Reinventing Your Approach to Comms Planning? Consider These.

Every marketing team we work with right now is innovating their approach to Communications Strategy or Planning in one way or another. What people are innovating varies greatly – some need a more efficient approach to campaign planning or content. Others, a complete overhaul of team structure to break down cross-functional silos. While the innovation goals vary based on the needs of the organization, there is one thing they all have in common: they don’t have the support they need.

We just want to say It’s ok to not know how to do Communications Strategy or Planning  if you are a marketing leader. The way in which the practice has evolved from the start (when there was only one channel, TV ad) to now (hundreds of channels, lots of content) is an unreasonable amount of skill to be expected to develop and orchestrate on your own – especially as many in high leadership positions don’t understand the importance of the value in today’s marketing reality.

Here are our three things to consider when you are working to adapt how your organization organizes, plans and executes Communications Strategy or Planning: 

People need a broader plan, often called a Communications Strategy. 

Our clients tend to have a Business Strategy, a Brand Strategy and sometimes a Marketing Strategy but very few organizations (large and small) have a Communications Strategy, i.e., a broader understanding of how the organization communicates to its audiences on behalf of the business and the brand across all of its channels, regardless of timing. What we tend to see is a company will have goals, brand guidelines and a set of siloed teams developing their own approach to communications based on that quarter’s initiatives, typically driven by what the company wants to sell. This tends to lead to audiences experiencing a non-personalized, salesy and inconsistent brand experience. The most efficient way to successfully shift from a siloed, company/product-driven communication model to an omnichannel, consumer-driven communication model is to create a broader Communication Strategy that connects directly to the Brand and Business Strategy. 

Getting started: We typically start with both yearly and quarterly communication goals that directly connect to business, brand and marketing goals and a Consumer Journey that your teams can use to deliver a consistent brand experience across all channels, regardless of timing or initiatives. We often have consulting retainers in which we provide guidance and direction as our clients shift their approach  – helping them turn what can often feel like a massive ship. 

People need process and tools to deliver consistent communications.

Because there is so much confusion around Communications Strategy and because it has been such a siloed practice, it’s really important to have streamlined processes and tools that are incredibly easy to understand and use – by everyone. Because most of these cross-functional teams are doing things their own way, clear direction is crucial to reduce confusion. 

Getting started: We typically come in and do an audit to help leaders understand what is the most efficient and least disruptive way to adjust the current ways of operating. We build our processes based on finding what is currently working the best (pick a team) and build upon that with the leaders of that team. From there, we evaluate all the tools being used across the organization and we streamline as much as we can. We try to keep toolkits incredibly lean knowing people don’t need more to absorb but rather a copy/paste process that will save them time and energy. The goal of all of our processes and toolkits is to break down silos and add consistency and efficiency – replacing confusion with autonomy and motivation.

You likely don’t have the people you need. Not only should you not feel guilty for not having all the knowledge of Communications Strategy but it’s also likely you don’t have those brains on your team currently. There aren’t many people that specialize in orchestrating communications on behalf of large marketing systems. The reason for this is because most Communications Planners specialize in one channel (Social, Email, Ecommerce) or go directly to Media Planning – very few can orchestrate all the channels together (earned, owned, paid). 

Getting started: You’ll likely need to hire outside support. And we’re not just saying that because we want you to hire us. We specialize in helping people find what they need in this area. We’ve helped dozens of CMOs and marketing leaders reset their approach to communications. We have a process that we follow that not only integrates the brand and business strategy but also provides org charts for filling gaps and tools and training to align teams on executing a more efficient approach. 

We know Communications Strategy is incredibly daunting but we also know the reward is almost immediately seen in time-savings, higher employee satisfaction, and higher customer experience satisfaction. 

Need help, please reach out. 

Want more on Communications Planning? Read, Do I Actually Need “Comms Planning?”