How to Write an Effective Communications Plan [+ Template]
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.
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.
Download These Templates for Free
Now that we’ve gone over how a communication plan can be helpful, let’s learn how to write one that will be effective.
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.
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 …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
