business plan communication strategy

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

How to Communicate Your Company’s Strategy Effectively

• David Lancefield

Ditch the lofty purpose statements and lengthy slide decks.

For too long, communicating strategy has been an afterthought. Executives have shared long, bombastic documents or withheld critical information and expected people to just “get it.” And it hasn’t worked. Greater external uncertainty, collaboration, employee anxiety, and organizational openness demands a change of approach. The author presents five actions that will improve the clarity and quality of communication, enabling stakeholders to make a more substantive and meaningful contribution to the strategy.

Most people can’t recall the strategy of the organization they work for. Even the executives and managers responsible for strategy struggle, with one study reporting that only 28% of them could list three strategic priorities.

• David Lancefield is a  catalyst, strategist, and coach  for leaders. He’s advised more than 50 CEOs and hundreds of executives, was a senior partner at Strategy&, and is a guest lecturer at the London Business School. Find him on LinkedIn (@davidclancefield) or at  davidlancefield.com , where you can sign up for his “Every Day is a Strategy Day”  newsletter  and receive the Mastering Big Moments toolkit.

Partner Center

6-Step Guide to Crafting the Perfect Communication Plan

A communication plan is a key to developing an effective and consistent messaging strategy.

It helps guide the process of setting measurable goals for your strategy, profiling your target audience and creating and successfully delivering your message.

What is a Communication Plan

Components of a Communication Plan

Steps to communication planning, step 1 – perform a situation analysis, swot analysis, pest analysis, perceptual map, step 2 – identify and define objectives / goals, step 3 – understand and profile your key audience, step 4 – decide the media channels and create a strategy, step 5 – create a timetable for publishing, step 6 – monitor and evaluate the results, common mistakes to avoid when creating communications plans, faqs about communication plans, what’s your approach to writing a communication plan, what is a communication plan.

A communication plan outlines how teams can communicate important information to key stakeholders. It highlights what information should be shared, when, to which audience and via which channels.

Having a solid communication plan in place will help ensure that the communication objectives of your organization are met and that all assets that you send out are aligned with the core communications strategy of the company.

In marketing and public relations, communication plans are used to plan how important information about products and services will be communicated to target audiences, including customers, clients, media and the general public. Companies also use communication plans to maintain consistent and effective internal communications within the organization. These may include internal newsletters, intranet updates and team Wikis. In project management, communication plans are used to highlight how information will be communicated within teams and relevant stakeholders, throughout the lifecycle of the project. Overall, communications plans offer a structured approach to plan, implement and evaluate communication efforts to optimize the effectiveness of communications.

Use this communication plan template to develop your strategy and deploy it.

Why is a Communication Plan Essential?

Clear communication is the backbone of any successful initiative. A communication plan ensures that everyone is on the same page, reducing the risk of confusion, missed deadlines, and unmet expectations. It fosters trust, ensures transparency, and can be the difference between project success and failure.

Who Should Use a Communication Plan?

A communication plan isn’t just for large corporations or project managers. It’s for anyone aiming to streamline interactions, whether you’re a small business owner, a team leader, or an individual looking to improve personal projects. Understanding your audience and tailoring your communication strategy to them is the first step.

When Should You Implement a Communication Plan?

The best time to implement a communication plan is at the onset of a project or initiative. However, it’s never too late. Whether you’re starting a new project, revamping an old one, or looking to improve ongoing communications, a well-structured plan can make a difference.

Where Does a Communication Plan Apply?

While often associated with business projects, communication plans apply everywhere: from community events, educational programs, to personal projects. Any scenario that requires organized communication can benefit.

Your communications plan should include the following key elements.

1. Target Audience

Who is Your Target Audience? All strategic communications should be directed at a specific audience. Accordingly, the message you send out should be tailored to their level of knowledge, understanding and trust in your brand or organization.

What is the Context of Your Message? The next step is to define the context of your message. Identify key events that may be significant to the audience that you are aiming to reach. The context defines what should be included in the message and how your audience will relate and respond to it.

3. Outcomes

What Do You Aim to Achieve with Your Message? The outcome of your message is the ‘call to action’. Define what people need to know, believe and do after receiving the message. Create a ‘message pyramid’ with an attention grabbing headline, followed by ‘reasons why’ and proof points. This helps the audience understand your core message and then consider the proof points which are relevant to their context, and there by act based on your call-to-action.

