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Making a Risk Management Plan for Your Business
It’s impossible to eliminate all business risk. Therefore, it’s essential for having a plan for its management. You’ll be developing one covering compliance, environmental, financial, operational and reputation risk management. These guidelines are for making a risk management plan for your business.
Developing Your Executive Summary
When you start the risk management plan with an executive summary, you’re breaking apart what it will be compromised of into easy to understand chunks. Even though this summary is the project’s high-level overview, the goal is describing the risk management plan’s approach and scope. In doing so, you’re informing all stakeholders regarding what to expect when they’re reviewing these plans so that they can set their expectations appropriately.
Who Are the Stakeholders and What Potential Problems Need Identifying?
During this phase of making the risk management plan, you’re going to need to have a team meeting. Every member of the team must be vocal regarding what they believe could be potential problems or risks. Stakeholders should also be involved in this meeting as well to help you collect ideas regarding what could become a potential risk. All who are participating should look at past projects, what went wrong, what is going wrong in current projects and what everyone hopes to achieve from what they learned from these experiences. During this session, you’ll be creating a sample risk management plan that begins to outline risk management standards and risk management strategies.
Evaluate the Potential Risks Identified
A myriad of internal and external sources can pose as risks including commercial, management and technical, for example. When you’re identifying what these potential risks are and have your list complete, the next step is organizing it according to importance and likelihood. Categorize each risk according to how it could impact your project. For example, does the risk threaten to throw off timelines or budgets? Using a risk breakdown structure is an effective way to help ensure all potential risks are effectively categorized and considered. Use of this risk management plan template keeps everything organized and paints a clear picture of everything you’re identifying.
Assign Ownership and Create Responses
It’s essential to ensure a team member is overseeing each potential risk. That way, they can jump into action should an issue occur. Those who are assigned a risk, as well as the project manager, should work as a team to develop responses before problems arise. That way, if there are issues, the person overseeing the risk can refer to the response that was predetermined.
Have a System for Monitoring
Having effective risk management companies plans includes having a system for monitoring. It’s not wise to develop a security risk management or compliance risk management plan, for example, without having a system for monitoring. What this means is there’s a system for monitoring in place to ensure risk doesn’t occur until the project is finished. In doing so, you’re ensuring no new risks will potentially surface. If one does, like during the IT risk management process, for example, your team will know how to react.
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Writing a Business Plan
While it may be tempting to put off, creating a business plan is an essential part of starting your own business. Plans and proposals should be put in a clear format making it easy for potential investors to understand. Because every company has a different goal and product or service to offer, there are business plan templates readily available to help you get on the right track. Many of these templates can be adapted for any company. In general, a business plan writing guide will recommend that the following sections be incorporated into your plan.
Executive Summary
The executive summary is the first section that business plans open with, but is often the last section to actually be written as it’s the most difficult to write. The executive summary is a summary of the overall plan that highlights the key points and gives the reader an idea of what lies ahead in the document. It should include areas such as the business opportunity, target market, marketing and sales strategy, competition, the summary of the financial plan, staff members and a summary of how the plan will be implemented. This section needs to be extremely clear, concise and engaging as you don’t want the reader to push your hard work aside.
Company Description
The company description follows the executive summary and should cover all the details about the company itself. For example, if you are writing a business plan for an internet café, you would want to include the name of the company, where the café would be located, who the main team members involved are and why, how large the company is, who the target market for the internet cafe is, what type of business structure the café is, such as LLC, sole proprietorship, partnership, or corporation, what the internet café business mission and vision statements are, and what the business’s short-term objectives are.
Services and Products
This is the exciting part of the plan where you get to explain what new and improved services or products you are offering. On top of describing the product or service itself, include in the plan what is currently in the market in this area, what problems there are in this area and how your product is the solution. For example, in a business plan for a food truck, perhaps there are numerous other food trucks in the area, but they are all fast –food style and unhealthy so, you want to introduce fast food that serves only organic and fresh ingredients every day. This is where you can also list your price points and future products or services you anticipate.
Market Analysis
The market analysis section will take time to write and research as a lot of effort and research need to go into it. Here is where you have the opportunity to describe what trends are showing up, what the growth rate in this sector looks like, what the current size of this industry is and who your target audience is. A cleaning business plan, for example, may include how this sector has been growing by 10% every year due to an increase in large businesses being built in the city.
Organization and Management
Marketing and sales are the part of the business plan where you explain how you will attract and retain clients. How are you reaching your target customers and what incentives do you offer that will keep them coming back? For a dry cleaner business plan, perhaps if they refer customers, they will get 10% off their next visit. In addition, you may want to explain what needs to be done in order for the business to be profitable. This is a great way of showing that you are conscious about what clear steps need to be taken to make a business successful.
Financial Projections & Appendix
The financial business plan section can be a tricky one to write as it is based on projections. Usually what is included is the short-term projection, which is a year broken down by month and should include start-up permits, equipment, and licenses that are required. This is followed by a three-year projection broken down by year and many often write a five-year projection, but this does not need to be included in the business plan.
The appendix is the last section and contains all the supporting documents and/or required material. This often includes resumes of those involved in the company, letters of reference, product pictures and credit histories. Keep in mind that your business plan is always in development and should be adjusted regularly as your business grows and changes.
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Corporate Communications Plan: The Roadmap for Success
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Successful companies are strategic with the way they communicate. In fact, developing a corporate communications plan can be one of the most important ways to build a stronger brand.
Trust is created by the ways that businesses share authentically about themselves and how they respond to difficult situations.
Communications teams benefit from putting a lot of effort into the way they craft messaging and tell stories about their brand. And those that are most equipped to handle challenges and adapt to change are the ones that have plans in place.
A 2019 study showed that 96% of people think the businesses they deal with could improve when it comes to communication and project management. So clearly this is something more businesses need to address!
Let’s explore what successful corporate communications plans include and have in common, and how they can benefit your organization.
What is a Corporate Communications Plan?
A corporate communications plan is the framework for how a business shares messages internally and externally. You can think of it as the roadmap for how a company communicates with their stakeholders, employees, customers, the media, and regulators.
Part of the plan includes what information to share, who the target audience is, how frequently to provide updates, and what channels are the best to relay these messages.
Having a plan in place shapes how a company will handle communications during times of crisis, change, and launches of campaigns and new products.
What Are the Types of Corporate Communications?
The two main types of corporate communications are:
Internal Communications: How a business shares information with its employees, leadership teams, managers, and board members.
The interactions can be formal modes of communications such as all-hands meetings to discuss strategic initiatives and performance, updates about organizational changes, company newsletters , and internal memos about policy changes.
Or they can also include more informal communication like using messaging apps to collaborate, welcoming new hires, celebrating work anniversaries, or sharing details on winning new business.
External Communications: Any information shared outside of the organization.
Whether it is a formal press release or branded content on social media, these communications build the company’s public image and impact the perception of a brand and its products or services.
Marketing, content, and advertising created by the company to promote it are included as external communication methods.
Press releases and financial reporting are another way that companies share messaging about the organization with the outside world.
Why is Having a Corporate Communications Plan Important?
Corporate communications plans lead to sharing clearer and better messages with your target audience.
Whether that audience includes your own employees or potential customers, you want to be heard in the right place and at the right time. Setting up a framework to achieve that is essential.
Sometimes you might be thrown a curveball, and a communications plan will help your business be prepared for any unexpected changes or crises that come your way.
