, they need to be able to use the tools and resources available to achieve the defined objectives!
Set a budget
First of all, I need to tell you that the budget will depend on your strategy. Therefore, it is very important to plan the use of channels and establish an application schedule.
Knowing exactly what the actions will be during a given period, at least the main ones, makes it easier to establish how much you will need to have available to maintain the channels, the communications team, content production and possible promotional and marketing campaigns.
To do this, in this part, be detailed and very specific, but don’t forget that the budget also requires a certain amount of flexibility for unexpected events!
Understand your audiences
Your audience is the one who actually consumes your content and it changes depending on the environment.
What I mean is: the information that interests your internal audience, such as collective vacations and developed projects, is not so relevant to your external audience, your customers, unless they are impacted in some way.
A simple way to do this is to create a table with your main audiences, such as employees, partners, shareholders and customer groups, and indicate what type of subject interests each one.
Plan the use of your channels
Once the way in which the company will present itself has been defined, it is necessary to define the channels.
Which channels will you use? How will your communication be on them? More relaxed or more professional?
And this, of course, will depend on where your target audience is: are they people who use the Internet a lot or who watch more TV?
Be careful to base your choice on data about your audience and invest in the channels they use most.
This way, your company builds a strong identity, easy to recognize and with a personalized language for each channel, followed by everyone on the team who creates communications for these locations!
Define the messages and content that will be worked on
Planning is not just about defining goals and schedules, it is necessary to detail the actions and their specificities very well.
Establishing what messages and content will be disseminated by your company is an important point, which should be included in the plan.
Understand, before anything else, what types of content generate the most interaction, engagement and sales opportunities: themes, formats, communication channels and much more!
This makes it possible to define messages, sales arguments and other details, as well as identify the best language to use in these channels, based on what is generating the most conversion.
These adjustments will be essential for you to be able to create a plan aligned with the message that the company wants to convey, through the appropriate platforms.
Know your audience
It seems obvious, but unfortunately, many companies do not know their target audience. There is a vision of an ideal audience to be reached, but is this ideal audience actually the one who actually buys from your business?
For example, try analyzing sales records and monitoring the sales team to find out who is actually buying from your company.
This makes it easier to understand what the customer’s pain points are, the problems that your product or service needs to solve, the best sales arguments, the purchase objections to be overcome and, from there, structure messages that really convert.
Know your product
Identify all the benefits and utilities of the products and services that are being marketed by your company. Identify the competitive advantages of each one and see how they stand out from the competition.
The more you know about your products and services, as well as what your competitors offer, the better your sales pitch will be.
This way, it is possible to create communication that reinforces the differences of your business!
Have a schedule
When we set dates and deadlines, we create a sense of urgency and organization, and this makes it much easier to put our plans into practice.
Therefore, creating a schedule is advantageous for the company. It ensures that, from the beginning, the team is clear about how they will need to organize themselves to meet deadlines and the steps necessary to achieve their goals.
The schedule also guides your strategic actions. For example: if your company sells flowers and knows that Mother’s Day is coming, the ideal thing to do is to start a communication campaign in advance, so that your brand is already present in the minds of consumers!
And this applies to several events throughout the year: Black Friday, long weekends, seasons or even the weekend.
So here’s a tip: make a medium-term plan, about a year in advance. It’s interesting to have an overview of the company’s direction, but it’s important to have the flexibility to keep up with unforeseen events, trends and other twists and turns along the way!
Prepare for crises
Every company faces crises, to a greater or lesser extent. Ideally, you should have an action plan, whether for a customer complaint, for situations with the press, or for financial contingencies, for example.
To do this, consider:
- Plan responses to objections customers may have;
- Be prepared to issue rapid statements in a time of serious crisis;
- Prepare executives and other employees to speak on behalf of the company, if necessary.
In addition, always maintain a good relationship with the press and the public. Building trust is important in times of impasse — a company with credibility does better than one that constantly makes mistakes.
Crisis management also involves prevention!
Follow the results
There’s no point in having good planning if you don’t know your results! Analyze all the data you have access to, from your website information in Google Analytics and Google Search Console, to consumer feedback in a physical store, for example.
To make your work easier, look for key performance indicators , KPIs, such as conversion rate, CAC, CPC, engagement rate, among others. They reflect whether your objectives are being met.
If you want to increase your website’s audience, the number of hits is a KPI, for example. They need to be simple, easy to track and essential in evaluating results!
Add an optimization step
After tracking the results of your plan, it’s time to optimize!
Planning needs to be fluid and keep up with the company’s needs. After all, by analyzing data on the performance of each action, it is possible to understand how to improve and make the next steps more successful.
Therefore, don’t forget to reevaluate your planning regularly and discover the points that need to be adjusted, to deliver an even better result, getting ever closer to your Marketing objective!
Plan your strategies
When planning your communication strategies, you are shaping how your message will be conveyed and received by your target audience.
Therefore, I will show you practical tips to optimize your planning :
- Be flexible: be prepared to adjust your strategies as the market evolves and public preferences change;
- Provide ongoing feedback: Ask for regular feedback and be willing to correct your actions based on audience responses;
- Evaluate and learn: after implementation, evaluate performance, identify what worked and what can be improved to optimize future planning;
- Integrate collaboration tools: Improve internal communication and ensure that everyone on the team is aligned on goals. Some examples of tools are Asana, Slack, Trello, Miro, etc.
Set yourself up for success next year!
To be successful, your company needs to be consistent, coherent and persistent in conveying its message.
It is interesting that the voice, language and all elements of the communication planning follow a pattern, avoiding generating doubts in the audience.
This way, in addition to the coherence and boosting of your objectives, you position your brand in the market more effectively, reduce unnecessary expenses with rework, reduce stress and can even increase efficiency by using opportunities to reuse materials in different media!
With good communication planning, then, you can have more and more success in your Marketing actions.
For this, having a specialized Digital Marketing agency by your side is a good idea.
With expertise and strategic analysis, you will be able to understand in greater depth the scenario of your company, your consumers, your competitors and your entire market.
Request a Free Digital Marketing Diagnosis right now with the experts here at Enjoy Minder!
