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How to Write a Communications Plan

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11 B2B Content Ideas to Fuel your Marketing (with Examples)

A communications plan is a fantastic way of showing how well you understand your audience. It also shows your ability to deliver insights about your products and services to gain the consumers’ attention. However, writing one can be challenging. It takes time, dedication, and effort to develop the best information pathway.

This post will explore the crucial points for the success of your communication plan. Read on!

What is a Communications Plan?

A communications plan is a structured strategy of developing and distributing information about a product, service, or company to the target audience. 

The plan also contains procedures for communicating with buyers, clients, stakeholders, and others using various tools such as telephones, computers, and print media.

What Makes Up a Good Communications Plan?

Below are the critical components.

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1. Introduction

The introduction contains:

  • The plan’s background

  • Objectives

  • Strategies of the communications program

  • A high-level description of how it works

  • A brief description of the business, competition, and corporate goals

2. Objectives

This section captures your targeted business or marketing outcome for the project. Objectives are measurable and specific. If the goal is to sell one million iPads during the Christmas holidays, your plan could include increasing iPad sales by 20% over last year’s holiday season, achieving 10 million dollars in iPad revenue, and opening 50 new stores with iPads on display.

3. Program Outline

This section explains the actions required to implement the objectives and strategy outlined in the introduction. The outline captures profiles of stakeholders, communication channels, planning, and scheduling. 

It also includes the training needs of communication team members, support required to implement the communication plan, and resources needed for communication activities. 

The size and nature of the target audience are also discussed with the expected response after delivering information about a product, service, or company through different channels.

4. Strategy/Methodology

It is the list of specific action steps required to conduct an activity mentioned in the program outline. It is broken down according to different communication channels like print or electronic media. 

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The methodology also captures recommendations for effective tone, language, and style depending on the target audience.

5. Schedules

This section contains specific implementation activities based on your marketing campaign timeline for each channel. This includes print media, web, press releases, and face-to-face meetings. It also maps out the amount of effort you need to spend on each activity.

6. Budgets

This part includes the budget requirements and costs of activities detailed within the communications plan. Furthermore, it includes information on expected costs and resources required to accomplish each task and activity mentioned in the program outline and methodology.

7. Issues and Risks

With every good communications plan, expect to have some risks and issues. This section captures what should go well with your plan and what may go wrong along the way. It also identifies potential obstacles that can affect the success of your communications plans, like employees not taking the initiative or lack of commitment, budget, and time constraints.

8. Monitoring and Evaluation

This section contains the method of putting your plan into action. It captures how you will measure success for each task mentioned in the tactics. It also explains who is responsible for measuring success, how it will be done, when it will be done, and what information is required to finalize results. 

9. Appendix

The appendix includes information or additional data not contained in the communications plan’s body but valuable to communicate with stakeholders. It could be product literature, logos, presentations, reports, case studies, and photos required to effectively deliver the intended message. You can also use this section to capture metrics and anecdotes that may not fit into the body.

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How To Create An Excellent Communications Plan

1. Define The Purpose Of The Communication

Identifying the purpose of your communication is beneficial in determining your strategy’s objective and expected achievement. 

Building a meaningful sense for your communication channel requires you to:

  • Research the current scenario and requirements for your product or service

  • Take inputs from crucial members who work with your target audience and highlight the problems faced by them

  • Create a valuable plan to highlight your product or service advantages

2. Identify Your Target Audience 

Who are you trying to reach? For example, suppose you are targeting high-profile clients.  You must have a clear idea for your communication on issues such as what products or services they consume as well as the level of expertise necessary to solve the problems that currently exist within their niche. 

To define your audience, do the following:

  • Identify the right person to share with your audience

  • Analyze demographics, purchasing power, location, and age that count when defining your audience

  • Understand the critical pain points of your target audience

  • Identify if your target audience prefers written content, video, or social media for

  • Decide what actions you want them to take after they are exposed to your communication

3. Develop The Message

Creating the right message involves the following concepts: 

1. Content

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Content creates an emotional bond with your target audience while delivering your message and motivates them to purchase. 

When developing content, you should;

  • Be original

  • Be knowledgeable and passionate

  • Use simple and easy-to-understand words. 

  • Focus on your target audience perspective than the business perspective.

  • Use an “I” perspective to ensure efficiency in message delivery

2. Mood

Mood describes the motive behind your communication. It’s a powerful tool to communicate with your customers and ensure you have their full attention: To create the right mood for your communication plan, you should; 

  • Overcome objections and provide answers to questions raised by your target audience.

  • Make them feel an emotional connection with your product or service

  • Build trust by highlighting key pain point addresses in your products or services 

3. Design

Design is essential to understanding the mood of your communication. Having a great plan creates a positive impact on how people perceive your brand. To create a strong design effect, consider the following: 

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  • Use a single, consistent color scheme for your content

  • Create a custom logo

  • Highlight key features in your product or service

  • Select the correct font to ensure ease of use and readability

4. Language

Always use your target audience’s everyday language. Use words that are widely used by your audience on your products and services to describe their pain points. For example, if you’re targeting the construction industry, use words such as storm drain and lateral line instead of industry technical terms such as infiltration trenches and property drains.

4. Select The Best-Fit Communication Channels

List out all communication channels that potentially serve your target audience. Evaluate each separately before settling on the ideal channel that fits into your communication strategy. 