Surprisingly, a JOTW Communications Survey showed that 59% of communicators say they have a communications strategy drafted, but only 45% admit to having a documented crisis communications plan.
Having a plan in place will also allow for speedier recovery to any public relations issues. For example, responding to negative feedback and being open about mistakes can build trust with your brand and get you back on the right track in the eyes of customers and potential clients.
Communicating effectively and transparently shows that your brand values engagement by taking a proactive approach to be included in conversations about your brand or industry.
A corporate communications plan for internal communications will also help define and build a transparent company culture. This can improve employee engagement by keeping team members included in conversations about where the company is heading and what it values.
If there are sudden changes on a team, you’ll be better able to communicate the changes in a way that makes employees feel comfortable and cared for if you have a plan for how to share that information first for those immediately affected and then across the company.
What Should A Corporate Communications Plan Include?
It takes time and consideration to develop an effective corporate communications plan. You’ll want to include details for the objectives, approach, and tracking measures for the goals of your messaging.
In simple terms, you’ll want to include the who, what, when, where, why, and how.
Here are the elements your corporate communications plan needs:
- Target Audiences – these are the groups of stakeholders that will be receiving the messages. They could be employees, customers, media members, investors, leadership teams, and managers. Age, location, job level, interests, and lifestyle are all helpful to know about the receivers of your messaging.
- Objectives – most communications are created with a call to action or a desired outcome in mind — these are your ultimate objectives or goals. They should be tied to your overall organizational goals to drive business outcomes.
- Message content – what you want to say and what you are trying to help your readers understand. Tone and personality are important to formulate in your message to get your reader’s attention.
- Distribution strategy – the channels and venues that your communications will be delivered on are an important aspect of the communications plan. Paid, earned, owned, and shared media channels have different benefits for reaching audiences.
- Frequency – how often you will be sharing or updating content to reach your target audience. This will depend on your team’s budget and resources, as well as an understanding of your target audience and being mindful of attention fatigue.
- Measures of evaluation – how you’ll know if your communications were successful. These should be highly attached to your objectives and goals so that you can track progress and understand areas for improvement.
How to Create a Corporate Communications Plan
You can follow these steps to design a corporate communications plan that is thorough and takes into account the many facets that go into a successful communications strategy.
1. Establish goals
Pick 3-5 measurable goals for your communication plan. They could be connected to brand awareness like increasing website traffic or generated a certain number of new leads.
Or they could be related to employee engagement, such as increasing the employee satisfaction score on your next survey or increasing the number of shares of branded content.
2. Set a clear process
Knowing the steps involved to launch a communications campaign and having teams on board with the process will ensure that your plan is scalable.
Document the steps involved from content creation to distribution to collecting feedback and share those with any teams that are included in the action.
You should also define clear roles for who will be involved in creating the communications and which stakeholders need to be involved for approving messages and compliance.
3. Identify and segment targets
Take time to think through who your target audience will be and how they may be different. Knowing your audiences can help you tailor your content and tone to appeal to audiences.
Use customer analysis and social listening to determine your audience’s preferred social channels and the best forms of content to encourage visibility of your content.
The way your company shares information with employees will likely be different than how it presents to the board or investors so it’s important to segment your audiences.
4. Develop key messages
Craft the copy and creative materials needed to effectively communicate your messaging. Think about what you are trying to articulate and how it could be conveyed in the clearest and understandable way for your target audience.
The content-type should also be considered — should the message be shared in a meeting or email or video? How can the audience react and ask questions about the announcement? These are all questions to consider when creating the content for both internal and external communications.
5. Choose a channel strategy
You’ll need to determine the channels and frequency of your communications to meet your goals.
For example, if your communication strategy is for internal communications you’ll evaluate whether an email or meeting is the best way to share the news.
Do teams prefer shorter, weekly updates or to get more information at the end of the month? Get feedback from your audiences to determine what makes the most sense for your communication cadence.
6. Measure objectives and progress
Before you start implementing your plan, think through how you can measure success for your communications with metrics like reach, open rates, and engagement.
That way you will be set up to continuously improve your content strategy and messaging.
Collect feedback from employees or customers on how to improve your messaging and enact these changes so that you are don’t run the risk of turning off or disengaging your audience.
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What are the Main Channels for Corporate Communications?
Companies have many software platforms and tools to choose from that can help streamline communications. You’ll want to use a mix of communication channels to achieve different goals.
For external communications, social networks, media publications, and videoconferencing are some of the most effective ways to reach potential customers and grow brand awareness.
All of the content that you publish on your website reflects the values and goals of your brand and can be a powerful way to make connections by providing valuable resources to potential buyers.
For internal project communication, email and messaging apps are the easiest ways for people to collaborate at an organization. They make it easy to share files and resources, get input from colleagues, and track project status updates.
Internal blogs, company newsletters, and intranets are some examples of methods that companies have used to keep employees informed and connected.
For building company culture and employee engagement, internal enterprise social networking platforms provide a more flexible and easy to use way to share company content.
Employee advocacy for corporate communications
Employee advocacy platforms like EveryoneSocial make it easy to link to external social networks, bridging the gap between internal company conversations and sharing them externally to strengthen brand engagement.
Press releases are important tools for sharing announcements and launching new products. And those efforts can be amplified when you have employees that want to share that content to their own networks, as well.
Beyond externally distributing communication messages, EveryoneSocial has unique features that keep your people engaged, connected, and informed — no matter where they are working.
For example, some features for communications include:
- Internal newsletters
- Push notifications
- Mobile apps
- Real-time messaging
- Follow company employees
- Tag employees on important info
- Read-only content
Want to learn more about how Everyone Social can be used to improve your corporate communication plan? Schedule your demo with us and we’ll share how some of our enterprise customers are communicating better by enabling their workforce with EveryoneSocial!
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How to Write an Effective Communications Plan [+ Template]
Published: January 05, 2023
Remember the " Tide Pod Challenge ?" That horrendous time at the beginning of 2018 when adolescents filmed themselves ingesting laundry detergent?
While it was a funny (albeit dangerous) start to the new year, this small boost of infamy was a PR mess for the detergent brand in question, Tide , whose crisis communication team had to figure out how to respond to America's teens swallowing their toxic product. Tide's parent company, Procter & Gamble, was swift in their response, thanks in large part to their communication plan .
In this post, you'll learn how to create an effective communication plan that prepares you and your company for any situation.
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What is a communications plan.
A communications plan enables you to effectively deliver information to appropriate stakeholders. The plan will identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you're targeting those messages, and on which channel(s). Communications plans can be used in times of crises, but they are also used when pitching new initiatives or launching new products.
Communication plans can help you clarify the purpose of a product launch or new initiative and officially determine the messages you want to deliver to your intended audience(s).
Additionally, a communication plan can help your business during a time of crisis if a previous marketing message or business decision damages your reputation with internal stakeholders or customers.
If companies don't have a communication plan, they'll be unprepared when disaster strikes. It may be unlikely that your company will find teenagers eating your product for internet fame, but not so unlikely that you'll never find yourself needing a procedure to effectively handle difficult situations.
Need a free, easy-to-use communication plan template? HubSpot has 12. Check out this toolkit for everything you need to build your own.
This is part of a template offered in the toolkit. For this particular template, the organization is separated into phases, a description of that phase, and who needs to complete that action.
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Now that we've gone over how a communication plan can be helpful, let's learn how to write one that will be effective.