Which Media Channels Will You Use? Media are the channels through which your message is communicated. These may vary depending on the content, context and audience of the message. For instance, if you want to reach a younger tech-savvy audience, you may choose a social media platform that may be popular among them.

5. Messengers

How Will You Choose Your Messengers? The primary messenger may not always be the most ‘effective’ messenger. The messenger’s ethos should resonate credibility, status and power, expertise and relationship.

Why do most companies get their CEOs or members of the senior management to conduct new product launches or convey important product information? It is because audiences tend to have confidence in people with big titles who have an influence in the organization. They are also experts in their subject area and have a strong relationship with the company.

6. Measurement

How Will You Measure Success? It is important to cultivate strategies to measure the effectiveness of your communications. Include KPIs for your communication activities and document the results. This also helps build a repository of information which will be useful when planning future communications activities.

Whether you are creating a marketing communication plan or a strategic communication plan, the following steps will help guide you.

Situation analysis helps assess the capabilities of and health of things in an organization. It’s the ideal way to understand the current status of your organization’s communication.

You can gather as much information as needed from conducting an audit .

To gather relevant information from situation analysis, you can consult departmental heads, process owners and other internal staff members.

In a situation analysis, you need to examine both the internal and external environments. To do so, you can use the following tools

You can use a SWOT analysis to examine the strengths and weaknesses within your organization, and opportunities and threats that you can find in your external environment.

With a PEST analysis , you can examine political, environmental, social and technological factors, all of which exist in the external environment of your organization, but can have a significant impact on the way things run in your business.

One good competitor analysis technique is the perceptual map. It helps you make sense of how your customers perceive the brands of your competitors in the market compared to yours.

Once you know where you stand, you can find your direction. The next step is to define your goals.

Think of what outcomes/results you want to achieve from your communication plan. These will become your goal/s as you develop your communication plan.

Make sure that the goals you select are SMART :

Who are you creating this communication plan for? Understanding your audience and their requirements, characteristics etc. is key to creating an effective message and delivering it successfully.

Your key audience could be within your organization or your customers. Either way, you should gather information on them and create simple audience personas.

These personas could include a variety of data that ranges from their age and gender to the challenges they face.

As you conduct research on your target audience you would get to know that their requirements and preferences are diverse.

It’s clear that you won’t be able to reach all of them through one media channel or retain their attention with one type of content.

Consider the most effective channels you can think of when creating your media channel strategy. Make sure to select the ideal channel when you are targeting different audience segments.

When do you want your audience to hear your message and how often? Have a content calendar or create a Gantt chart outlining a timeframe for your publishing strategy.

You may also need to take the resources available to you into consideration. If you have one content writer, publishing quality blog posts on a daily basis would be ineffective.

Constantly monitor and track your results in order to understand whether you are any closer to achieving your goals. If you have failed, proceed to mark it down so you can make necessary improvements next time.

Creating a communication plan for your non profit organization? Check out this resource for some great tips.

Overcomplicating the Plan

Trying to include too many channels or too much information may complicate the plan. This can lead to confusion and dilute the effectiveness of your messaging. Stick only to key messaging and channels that are most effective in reaching and engaging the target audience.

Not Considering the Timing

Timing is crucial in communication planning. It is important to consider the timing of the messaging and ensure that they are aligned with key events or milestones. Don’t send out important communications during periods of high volume or noise, such as during holidays or major news events.

Not Adapting to Changes

Communication plans should be adaptable and flexible to changes in environment or audience. It is important to regularly review and update plans to keep up with emerging trends (to make sure that your plan stays relevant and effective). Failing to adapt to changes may cause missed opportunities and ineffective messaging.

How often should a communications plan be updated?

A communications plan should be updated regularly to reflect changes in the organization’s goals, priorities, audiences, or external environment. The frequency of updates will depend on the pace of change in the organization and the industry. A good rule of thumb is to review the communications plan annually and update it as needed. However, if there are major changes in the organization, such as a merger, acquisition, or crisis, the communications plan should be updated immediately to ensure that communication is timely, accurate, and effective.

How can an organization measure the effectiveness of its communications plan?

