Determining Your Goals and Audience
Create a timeline or calendar to keep your plan together. To start sketching out your communication plan, you’ll need a couple of pieces of scratch paper along with a blank timeline or calendar, which you’ll use to organize your different initiatives. As you brainstorm and narrow down your ideas, you’ll start entering them into your calendar or timeline. For now, just set the calendar next to you so you can keep timing and scheduling on your mind as you create your plan. You can use a paper calendar to keep on your wall or desktop, or go with a computer calendar, which can give you reminders when deadlines are approaching.
Describe the state of the company or project as it stands. Before you start plotting out your ideas for your company or project, you need to get a good idea of what the current status is. Talk to your employees, co-workers, or stakeholders, then analyze and map out the current situation as best you can. Write down these points as you brainstorm. Think about the state of your market and the company or project as a whole. Ask yourself what your company or project is doing right, and what it could improve on. For example, you might detail your company’s current sales, its budget outlook, and its projected growth. You could also talk about things like employee and customer satisfaction and retention.
State your broader goal to keep your plan focused. To pinpoint the exact goal you’re aiming for, ask yourself what you need to do and why you need to do it. What is your company or project’s objective? What ideas do you have to improve while staying true to that bottom line? Consider what will be different in your company or project once your ideas are carried out. Write down your broad goal in big, bold letters. You’ll want to keep referring to it as you continue creating your communication plan. For example, if you want to move your company away from storefront business and towards digital customers, you could frame it as a way to continue making a viable profit in a changing business landscape.
Make smaller sub-goals that follow the SMART layout. Once you’ve identified your overarching objective, plot out a few sub-goals that will help you get there. For example, if you’re transitioning to a digital storefront, one goal could be to create a website, while another might be to shift to web advertising. Follow the SMART method to make these goals as specific and achievable as you can. On your brainstorming sheet, write down your subgoals below your broader goal. Creating SMART Goals Make your business goal… Specific and focused. Measurable, so you can quantify your progress. Achievable, so you’re able to get it done within a timeframe and with the resources you have. Relevant to your company’s broader objective. Timebound, aiming to complete the goal by a certain date.
Pinpoint the audience(s) you’ll be talking to. Once you’ve decided on your goal, think about who you ultimately want to talk to and influence. Ask yourself who will help you reach your goals, who will be responsible for implementing changes, and, if applicable, who will provide funds for them. Start to consider how you can best communicate your goals to that particular audience and jot down notes for each. For example, if you’re communicating with a large company and consumer base, you might split your audiences into employees, stakeholders, and customers. If you’re communicating with different audiences, you may need to come up with different strategies for each, since a tactic that works for one group might not be as effective for another. For example, communicating with customer might work best with an image-based approach, while stakeholders might prefer more data and analysis.
Creating Specific Key Points
Decide on 3 important points you’ll need to convey to each audience. Based on your audience and your broader goals, start to map out about 3 (or fewer) main points that each audience needs to know. Ask yourself, what is the most important thing for each audience to be aware of? How much detail will each audience need? For example, let’s say you’re expanding the inventory of a retail company to include children’s clothes as well as adults’. You might need to tell the manufacturing branch the more practical facts of how the change will be implemented and how they’ll need to change their current processes. For a branch that’s less directly impacted, you could focus your messages on the broader impacts of the change.
Tell the audience what the decision is first. Every audience will want to know exactly what the decision is, so lay that out as clearly as possible. Try to say it in just 1-2 sentences, keeping it simple and straightforward. For example, you might say, “We’ve decided as a company to open up our retail to kids as well as adults.”
Communicate why it’s the right decision. Now you’ll tell your audience why you’ve decided to make these changes, why they’re important, and why it’s happening now. Support your point with data, facts, or stories, possibly using different details for different audiences. Think about what will be most compelling for each audience, and how you can use that strategy to get your point across. For example, you might say, “As our data team, you know that most of our customers are also parents—about 70% of them. Expanding our inventory to include children’s products allows us to make our existing customers even more satisfied.”
Say who made the decision and who it impacts. Your audience will want to know exactly who this decision is coming from and who will see the most changes. Be specific and honest here, even if some of the changes might be unpopular. For example, you might say, “This decision was made by a team comprising of employees and executives from each branch of the company. Expanding our inventory also means increasing workload. We all, and the data team especially, will need to work harder than ever to get this initiative out. In the meantime, we’ll start the hiring process for new analysts to help relieve some of the load.”
Talk about how the decision was made and how it’ll be implemented. Some audiences might need or want to know how the decision came about at the higher levels, and telling them about this process shows trust and consideration for their needs. Most audiences will also need to know how the change will be implemented, as it effects them. For example, you could say, “We came to this decision after completing several overall reviews of customer satisfaction and engagement. We also sent out surveys to all our customers to see what we can do to retain their business, and opening up a children’s department was overwhelmingly popular.” When telling a branch how it affects them, you might say, “As our data team, this means that you’ll be pulling information from a new source now: our children’s department. When we first launch, this will mean measuring hits and page retention rates, as well as item to checkout information, and comparing it directly with our men’s and women’s products.”
Say when the changes will happen. Once you’ve fully described the scope and background of the changes, you’ll need to tell your audience when the decision will be rolled out. You might need to tell them when they’ll start to see certain changes, and when they’ll need to start implementing actions of their own. You could say something like, “The design team will be starting to develop new products over the next couple of weeks. From there, manufacturing will start producing them. We’ll aim to have our website and first stock ready in 3 months, with a launch date on May 15. Your part in this, as the data team, will start up right around then.”
Tell them where they can find more information. Depending on how you’re communicating to your audience, you might be able to ask them if they have questions in-person or over email. If it’s a less direct communication, you could refer them to an FAQ page or a help hotline. For example, if you’re speaking to a team in-person, you simply might say, “Does anyone have questions?” For large-scale changes, you might want to solicit questions over email and hold a follow-up session to discuss them one by one.
Supporting and Delivering Your Message
Present your message in a clear, persuasive way. Once you’ve developed your key points, you still have to deliver them in a way that’s effective and interesting. Use persuasive strategies that connect directly to each of your audiences, showing them why this is the right decision for the company and for them as individuals. Tips on Getting Your Message Across Keep your ideas simple and present them in an unexpected, memorable way. Use images, when possible, to make your point stick. Use a narrative structure, like a story, to create an emotional connection. Include facts and data from credible sources.
Figure out how to deliver your message to each audience. Different audiences will likely necessitate different means of communication. In general, though, major changes are best communicated in-person, whether in a team meeting or a one-on-one talk. Think about how broad the changes will be and how they’ll affect each audience to decide how best to bring it up. Communication Strategies Use face-to-face communication for major changes. Have a meeting if the new ideas are more complicated, or if you want ideas from other people. Use paper handouts to help people remember dates and details. If your company relies more on tech, send an email instead.
Develop a strategy to measure how successful your communication is. Beyond successfully carrying out your broader company goal, you also want to make sure that your communication plan is effective. This can help you improve as a supervisor, employee, or communicator in general. Before you roll out your communication plan, think of how you’ll measure its success. Consider options like: Handing out a survey to your audiences, asking them to judge how the information was presented. Measuring investment rates, if you’re communicating with investors Measuring retention rates of customers or employees
Carry out your plan. Now that you’ve plotted out your communication plan, it’s time to get it started! You should follow your calendar closely to roll out each phase of your plan, but don’t worry if you have to deviate from it from time to time. Adjust dates and times as need be, but make sure you’re on track to attain your broader goals.
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