How to Write a Communications Plan
- Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.
- Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.
- Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.
- Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.
- Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.
- Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.
- Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.
- Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.
1. Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.
Before sitting down to get rollin' on your plan, you need to first decide where it'll fit into your business. So it's important you complete a "state of the union," or an audit of the current climate of communications within your company. This can help you identify any problem areas.
For instance, let's say you need to create a communications plan for a new product launch. To create your plan, you'll first need to perform an audit to identify gaps in your current marketing approach.
After performing the audit, you might find there is a major gap in your marketing materials in which you rarely discuss a topic that aligns well with your new product. You'll want to ensure this topic makes it into your communications plan.
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To conduct an audit, you'll need to carefully gather and interpret data on your current marketing plan performance and build a path forward based on those results. Additionally, you might consider hosting focus groups or sending surveys to your audience to find gaps in your current communications materials.
Of course, you'll want to have the goal of your communications plan in-mind when conducting an audit. In the example above, noticing you're lacking material on a certain subject only matters if your goal is to drive leads and conversions to a product that aligns with that subject.
For instance, if you're launching a new email marketing tool and you notice you're lacking content on Google Ads, this might not be relevant information for your communications plan. However, if you're missing content on email marketing best practices, that's important information you can use to tailor your communications plan appropriately.
2. Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.
After your audit, you'll want to lay out a few goals based on the data from the results. What do you want to achieve with this plan?
When in doubt, remember that your goals should be SMART : Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based.
For instance, if a small agency is writing a communications plan for its client, they might write a goal along these lines: "We plan to increase employment applications for our client by 25% over the course of one quarter."
Alternatively, perhaps your HR team needs to write a communications plan to pitch designing a new growth matrix for individual contributors who don't want to become managers.
If that's the case, your HR team will need to identify specific goals they hope to achieve as a result of their plan, even if the results are less quantifiable — for instance, their goal might be to "increase employee retention rates by 10% over the next year" or even "increase employee satisfaction, as indicated by their next NPS scores." They'll need to pitch these goals to stakeholders to get leadership on-board.
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3. Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.
Good communication starts with knowing and understanding your listener. In this case, if a crisis communication plan is for stakeholders, which one(s) are you writing for? Stakeholder examples include employees, investors, customers, local government officials, or media outlets.
If you're writing for media outlets, a press release detailing your goals is a good idea for that audience. There should be a process for who will speak to the media outlets, an outline of what they will say, and an action plan put in place moving forward.
Alternatively, if your audience is your employees, you might want to create an up-to-date internal document for employees to refer to, as well as the contact information for the internal DRI if they have follow-up questions.
4. Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.
When you're ready to outline and write your plan, it's likely easiest if you start with a table or chart to identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you're targeting those messages, and on which channel(s).
Once you've created a general outline, here's how you'll want to structure your communications plan (feel free to copy these sections into a Table of Contents for your own plan):
- Purpose (what is this communications plan for)
- Escalation Framework (including 'first line of defense' and 'greater response team')
- Roles and responsibilities of each employee
- Do's and Don'ts
- How to maintain an effective response plan
(If you need help writing a communications plan, download our free, ready-to-use communications plan templates .)
When writing your communication plan, work with groups or representatives from your stakeholders to improve accuracy. Strategies should solve for goals or potential risks.
For instance, if you work for an agency aiming to promote a client's product, a risk might be spending money on paid ads without a guaranteed ROI. To solve for that risk, the agency should detail different steps to ensure the ads are effective before going public.
5. Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.
The channels you choose to communicate with your audience depends on your message, and to whom you want to deliver that message. For instance, if you're creating a communications plan for internal employees, you might send out your communications plan in a company-wide email, or use in-person team meetings to deliver your message.
Alternatively, if you're communicating with customers, you might determine it's best to communicate via an email newsletter, or via a press release.
Of course, the channel(s) you choose will depend on your goals, but it's important as you're writing your communication plan that you keep your distribution methods in-mind.
6. Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.
Once you determine your audience and channel(s) on which you'll deliver your communications plan, figure out the DRI for delivering the message.
For instance, if your HR team is pitching a new growth matrix to leadership, you might ask your Director of HR to deliver the initial pitch in the first meeting. Once leadership is on-board, you might ask each HR representative to deliver one training session for each internal team to ensure every employee understands what's changing internally, and why.
7. Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.
You should have a ballpark estimate of how much time each step in executing your strategy will take. For instance, if your plan needs to go from the higher-ups down to the employees, it's good to take into account how long going through the chain of command will take. It's also smart to infer how long a media cycle will last.
For instance, for a minor slip-up on an ad campaign, the advertising agency might estimate the cycle for controlling the issue will take a month — including meeting with the client, stakeholders, and employees to discuss steps moving forward.
8. Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.
There's always room for improvement. Measure the results of the plan after presenting it to stakeholders, and determine aspects that went well, and areas for improvement next time.
For instance, the ad agency might not have met its goal of increasing prospective applications by 25% within a quarter. They might rework their goals to give themselves more time or pivot their quarterly focus to fit those goals.
Alternatively, if you notice certain language in your communications plan evokes a level of stress or fear with internal stakeholders, consider how you can re-word next time to ensure your communications plan feels helpful, beneficial, and positive.
Some aspects of building a communication plan can be a "choose your own adventure" journey. The key is choosing aspects that best reflect what your business needs in times when effective communication is key. What do your stakeholders need to know, and how are you going to best communicate that?
Communication Plan Examples
- Strategic Communication Plan
- Project Communication Plan
- Marketing Communication Plan
- Corporate Communication Plan
- Crisis Communication Plan
Communication plans can get tricky, but writing an effective one will prove itself with its longevity. The following communication plans include analysis for stakeholders you'd respond to and the procedures for what to include in those communications.
1. Strategic Communication Plan
Bright Hub Project Management's communication plan explains how, when, and why communication happens within its organization.
This example is great because it details how communication managers write crisis plans and acknowledges that sometimes the busy marketer or project manager takes on this responsibility.
3. Marketing Communication Plan
A marketing communication plan is essential for communicating to your target market, especially when launching new products or initiatives. This example from Smartsheet allows you to plan marketing communications strategies for customers, sales prospects, media partners, internal stakeholders, and events.
Ultimately, your communications plan needs to clearly and succinctly provide necessary information to everyone involved in the business decision, product launch, or PR crises. Use the strategy mentioned above, as well as our communication plan templates , to ensure yours is as effective as possible.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in September, 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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Five components of a successful strategic communications plan.
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Director of Marketing at haseebtariq.com. I help fix large revenue retention & growth issues.
Communication is a critical part of any organization's success. Once, I was working closely with the senior leadership to create an email that addressed late deliveries. I remember that when we first started, there were so many ideas swirling in our heads about how to approach this project and what tone of voice would be best for our company. I wished I had someone with a communications strategy plan who could tell me the "best" way to approach this project in order to be successful.
I started reading and researching, looking for what I felt was a good strategy to communicate with our target audience. Luckily, after some research and conversations with others who had more experience than myself on the topic at hand, what finally developed was a communications strategy plan that we used over and over again for all of our marketing and communication efforts.
What Is A Communications Strategy Plan?
A communications strategy is a plan for communicating with your target audience. It includes who you are talking to, why you are talking to them, how and when you will talk to them, what form of communication the content should take and what channels you should use to share it.
