A successful communication plan for a business details strategies for conveying information about products and projects to current and potential customers. Communication plans are also tools for spreading the word about an organization's larger purpose to media outlets, like-minded businesses and sympathetic public officials. A communication plan is an essential part of an effective business plan, and successful companies update their communication plans as their companies and strategies evolve.
Communication Plan Strategy
A good communication plan starts by outlining the strategy for conveying information. Clearly define your communication objectives, stating your key messages, why you want to disseminate them, and what you hope to accomplish by spreading the word about them. Describe the audience you will target, segmenting it as necessary into subgroups with specific needs, interests and learning styles. The process of developing a communication plan strategy is an opportunity to assess and evaluate your company's current communication activities, identifying elements that work, cull policies that are ineffective, and introduce new ideas that are more in keeping with your goals.
Involve employees from a range of departments in the process of creating a strategy for your business communication plan, drawing on management to shape the overall direction, human resources to coordinate personnel and implement scheduling to enact the plan, marketing to shape the specifics of the message, and accounting to create a reasonable budget for your communication program.
Communication Action Plan
An effective communication plan also includes an action plan that provides concrete details about how it will proceed. It should closely follow the strategy section, supporting the stated objectives through specific, achievable steps. It should include a time frame for each part of the process, and well-defined, quantifiable criteria for evaluating whether particular actions are successful, such as setting a target number of product inquiries, and establishing an indicator such as asking customers to use a certain phrase when they inquire.
The action plan is the opportunity to describe how you will communicate your message to each of the demographic segments that you mentioned in the strategy section. Specify the types of media you will use to reach each group, and a budget for purchasing air time, Internet advertising, or printed marketing materials as needed.
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