You can develop an individual communication plan for each channel. For example, using our marketing communicating solutions allows you to retain trademark messaging while driving unified advertising communications steadily across every touchpoint.

You can also have a good mix of communication channels to reach out to different target audiences. The communication channels could be a mix of face-to-face communication, event-based communication, social media, and advertisements.

When selecting the best-fit channel, you should:

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  • Understand the advantages and disadvantages of each channel

  • Determine the medium that works best for your target audience

  • Evaluate your budget and resources before making an informed decision

  • Pick a channel widely applicable within your target audience and niche 

Leverage your communication channel to maintain a consistent focus for all posts on your channel. It also confirms you are reaching the right audience with each post, video, or email. 

5. Evaluate Your Resources

Do you have sufficient resources? The supplies available at your disposal will always determine the success of your communications plan. Resources range from time, financial, human, software, equipment, and your networks. 

Always maximize the available resources without compromising on quality. If you are going to outsource additions, consider their implications to your communications plans. Have a precise integration plan to achieve the desired income while facilitating the intended project goals. 

6. Anticipate Shocks

Shocks are unexpected events outside the control of management that can disrupt your activities or plans. The communication shocks include:

  • The death of supporting or mainstream staff.

  • Natural disasters.

  • Death of key stakeholders or purchase decision-makers.

  • Amendments or enactment of new communication laws and competition.

Always prepare for these events before their occurrence in the following ways: 

  • Identify key stakeholders and their key contacts

  • Plan for the worst possible outcome to avoid getting caught up off-guard

  • Develop contingency plans to ensure continuity with your communication plans after the shocks 

  • Paying keen attention to details to point out signs of shock occurrences 

7. Create An Effective Action Plan

Action plans can manage and measure your communication activities. They cover the following aspects. 

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1. Campaign planning

  • Determining the milestones and deadlines in your communications plan

  • Setting a timeframe for your communication plan

  • Selecting and assigning each team member with a task 

  • Allocating resources for every task

2. Measuring and tracking 

  • Establishing measurable goals and objectives for your communication plan

  • Creating a way of measuring your achievement against set targets 

  • Monitoring the results on an ongoing basis

  • Monitoring signs for possible risks and developing issues that you should address

3. Ways of improving your communication plan

  • Determining whether your communication’s goals and objectives are clear 

  • Gauging if your targeted audience received your content correctly

  • Distinguishing your strategy reflects all your audience’s necessary pain points 

  • Determining the effectiveness of your communications plan’s monitoring 

  • Evaluating whether you have the proper channels to adopt to tackle the good and bad stressors affecting your plan

8. Evaluate Any Feedback Offered

Feedback from your target audience helps you understand the effectiveness of your communication plan. A recent study done by G2 and Heinz Marketing showed that approximately 61% of buyers prefer seeing around 11-50 reviews before purchasing.

Feedback could be gathered through channels such as: 

  • Customer feedback forms 

  • Inspection of your website traffic 

  • Reviews, comments, and interactions on your social media platforms 

  • Surveying your links click-through rates 

  • Monitoring the number of leads generated from your website 

You can also gather feedback by engaging directly with the target audience through: 

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What Is The Importance Of A Communications Plan?

The following are the reasons why you have to consider preparing a communications plan:

Defining Your Target Audience

You are more likely to reach your audience if you know the individual needs of different target audiences. 

Budgeting For Your Communications

It is easier to plan for communications if you understand how much you can spend. A communications plan helps you develop realistic expectations around return on investment for your contacts.

Resource Allocation

A clear communications plan reduces the timelines needed to identify the resources required to implement and execute the strategy. It also helps you distribute resources effectively for maximum reach and impact of the plan.

Clear Objectives

Achieving your objectives requires a well-structured communications plan with specific goals, target audience, key messages, and measurement mechanisms.

Trustworthiness & Transparency

A well-defined communications plan demonstrates credibility and transparently communicates your intentions to the target audience. It also boosts your stakeholders’ confidence in your products or services.

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Alignment With Other Strategies

A well-defined communications plan enhances your overall brand strategy by reinforcing key messages and positioning across different channels. It also helps you improve alignment and integration between marketing, public relations, and business development strategies.

Flexibility

Communications plans are beneficial for adjusting and developing new strategies leading to business growth. Based on the feedback from stakeholders, a clear strategy will help you address issues and make any necessary course corrections.

Sustainability

A communication plan sets the foundation for an organization to build on over time. Ensure you discover what works and continue to deliver on your objectives through multiple communication avenues.

When To Update Your Communications Plan?

Below are the appropriate moments for you to update your communications plan:

  • When you have analyzed the effectiveness of your strategy and identified areas that require improvements 

  • When you have done a formal review after experiencing changes in the business environment, such as new competitors entering the market or increased competitor activity 

  • When you have identified new target audiences that require a unique and different marketing approach 

  • When you have developed new product/ service offerings that need to be communicated in a different way 

  • When you have gained feedback from your target audience on the effectiveness of your communication strategy after its launch 

Whenever you are looking for an expert in creating an effective communications plan, Welcome has got you covered. We are an expert marketing orchestration platform with four years of experience harmonizing marketers’ roles in planning, collaborating, monitoring, and working efficiently. Get in touch with us for a free and no-obligation consultation.

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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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