1. What Is The Purpose Of Your Communications Plan?
A clear purpose helps keep everyone on board. Make sure the right people hear your message when they are ready and in a way that you want them to hear it. Your communication objectives should be to answer these questions: Who do I need to reach? Why do I need to reach them? What will my communications say? How will I deliver this message at the time that will have the best impact on my audience (and for me)? And what channels am I using or can I use for delivery?
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2. Who Are You Communicating With (Or Who Is Your Target Audience) And What Message Do They Need To Hear?
Target audiences can vary from one time to another and may include your customers, employees or the media. Define who needs to hear what is happening in your organization. Every communications plan is different, but they should never be one-size-fits-all. It's a good idea to create an audience map that identifies key audiences and the messages they need to hear about your organization or cause in order for them to take action.
3. How Will This Message Be Communicated?
Your communications strategy provides the framework for the company's outreach activities, including what needs to get out there through communication channels like social media, email marketing, blog posts, video content on YouTube or Vimeo and so on. In my experience, the more specific you are with your messaging (and visuals) — even if it seems repetitive — the better your chances of getting people engaged and taking action are.
4. When Should This Communication Happen — Right Now Or Later On?
Organizations have to use their communications wisely and strategically in order to be successful with them. But the importance of timing is also important for communicating effectively. Your communications strategy should specify when the message should be communicated, including whether that's right now or later on. Your communications team should take these considerations into account as they develop your messaging and timing plan. In addition, I recommend developing two equally effective strategies: one for "now" and another that can be deployed in anticipation of events that might happen later down the road. A crisis communication plan helps cushion against unexpected turns of events, no matter what happens.
5. Who Will Be Responsible For The Communication?
Communications professionals should be the ones responsible for communicating with external audiences, and they should do so often during a crisis. However, human resources departments may also need to communicate internally about any changes that may affect employees. Define key messages, and then decide who will deliver them. Define the audience and focus on what they need to know about this change. Be sure to provide information in a timely way, but also keep the message concise so that employees can digest it easily.
Bottom Line
A strategic communications plan can help you communicate your message to the right people at the most opportune time. By considering these five components, you can put together a solid strategy that could drive more success for your business and bring about your desired results in less time.
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Aero Technologies
Executive summary executive summary is a brief introduction to your business plan. it describes your business, the problem that it solves, your target market, and financial highlights.">.
Today the world is defined by the term ‘Information Age.’ All businesses, both large and small, require effective and efficient business communication solutions in order to continuously meet their customer expectations and attain a competitive advantage, and therefore be successful. Whether a company is large or small it is realized that, the right amount of financing, materials, talent, and experience are not enough to succeed without a good communication system in place that enables smooth transaction sealing. Communications is at the heart of regional and international integration, with the development of an efficient, cost effective and technologically advanced communications infrastructure essential to Botswana’s success in the global market. With the economies of most countries becoming increasingly sophisticated and knowledge-intensive, there is a greater need for the existence of an efficient network that will enable decision-makers to have access to timely and accurate data to facilitate decision-making and transaction sealing.
We are on the brink of penetrating a lucrative market in a rapidly growing industry. The current increase in the number of entrepreneurs, and competition among existing companies presents an opportunity for Aero Technologies to penetrate the market. Our services/products will be positioned very carefully. They will be of extremely high quality to ensure client satisfaction, supported by impeccable customer service. Aero Technologies will offer the expertise that a proactive oriented and market-opportunity seeking company needs to develop and maintain a good communications system. We intend to provide a number of necessary services the business community and to the public. Initial plans are to introduce five main lines of services, with the primary focus on Multimedia, Call Centre facility, Data Communications and IT, Financial Services, and Knowledge Consulting.
We realize that, for us to prosper, there is need to be flexible and responsive, to delight clients by providing them what they want, when they want it, and before the competition can offer it. The company intends to achieve this through a systematic approach that is customer-centric, and in which the customer’s business objectives enjoy top priority. This involves not only skill and depth of knowledge, but time devoted to studying a customer’s needs. Aero Technologies will view the provision of value-added services over the entire scope of our customers’ requirements as not only essential, but as a competitive advantage which the company protects as a key asset; from service concept to service provision, the intention will be to ensure that every policy and procedure, system and process has the objective of improving the flexibility and response of the whole company. There is a need for interaction between all functional areas, particularly between marketing and service logistics, if the project is to realize its full potential, with marketing being employed as a strategic weapon.
Once the needs and processes are understood and described, leading edge products and best-of-industry skills will be applied to design and develop a fitting solution to satisfy the need and enable the client’s business in the most cost effective way.
Our marketing strategy will be based mainly on ensuring customers know what need the service(s) is able to fulfill, and making the right service and information available to the right target client. We intend to implement a market penetration strategy that will ensure that our services are well known and respected in our respective industry. Our marketing strategy will convey the sense of quality and satisfaction in every picture, every promotion, and every publication. Our promotional strategy will involve integrating traditional advertising, breakfast seminars, events, Internet marketing, personal selling, public relations, and direct marketing, details of which are provided in the marketing section of this plan.
We intend to build our project management team correctly. We need the right people in the right place at the right time if we are to ensure optimum growth. We intend to develop our team so that our people can grow as the company grows — a mutually beneficial relationship.
The intention is to go into partnership with NNN Limited, a company registered in QQQ, and provide financial, IT, and data communications consultancy services to industries in the application and use of latest technologies such as data communication and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), enabling cellular telecommunications.
In a nutshell, we don’t just intend to market and sell our service, but to market and provide a service that will ensure our client’s customer satisfaction, ease of communication, improved corporate logistics, and cost savings on transactions ensuring a total-quality environment. This will ensure we establish and maintain a reputable corporate image. However it should be noted that timing and information provision will be of the utmost importance and significance in terms of the project’s introduction onto the market. In addition we are appreciative of the fact that entering such a market is not a bed of roses, particularly as it is still a relatively new concept needing to be implanted in people’s minds in terms of the benefits it may bring to them, as well as the number of ‘laggard’ firms who often do not easily appreciate the need for change, be it to their benefit. In such a case the need will exist to aggressively market the concept to these organizations and individuals through various means. Hence the intention is to utilize the technical and business know-how of technical partners in order to implement and attain our business objectives.
NOTE: All currency values in this plan are expressed in Botswanan Pula [P].
1.1 Objectives
Our business strategy will revolve around the need to provide quality service and products to our various target clients, in the process fully satisfying their needs. This shall be undertaken through recruitment of a professional telemarketing, sales and technical team and the provision of good quality custom-designed services, catering for the clients’ particular needs.
With time our marketing campaign will increase the knowledge of our services to the various market segments we shall be targeting. This is particularly so with organizations looking at establishing a competitive advantage(s) on the market due to increased competition, hence providing them with the opportunity to focus on their core activities whilst procuring increased business from new and existing customers. Marketing material shall be professionally done so as to be reflective of our intended image and reputation. We shall position ourselves as a quality total communications solution service provider that strives to provide effective and efficient communication solutions. We intend to establish a good rapport with all the relevant stakeholders.
In summary we intend to attain the following objectives:
- Continuously provide professional quality services on time and on budget.
- Develop a follow-up strategy to gauge performance with all our clients.
- Implement and maintain a quality control system and assurance policy.
- To continuously formalize and measure cross-functional working communication so as to ensure that the various departments work harmoniously towards attainment of company objectives.
- To instill a culture of continuous improvement in beating standards of customer satisfaction and efficiency.
