Creating and Using Your Communications

Plan

Presenter: Niki Lamberg

Agenda

• Overview• Individual planning• Group work and brainstorming• Takeaways:

•Communications Audit•Communications Plan Objectives•Plan Framework: Strategies, Tactics &

Budget•Pulsed Calendar•Measurement Matrix

Starting Points

Plan at your own scale:

Entrepreneurial Strategic Organizational

No funding Limited funding Substantial funding

Internal resistance Ambivalence Internal support

Why plan? Why invest?

• Increase income and spread support

• Reduce guesswork and stress

• Anticipate systems you’ll need in the event of success

• Provide evidence of and feedback on the match between internal perceptions/priorities and audience interests

Simplifying choices, overcoming barriers

• Agile Marketing: • Everything is an experiment• Failure is built into the system• Short bursts enable easy adaptation

• Research:• Not enough? Too much?• Internal vs. external insight

The Communications Cycle

Benchmark

Adjust

Collaborate

Evaluate Monitor

Implement

Plan

Building blocks of a Communications Plan

1. Know your organization: resources & limitations

2. Know your audience: demographics, values, context

3. Where you are, and where you want to go

4. Strategies: simple and manageable

5. Tactics: affordable and easy

6. Budget and/or staff time

7. Clear assignment of responsibilities

8. Calendar of activity

9. Consistent measurement tools

Your Communications Plan covers…

• Advertising

• Public/Media Relations

• Messaging/Marketing

Advertising

Examples:• Paid print ads, radio spots• Print/collateral materials (brochure,

direct mail)• Google AdWords or Facebook ads• Calendar/directory listings (free or paid)

Your level of control:

Public/Media Relations

Examples:• Press announcements /

“Earned” editorial coverage • Blogger cultivation• Facebook & Twitter• Your organization’s blog

Your level of control:

Messaging/Marketing

Examples:• Speaking engagements• Experiences: volunteer engagement,

hallway signage, customer service• Letter-writing campaigns• Facebook/Twitter/blog

Your level of control:

/

Your first audience: INTERNAL

• Buy-In• Expectations • Goals and Indicators• Sharing Updates & Successes• Budget

Manage Internal Expectations

Communications planning is:

• A support and strategy, in tandem with other efforts… Not a magic wand.

• Intrinsic and organic to the program process…Not an afterthought or sales job.

• A thoughtful and controlled experiment that will evolve and adapt over time… With some budget!

What is your organizational context?

People Price Product Place Promotion Process

Communications Audit, Steps 1 & 2Worksheets

Getting out of a rut

• Your patterns and your audience’s patterns:changing in sync?

• Is habit or strategy driving the bus?

Communications Audit, Step 3:Your Promotional Mix

Worksheet

Communications Audit

• What are you doing in outreach now?• What is your actual cost?

• Potential discoveries, with visual clues:• Is your frequency balanced appropriately, or are you

connecting with one audience more frequently/effectively than another? Why? Is it easier? Cheaper? More fun/less scary?

• Are you appropriately balancing your investment of time and money? Are there surprises?

• Are you relying on certain tools/media more than others? Why? Are these the most effective/efficient, or just the most familiar?

Define Indicators of Success

• Get concrete (and realistic): We want to…• Enroll more students • Serve more meals• Raise more money• Generate more letters of support to

elected officials• Sell more tickets/stuff

• The test: what numbers can you grow, by when? Look for the $, # and % signs.

Recognize NON-Indicators of Success

“Increase public awareness”

is NOT concrete.

Success breeds success

Achievable goals for change

Measured change

Feeling of success for you, staff and stakeholders

Eagerness to continue

New achievable goals for change

Even more effort

Even more measured change

Who cares, specifically?

Ask: Who cares about your work, or could care?

Whittle down your target audiences to a manageable group of 2-3:

• Examples:• School groups, parents, teachers• Students, alumni, funders• Households in poverty within a 5 mile radius, high-income local

residents• Women ages 18-25, high-tech employers• Farmers, youth ages 14-24, residents of two towns

Hint: if you answered “everybody,” keep whittling.

Whittling can be hard work

Questions to help your whittling:• Which demographic is essential to our mission?• Which demographic do we care most about serving?• Which demographic already believes in and

supports us most passionately?• Can we reach our target demographic directly?

If not, which demographic influences others to support us?

It’s OK – in fact, essential – to de-prioritize some.

What do you want your targets to DO?

• Nail down those concrete actions

• Figure out how to make taking those actions easy:

• Clickable, copyable, automated, do-able.

A note about Key Messages:

• Key Messages explain to your target audiences why they should do what you want them to do.

• In your Communications Plan process, they are:

•Essential •Implicit

S.M.A.R.T. Objectives are:

• Specific• Measurable• Achievable• Realistic• Time-based

Example:

We want:

• Specific To increase ticket sales tofamilies with young children

• Measurable by 10%

• Achievable over last year’s sales,

• Realistic based on a comparably-strongproduct this season and a level-funded communications budget,

• Time-based over the next 8 months.

Example:

We want:

• Specific To engage enough volunteers

• Measurable to enable us to increase our caseload by 5%

• Achievable over our current caseload,

• Realistic with the support of our new volunteer manager and 20%

of the administrative assistant's time,

• Time-based by December.

S.M.A.R.T.Worksheet

Communications Strategies

• Learn (or ask around, then guess) as much as you can about where your audiences get ideas, information and recommendations:

•From you? (How?) •From media? (Which?) •From each other? (Where?)

• Identify the 5-10 most prominent ways to reach out

• Choose 3-5 of those as strategies to pursue

Example

• Our parents get ideas and make choices influenced by:

• Preschool recommendations• Word-of-mouth • Three local newspapers• Four parenting websites• Educational consultants• Workplace EAP programs• Educational fairs

• We think the most likely, lasting and efficient choices are:

• Preschool relationship-building• Social campaign through our current parents• Listings on and coverage by local websites

Communications StrategiesWorksheet

Communications Tactics

• You now know:• Where you are headed for each target

audience

• So now:• Brainstorm 3-5 ways to bring those

strategies to life• Consider who could take on each effort • Price out each effort• Weigh your choices and decide which to try

Communications TacticsWorksheet

with:Brainstorming List

At Last….The Communications Plan

Summary and Budget Sheet

Pulsing Communications on a Calendar

• You now know:• Exactly what you will do to reach each

target audience• How much your plan will cost• Who will take responsibility for

implementation

• So now:• Line up your plans on a calendar• Check that your balance is appropriate and

manageable all year long • Plan ahead for deadlines and crunch periods

The Communications Plan:

Pulsed Calendar

The Communications Cycle

Benchmark

Adjust

Collaborate

Evaluate Monitor

Implement

Plan

Measurement & Evaluation

• Benchmark your starting place (data)

• Set up systems and intervals for:• Measuring anything you want to know

(Google Analytics / Alerts; phone logs; counting)

• Monitoring and reporting(Excel spreadsheets; clip files)

• Plan ahead for who will review the data, when, in what context, with what goals

The Communications Plan:

Measurement & Evaluation

Your Communications Plan

• Now you have:• Your organizational context• Your communications objective• Your indicators of success• Your strategies• Your tactics• Your budget• Your calendar• Your measurement system

Congratulations! You now have a Communications Plan.

Thank you!

Niki Lamberg

Nicole Lamberg & AssociatesMessaging & Marketing

Strategy,Specializing in Non-Profits

nl@nlamberg.comnlamberg.com617-869-8695