- We are fully committed to supporting growth and development in the economy.
1.2 Mission
Aero Technologies, Ltd. offers marketing oriented organizations a reliable, high-quality alternative to in-house resources for business development, market development, and channel development on a local and regional scale. A true alternative to in-house resources offers a very high level of practical experience, know-how, contacts, and confidentiality. Clients will know that working with Aero Technologies is a more professional, less risky way to undertake communication with its various stakeholders, than working completely in-house with their own people. Aero Technologies must also maintain financial balance, charge a reasonable value for its services, and deliver a higher value to its clients. Initial focus will be development in the regional markets, or for international clients in Botswana. Aero Technologies is also an excellent place to work, a professional environment that is challenging, rewarding, creative, and respectful of ideas and individuals. Aero Technologies ultimately provides excellent value to its customers and fair reward to its owners and employees.
Internally we intend to create and nurture a healthy, creative, respectful and enjoyable office environment, in which our employees are fairly compensated and encouraged to respect the customer and the quality of the service we provide. In addition follow-up will be mandatory so as ensure customer satisfaction and make any improvements as recommended by the customers in future. We seek fair and responsible profit, enough to keep the company financially healthy for the short and long term, and to fairly compensate investors for the money and risk.
1.3 Keys to Success
The keys to this project’s success will undoubtedly be effective market segmentation through identification of several niche markets and implementation strategies. Along these lines the company intends to implement personal selling and direct marketing strategies to the target markets. Hence the key success factors will include the following:
- Excellence in fulfilling the promise: Completely confidential, reliable, trustworthy expertise and service(s) through the provision of an uncompromising service. This dictates that we have in place the latest technology, hardware and software, and well-trained personnel so as to fulfill the aforesaid.
- Timely response to clients’ orders: We cannot afford to delay our clients for whatever reason, as this will have a negative bearing on our image and reputation, including future business. Hence we need to be continually communicating with the client ensuring we provide needs-based solutions.
- Skill and depth of knowledge: Considering the nature of our services and their relative infancy on the market, the skill and depth of knowledge of our personnel shall be of utmost importance in determining the provision of the service(s) to the end-users.
- Marketing know-how: In a relatively volatile market there will be a need to aggressively market our business and the services we provide so as to be continuously at the top of our prospective and current clients minds. This will also act as a temporary deterrent for companies contemplating entering our market. Advertising shall be one of our competitive advantages.
- Leveraging from a large pool of expertise: The company’s various alliances with technological partners shall prove invaluable considering the skills and intellectual capacity these partners will have in the fields of design and system integration, implementation and execution, lifecycle support and understanding, and in the application of new technology. This has the potential of proving to be an important differentiator on the market.
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How to create a communication plan to promote your business
2-minute read
Good communication is good business. That’s why you need a communication plan that outlines who you should be talking to, how you’ll reach them and what you’ll say.
Without planning, it’s common for communication efforts to get off track, hurting your brand image and sales. The culprit might be poorly crafted messages, misdirected resources or unprofessional execution.
Here are six steps you can follow to create and execute a communication plan.
1. Analyze how you stand out
First, think about how you stand out from the competition . What do you do better? What do customers value about your products or business? To help, it’s a good idea to collect feedback from clients, partners, suppliers, employees and other business owners.
2. Develop a tagline
Create a concise message that describes your business and its unique value proposition . It’s often useful to come up with an “only” line. “We are the only company that does x.” You should use this key message consistently across all your communication efforts.
3. Choose target audience
Decide on the target audience for your communications. This will typically be customers and prospective customers, but could also be business partners, employees or the community. You may also need to identify specific segments to target within these groups. A market research expert can help you with these preparations.
4. Select communication channels
Choose the communication channels best suited to reaching your target audience. You should do a cost-benefit analysis to narrow down the best ones to focus on.
You will probably want to use a combination of traditional and digital channels, including online and traditional advertising, social media, trade shows, newsletters and public relations tactics.
5. Define objectives
Set measureable objectives for your communication efforts. For example, if you identify 20,000 potential clients in your market, you may set a goal of contacting at least 10% and, of these, selling to 20% by year’s end or 400 customers. Such goals help you forecast sales, devote appropriate resources to your communications, evaluate results and optimize your efforts.
6. Execute your plan
Decide who will execute your communication plan and hold this person accountable for meeting objectives. To fill any gaps in internal expertise, consider hiring outside communication professionals. These may include a public relations agency, a marketing consultant, a writer and a graphic designer.
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How to create a business analysis communication plan
Reading time: about 6 min
Posted by: Lucid Content Team
Business analysts help companies improve their processes, systems, and operations by analyzing current practices, defining business needs, and proposing solutions. In other words, business analysts (BAs) are in the business of change.
Once BAs define the problems and the solutions, they help initiate changes through careful communication and planning across the organization. Because business analysis covers the entire organization, BAs must facilitate cross-functional communications that effectively speak to the needs for change and the path forward so stakeholders at every level support the initiative.
That’s where a strong communication plan comes in.
BAs must be skilled communicators, enabled by a robust communication strategy and plan. Without buy-in from employees and leaders throughout the company, change initiatives will fall flat.
Below we’ll cover what a business analysis communication plan is, why it’s important, and best practices for developing a BA communication strategy.
Why is it important to have a communication plan?
A formal communication strategy helps business analysts communicate change requirements, project initiatives, and business needs clearly and consistently. This is an important part of the communication strategy because business analysts must be able to communicate clearly across the organization throughout the iterative change management process.
As projects and requirements evolve and different stakeholders engage in the process (or are impacted by the initiatives), communication acts as the glue that holds everything together and keeps everyone on the same page.
A communication plan provides a roadmap to guide messaging decisions and ensure that information is relayed in the right way to the right people.
In short, a strong communication plan:
- Keeps things organized
- Drives efficiency through a set process
- Ensures the communications reach the right audience
What is a business analysis communication plan?
Requirements communication is an important part of a BA’s responsibilities. Ongoing, iterative communication helps BAs convey key business requirements, findings, and recommendations throughout the business analysis process.
Business analysis and requirements communication involve numerous activities including:
- Managing conflicts
- Determining the requirements format
- Creating a requirements package
- Presenting the analysis and requirements
- Reviewing requirements
- Obtaining requirements signoff
To successfully communicate through each of these tasks, BAs need a clear communication plan.
A business analysis communication plan is a framework that helps BAs document:
- What information needs to be shared.
- Who needs to receive the information.
- When information should be delivered.
- How information will be shared (platform and setting).
- Required stakeholder actions (sign off, review, give feedback).
- Next steps after stakeholder actions.
A communication plan should outline the purpose of the communication, how those goals will be achieved, the audience, the timeline for delivery, and how results will be measured.
Use visuals to outline your communication plans and keep track of key messaging strategies. Visuals like a communication plan chart or communication matrix can help you get started.
Visualizing your communication plan will keep your framework organized into key categories such as stakeholders, deliverables, task or project owners, priority, and delivery method. Take advantage of visualization solutions that are easily shareable and collaborative to disseminate information efficiently and keep everyone on the same page.
Best practices for developing communication plans
Creating and implementing a robust communication plan takes work. But the payoff is worth it. Use the following tips and best practices to nail your business communication every step of the way.
1. Determine your communication goals
What is your purpose for the communication? For instance, are you managing conflict, creating a requirements package, or seeking sign-off from stakeholders? Each objective will affect how you communicate with your audience and the tools and strategies you use.
For example, if you are managing conflict surrounding business requirements and stakeholder expectations, you might have to get everyone in a room together to have a meeting to bridge the gap. Or, you may need to prepare a presentation with additional supporting research to back up your initial requirements analysis.
2. Consider your audience
How you communicate information will also depend on who your audience is. Consider what communication format and messaging is most effective for each individual or group you’re communicating with.
For example, your audience may be most receptive to a formal presentation with follow-up emails. Meet your audience where they are while ensuring all requirements are fully documented throughout the process for reference.
Communication methods could include:
- Status reports
- Meeting summaries
- Presentations
- Video conferencing
- Chat or email
- Shared collaboration tools like interactive visuals
3. Pay attention to frequency
Communication can make or break your company’s engagement. While what you say is important, how often you communicate can play an equally important role in building trust and keeping everyone on the same page throughout the change management process.
Don’t leave people to guess what is going on in the business or how it might impact them. Bring people into the conversation so you are always working from the most up-to-date information and ensuring no one is left in the dark.
Paying attention to the frequency and cadence of your communications will improve engagement and buy-in from your stakeholders across the organization.
4. Use visuals to deliver your communication
Communication must be consistent and clear. Avoid text-heavy, complex plans in favor of easy-to-digest roadmaps. While many BAs outline their plans in spreadsheets or text documents, visuals can help you organize and present your messaging plans and information simply and effectively through every business analysis stage.
The following templates can help you get started:
BPMN Process Flow
BPMN process flow diagrams help analysts understand current business processes and identify opportunities to improve them. These are a great addition to your BA toolbelt both for analyzing and documenting as-is processes as part of your analysis, as well as communicating your findings to stakeholders. Use these diagrams to illustrate current processes and pinpoint where and how your recommendations fit in.
Current vs. Target Balanced Scorecard
Balanced scorecards help BAs compare current business metrics to strategic goals. These are a great tool for analyzing the gap between where the business is now and where it would like to be. Use balanced scorecards to help communicate gaps in your strategic targets and support your case for recommended requirements.
Business Model Canvas
A Business Model Canvas is a one-page document that summarizes your business plans. This is a great asset for BAs because it succinctly communicates strategy, plans, and vision with enough detail to provide context and clear information about process and decision-making.
Business Model Canvas organizes the following information in one easy-to-digest visual:
- Value proposition —What problem are you solving
- Key partners —Who needs to be involved in producing and delivering these solutions
- Key activities —What needs to be done to achieve your goal
- Key resources —What you need to deliver these results
- Customer relationships —How do you talk to your market about these solutions
- Customer segments —Who needs your solution
- Channels —How will you deliver your solution
This visual is a great tool for organizing your plans and communicating the business value of your recommendations to stakeholders at every level.
A successful business analysis isn’t complete without a well-executed communication plan. Use these tips to bring your organization together on key business requirements and make an impact today.
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5 Ways to Make an Exciting Business Communication Plan
By Daleska Pedriquez , Sep 28, 2021
Good communication is a very important aspect of our lives.
A business with struggling internal and external communications often lags behind in growth and suffers from poor employee retention.
That is why most organizations learn how to create a business communication plan.
This ensures that the company won’t fall prey to any of the pitfalls above and ensures seamless communication.
Don’t know how to start creating a communications plan? No problem. With Venngage’s plan templates, you can design effective plans without design experience.
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Click to jump ahead:
- What is a communication plan in business ?
What are the benefits of having a good business plan communication?
Examples of business communication strategies, business communication plan templates, what is a communication plan in business.
Business communication can be divided into two categories: internal and external.
Internal communications deal with how effectively anybody within the company communicates with each other.
It deals with issues regarding the flow of information, processes, and ideas in more specific terms.
On the other hand, the external part deals more with communication with the shareholders and the customers.
However, an internal communication plan, like this project plan template , is effective if the target audience in the organization understands and embraces it.
CREATE THIS PLAN TEMPLATE
It is not as simple as putting all those strategies in a manual, handing them out to your employees, and telling them to go nuts with it. Obviously, that won’t work.
A good communication plan needs to be able to seep itself slowly but effectively into your company’s culture and values.
Employees need to eat, sleep, and breathe good communication.
This is the reason why you need to have solid communication strategies in business . Be strategic about it, like with this crisis communication plan, and include some out-of-the-box ideas.
A business communication plan needs to have consistency, variety, informativeness, and entertainment.
That is what we want to help you with today. We want to give exciting business plan strategies that you can implement to boost your organization’s communication exponentially.
But before we go into that, let us dive into the importance of a communication plan.
Once your branding has been imported, you can add your brand colors to all templates with one click.
Related: 8 Steps to Create an Actionable Employee Development Plan [with Templates & Examples]
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Let us get to know first what great things will happen if communication is seamless within the company.
Things get done faster.
You can also use this template to convince investors and partners about the benefits of working with your company.
Design infographics like the above example using Venngage’s extensive icon library. We offer 40,000 icons as well as diverse people icons .
With a good business communication plan, the target audience within the organization knows the proper flow of information and absorbs the key messages.
Employees will also know whom they can talk to about certain things and whom they can’t talk to. The result? The communication strategy will help tasks around the company get done faster.
Solving issues and problems is quicker.
Problems and issues will always arise if you have a thriving business. Whether it’s logistics, sales, marketing, operations, etc., challenges abound almost daily.
For example, this sales action plan outlines how the business works, as well as performance indicators. This will help team members understand the budget and their goals.
With good communication channels, any issues with workflow get solved faster, and the company keeps moving forward and growing.
Design plans effectively with Venngage’s real-time collaboration feature, available with every Venngage Business account.
Employees feel more valued.
A company that fosters great internal communications with its people will always gain the latter’s loyalty. That loyalty can kick-start a lot of things like better efficiency and output.
Teams will also grow closer and form bonds. That is when the company can maximize even a small workforce.
Related: How to Improve Employee Engagement with Visuals
Customer service improves.
Good communication plans also extend to one’s target audience. Customers always love swift, timely, and helpful responses.
A customer service mind map, like this example below, will make it easier for businesses to keep customers happy.
CREATE THIS MIND MAP TEMPLATE
If your company knows how to communicate its key messages with customers properly, you will react quicker than if you do not.
Employee retention rate increases.
What happens when employees feel more valued and have an easier time communicating with each other?
You get a lot of people willing to stay for a long time.
Bad employee retention rates cost companies a lot of money and task stagnation. Create an internal communication plan to manage this strategy, like this performance review process mind map.
Pair the communications strategy with effective communication channels to boost employee retention.
Create personalized documents with the Venngage for Business account. You can upload your own images to the editor. Or use one of the images from Venngage’s stock photo library.
Now that we have learned the benefits of a great business communication plan, let’s find out some of the most effective and exciting strategies out there.
Integrate fun videos into your communications strategy
If you want a good business communication plan example, then think of a video.
It’s no secret that videos can help people be more engaged, learn effectively compared to reading and writing, and understand key messages faster.
This one is really a no-brainer for external and internal communications.
An example of video communication is this video series about racial healing.
Other good examples of using videos in your business plan communication are monthly messages from the CEO.
Challenges and appreciative messages from the head of the company can easily be relayed to the employees. This is something that your people will surely love.
What is a communications strategy that works? Scheduled open meetings.
Scheduled open meetings are helpful for the company’s growth and can be something employees really look forward to.
How are they impactful for internal communications? And why should they be included in a communications strategy mind map, like this one? There are several great benefits that we should talk about.
First, open meetings encourage employees to share their thoughts and ideas.
This allows people to help grow into leadership roles while helping the company flourish by getting lots of fresh ideas.
Secondly, it can also be a place for employees to give their feedback. This helps the company continuously learn how their people feel so they can adjust accordingly.
Lastly, open meetings help empower employees and make them feel that they have a voice within the company. Issues also get resolved faster through these meetings.
For these reasons, every internal communication plan should include room for open meetings.
How to create a communication plan? Employee newsletters.
Another asset that should be added to an internal communication plan is employee newsletters , like this example.
CREATE THIS NEWSLETTER TEMPLATE
These help teams easily assimilate information in an entertaining and informative way.
Employee newsletters should be equal parts informative, professional, and sometimes silly.
If you look at an internal communication plan example from a company, it should include newsletters.
They are a great way to learn about new protocols, new products, and emergency news around the company, like in this reopening guide email.
With a Venngage for Business account, you can access the export as HTML feature. This makes it easier to import your design into Mailchimp or Outlook for a clickable email campaign.
Don’t forget to put stuff like fun and inspirational news about your people, whether it’s a bit personal (as long as it is still within respectable boundaries) or professional.
Related: 65+ Engaging Email Newsletter Templates and Design Tips
Good business plan communication strategies make training interesting.
During internal communications planning, the first thing that you need to think about is training or, more specifically, how you continuously and effectively train the workforce.
Jazz up your seminars by using entertaining tools like infographics and short videos. Infographics like a project timeline template are also a great way to improve internal communications.
CREATE THIS INFOGRAPHIC TEMPLATE
Infographics are a fun and effective way to summarize data and information through the use of charts and eye-popping graphics.
Fire up the Venngage app and start making an infographic using hundreds of ready-made templates.
Use the large database of images, icons, and charts to give your training that much-needed punch.
Next, try to implement fun video slideshows in their training to keep their visual minds stimulated.
Videos are by far more effective than oral learning, so use those to your advantage.
Keep things consistent. Training shouldn’t be done just once and never again. Have a monthly training session if you can. And use visuals like this microlearning infographic.
Just make sure that you keep them entertained while you are at it.
Remember, when it comes to training, if they snooze, you lose.
Related: How to Make Engaging Training Materials with Visuals (+ 20 Template Examples)
Another good business communication plan example? Use digital workspaces.
Digital workspaces allow teams to work and complete projects in a more efficient and timely manner.
That is why it is always a great idea to use those apps as part of your business plan communication strategy. You can adapt the communication plan below to accommodate digital workspaces.
With digital workspaces, everything is done online, so people can work faster even if they are at home.
This also allows them to communicate and post updates wherever they are.
Best of all, every step of the project is recorded with timestamps, so everyone can easily backtrack tasks and conversations.
Related: 18+ Project Management Infographics for Pain-Free Project Planning
You now know the importance of a communications plan. Here are some templates that will help you build better plans for your company.
Nonprofit campaign communications plan template
Using colors and lines, the template divides each section so the team is completely aligned. And you can adapt the visual for other types of companies, as well.
Marketing plan template
There are so many processes in a business. Keeping managers and team members on the same page can be a challenge.
This template can be customized for a variety of purposes, including creating a communications plan for a company.
Business update newsletter
We’ve already mentioned how useful newsletters are for boosting internal and external communications.
This customizable newsletter template is perfect for sharing updates with customers. It can easily be adapted to share news within a company, as well.
Informational infographic template
Sharing information with employees doesn’t have to be boring. With this template, you can educate your target audience effortlessly.
The template has plenty of room to share information via text. But you can also add a diagram to illustrate your point.
Did you know you could create Smart Diagrams with Venngage? Look for the Smart Templates tag in the Venngage library and start creating for free.
Customer onboarding plan
What’s one of the most important facets of a customer-facing business? Onboarding the customers efficiently.
Boost your communications plan by adding the following customer onboarding process infographic .
This template uses text, icons, and colors to make it more readable. These elements also make the steps in the infographic easy to follow and implement.
Good communication goes a long way.
Learning how to create a communication plan means that you need to understand how to make things fun for people.
That is why you need to implement some out-of-the-box ideas and refine the more traditional ones.
Get successful at this, and your company will reap the big benefits.
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How to Create A Communication Plan for Your Small Business
As a small business owner, it’s essential to have a communication plan. But, very often, business owners do not think it is necessary.
Imagine you need to communicate with a buyer to convince them that your product is their best option. Except that you cannot talk, you cannot write nor make any gestures. It would be impossible to help the customer understand anything.
In a way, not having a communication plan is precisely that: it prevents you from conveying essential information. The lack of planning can result in disseminated misinformation. It can also prevent you from communicating with your employees during an emergency.
Creating a communication strategy doesn’t have to be a complex process. But it is vital.
In this article, you’ll find everything you need to know to create the most effective communication plan.
What is a business communication plan?
A business communication plan is similar to a road map because it includes everything you need to reach an audience and communicate a message. This formal strategy plan lays out key components your business uses to communicate with recipients.
#CaminoTip This plan should have an internal and external communication strategy.
Examples may include methods to interact with audiences, advancement strategies, and measurements to evaluate communications campaigns, to name a few.
Why do you need a communication plan?
Consider for a moment how a business would operate without a communication plan in place.
No one in your business communicates with each other because communication channels aren’t in place.
Email alerts and automated text messages were never set up, and landlines weren’t installed.
No one is privy to essential communication information, so people wander around aimlessly in a chaotic environment because they lack direction.
Not to mention, the buying public isn’t aware that your company exists.
That certainly describes a worst-case scenario, but a company without a communication plan misses out on opportunities. They waste valuable resources by not communicating efficiently and effectively, both internally and externally.
Without a communication plan, your business could fail to build brand awareness, nurture business and employee relationships, and lose its market share of sales. Businesses use communications planning to deal with sudden changes, such as launching a new product or announcing a change in a business location.
A communication plan ensures consistency, sets forth requirements, and meets an audience’s needs.
What should a communication plan include?
A well-written communication plan puts everyone on the same page because critical data is mapped out ahead of time and should include these elements.
Business Objective
What’s the purpose of your communication outreach? In what ways can you improve how you communicate with employees and customers to focus on promoting products and services?
List your goals and then formulate ways to achieve your objectives within a defined timeframe.
Target Audience
Determine who you interact with the most. It could be investors, customers, shareholders, employees, or government officials. Then, you can prioritize what, when, and how you communicate with these individuals and organizations
Communication Focus
Once you determine your goals and target audiences, you can tailor your messages to each group.
For example, a message to an employee won’t be the same as you send to customers or members of your community. Messages should strengthen your business objective to promote your company and what it offers.
Be specific about the resources you’ll use to reach your audiences. Outreach methods may include websites, emails, social media, press releases, paid advertising, and other systems.
By measuring results, you’ll see immediately how well your communication plan operates. Your business should be reaching predetermined objectives and benchmarks. If you aren’t, then make changes by tweaking your plan.
Are people opening emails, and did traffic and sales increase? What methods worked the best? Do you need to change your key messages to garner more interest?
5 Tips to Create an Effective Communication Plan
1. turn inward.
Internal communication is about your employees. It helps create and promote a positive and productive work environment. They need to stay well-informed on any changes. These could be changes in products, services, or business practices.
Let’s say you are preparing to launch a new product. Employees need to be aware of the launch date, the details of the product, and any other “talking points.”
Perhaps your small business has grown to the point of being able to merge with another business. This growth could affect them. So they must be aware, and the process is transparent.
Would you know how to communicate that sensitive information?
2. Turn to Digital
Let’s imagine that your town or city is experiencing inclement weather. A blizzard or a hurricane. How do you communicate with your employees about closures? Do you have an emergency plan in place?
This information also appears in the internal communication plan you should have. You may say, “well, I will send my employees an email anytime I need to let them know about something.” After all, emails have become a staple of office communication.
But your employees already receive enough emails, which could cause them to miss yours. Consider newsletters, social media, and the intranet. Also, have a plan in place in case your city loses power. In which case, no digital strategy would matter.
This said, do not underestimate the power of in-person meetings and events. We have become accustomed to doing everything online. We forget that sometimes an effective way of communicating our message is face-to-face. So rather than sending a newsletter, consider an event that gets them away from their desks for a bit.
3. Create a Calendar
While using different ways to communicate with your employees, try to do so consistently .
Work with your Communications Department to establish a content calendar. This will ensure that newsletters, email announcements, and staff meetings occur at regular intervals.
If your employees know that, on the last day of every month, a newsletter circulates, they will know to keep an eye out for it. If they are aware that the first day of every new quarter there is a staff meeting, they will keep it on their calendars.
Keep in mind that, as much as we want to believe otherwise, people talk. It will be essential for you to communicate any upcoming changes as early as possible. Stay ahead of the rumor mill. This will help avoid misinformation and creating undue concern among your staff.
And don’t be afraid to make it fun !
Employees should enjoy coming to work every day. You want to create an enjoyable work environment. Celebrate your team’s efforts and accomplishments. Include this in your internal communication plan. Whether it is formal or informal, remember to keep it consistent.
4. Sing Out, Louise
Don’t think that when a customer needs to be aware of something, they can just look at your website.
How often do you think people are visiting your small business’s website? Other than to place an order, for example.
What we want to say is that external communication is not always the same as marketing. It can be true that, for your small business, it may be the bulk of your external communication efforts. Yet, even small businesses will have external communication needs beyond sales and marketing.
Common examples of effective tools for external communication include:
1. Direct mailings
2. Email Blasts
3. Social media updates
4. Press releases
5. Newsletters
First, it will be important for you to be clear on the need . Are customers confused by the details of a promotion? Are you implementing changes to your terms and conditions? Are you discontinuing a certain product or service? These are examples in which having an external communication plan is necessary.
Don’t neglect or fail to communicate with a clear voice to your customers. When they feel that they are an essential part of your small business, they will become loyal to your brand. This is part of enhancing customer relations.
5. Be prepared for the negative
Technology plays a significant role in the way we communicate. While it allows regular dissemination of information, it can open up your small business for backlash. This takes form in the way of negative posts on Facebook, Instagram, or in the comments section of a website.
Make sure you know how is your small business going to handle these incidents. This is something else you will want to include in your external communication plan. Don’t wait until it happens. Start considering how to address it ASAP.
Make sure your communication plan has a section that describes how to react to negative reviews or comments.
Internal communication vs. external communication plan: what’s the difference?
The content of internal and external communication is entirely different, but each one contributes to a business’s success.
For instance, internal communication is when you communicate with members of your business organization. Examples include instant messages to employees about an upcoming staff meeting or a notification about the company Christmas party. Information shared internally isn’t distributed to the public.
On the other hand, a company sends external communication to customers, investors, vendors, or other third-party entities. Messages might include product and service updates, announcements about an upcoming event, or links to your business’s website.
Start Communicating Effectively
Public relations also play a key role in affecting a business’s bottom line as much as sales and revenue. It will help you shape your public image to the community and your customers.
Do you want to be identified as a small business with a strong philanthropic spirit?
Are you donating a certain percentage of your revenue to a charitable organization?
Are you participating in a work-release program?
Then ensure that your stakeholders and customers know these initiatives.
These are the basics of how to develop a communication plan, both internal and external. It is time to execute it and stick to it! Communication plans are an organic document always subject to change. It is crucial not to deviate from whatever plan is currently in place: it could create chaos.
Remember this: communicate early and honestly.
If you want to keep up to date with the latest business trends and information, we invite you to subscribe to the Camino Financial newsletter .
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communication plan
- Katie Terrell Hanna
What is a communication plan?
A communication plan is a policy-driven approach to providing company stakeholders with certain information.
Communication plans are typically used in business settings to ensure all parties have the latest updates on projects, goals and objectives. They are also critical aspects of both incident response and business continuity (BC) planning .
Why communication plans are important
Businesses need communication plans for several reasons:
- They help ensure everyone is on the same page.
- They can prevent or mitigate the impact of potential crises.
- They can help improve efficiency and optimize workflows .
Communication plans matter because they help businesses run more smoothly and effectively.
Elements of a communications plan
A communication plan formally defines the following:
- who should receive specific information;
- when that information should be delivered; and
- what communication channels should be used to deliver the information.
An effective communication plan anticipates what information needs to be communicated to specific audience segments.
The plan should also address who has the authority to communicate confidential or sensitive information and how information should be disseminated -- email, websites, printed reports and/or presentations at meetings that may be virtual or given in person.
The plan should also define what communication channels stakeholders use to solicit feedback and how communication is documented and archived .
The specifics of what should be included in a communication plan vary from business to business, but the following are common elements typically included:
- the forms of communication that are used, including announcements over a building paging system, automated text messages , email alerts, prerecorded phone calls, meetings and social media ;
- who communicates what information to whom;
- how often communication occurs; and
- how communication is documented and archived.
Finally, a communication plan should be tailored to the specific needs of the business and the people involved and be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure it remains relevant and effective.
How communications plans are used
Communication plans have a variety of use cases . They're frequently used in crisis management and BC planning, but those aren't their only uses.
Communication plans play an important role in change management . An effective communication strategy can help lower resistance to change by getting everyone on the same page and helping stakeholders become engaged and, ultimately, endorse the need for change and the steps being taken to bring it about.
In project management , the communications plan may include a glossary of common terms to facilitate understanding among stakeholders. This glossary may also define and include samples of templates , reports and forms that the project manager uses to communicate information.
Steps in creating a communications plan
To build a useful communication plan, start by understanding the needs of your business and the people who are impacted by the communication. With a clear understanding of these needs, you can begin to develop a plan that meets them. Here are some steps to follow as you create the plan:
- Define your objectives. What do you hope to achieve?
- Understand your audience. Who is impacted by the communication? What do they need to know? When do they need to know it?
- Select your communication channels. What communication channels work best for your audience and your objectives?
- Develop your message. What information do you need to communicate, and how can you do so effectively?
- Create a timeline . When does your communication take place? How often?
- Assign roles and responsibilities. Who is responsible for generating and delivering the communication? Who approves messages before they're sent?
- Test your plan. Once you've developed your communication plan, test it to ensure it works as intended. Get feedback from your audience, and make adjustments as needed.
By following these steps, you can create a communication plan that meets the specific needs of your business and helps you achieve your objectives.
Learn how to implement a communication plan , explore tips for building a crisis communication plan and check out a template for BC planners developing an emergency communications plan.
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