An organization can measure the effectiveness of its communications plan by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) related to its communication goals and objectives. These KPIs may include website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, media coverage, customer satisfaction surveys, or sales figures. By tracking these KPIs over time, the organization can assess whether its communication activities are achieving the desired results and make adjustments as needed. It’s important to set realistic goals and benchmarks for each KPI and to ensure that the data is collected consistently and accurately. Additionally, feedback from stakeholders, such as customers, employees, and investors, can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of the organization’s communication activities.

A successful communication plan will get your message delivered across to your audience effectively while ensuring that you are on track to accomplishing your business objectives.

Follow the simple steps above to create a winning communication plan. If you have any other tips, do share them with us in the comment section below.

Amanda Athuraliya is the communication specialist/content writer at Creately, online diagramming and collaboration tool. She is an avid reader, a budding writer and a passionate researcher who loves to write about all kinds of topics.

Related Tools and Resources

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

How to Create a Communication Strategy [+ Free Templates]

Updated: February 09, 2021

Published: January 25, 2021

There are certain characteristics that should be at the core of any successful business. For instance, every business should have a great product or service, awesome employees to keep the internal engine running, and loyal customers who support through purchases and advocacy.

There also  has to be underlying elements to help establish the aforementioned characteristics. And one of the most necessary is clear and effective communication.

Communication is at the root of every interaction for businesses. Without transparent communication at every level, there's more room for error, and — depending on the magnitude of the error — it can make or break a business.

But, while 89% of people feel communication is extremely important for work, 8 out of 10 people rate their own business' communication as either average or poor.

Developing a communication strategy for your business will help you understand how your company best communicates, internally and externally, and can give you measurable results to better understand the efficacy of your communication tactics.

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with these crisis management plan templates.

• Free Crisis Management Plan Template
• 12 Crisis Communication Templates
• Post-Crisis Performance Grading Template
• Additional Crisis Best Management Practices

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

In this post, we'll explain how to create a communication strategy and plan for your business to ensure efficient, cohesive communication with colleagues and customers alike.

What is a communication strategy?

A communication strategy is a process developed by the appropriate stakeholders to identify where communication efforts need to be improved. The next step in this process is to ideate and select measurable actions that will be used to develop a communication plan to achieve your desired outcome.

How to Develop a Communication Strategy

• Use a Communication Plan template.
• Determine current and potential problems.
• Select key stakeholders who need to be involved.
• Understand your audience and what matters most to them.
• Brainstorm your ideal results, and then work backwards.

1. Use a communication plan template.

HubSpot's Communication Plan Templates are a great resource to help you develop actionable steps without having to spend too much of your time on this task.

Your communication plan will clearly go through all of the steps you need to take to address the challenges you're up against — like completing an audit, setting SMART goals , and understanding how long each step in your plan will take. Depending on your overall strategy, you may develop multiple plans to be carried out to meet the needs of different audiences.

You'll want to break your plan into steps so you can easily make and measure progress on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Additionally, as you're creating your communications plan, you'll need to factor in a working timeline, potential budget, and ensure you're delegating tasks to the appropriate team members.

Over time, you want to be able to reflect on what changes have been made and if these changes are actively contributing to helping you achieve your ideal results.

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

How B2C Companies Leverage AI Marketing [Examples & Tips]

Implementing AI in Your Marketing Tech Stack — Tips and Tricks You Need to Know

How Internal Marketing Helps You Build a Strong Brand From the Inside Out [Experts Weigh In]

The Top Goals of Marketing Managers & Leaders in 2025 [New Data + Expert Tips]

Holiday Marketing: 27 Steps, Tips, & Examples to Get Your Brand in the Spirit

AI Target Audience: What I Learned [+ Tools to Try]

Holistic Marketing Works — Here's How You Can Apply It to Your Campaigns [+ Expert Tips]

What's Below the Line Marketing Anyway? I Dove Deep Into BTL Marketing to Find Out

What Is D2C Marketing? Here Are 11 Tips I Found For Doing It Right [+ Examples]

5 Marketing Strategies Polymarket Is Using to Be Everywhere at Once

Manage, plan for, and communicate during a corporate crisis.

The weekly email to help take your career to the next level. No fluff, only first-hand expert advice & useful marketing trends.

Must enter a valid email

We're committed to your privacy. HubSpot uses the information you provide to us to contact you about our relevant content, products, and services. You may unsubscribe from these communications at any time. For more information, check out our privacy policy .

This form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

You've been subscribed

Ultimate Tool Kit: Free Communication Strategy Templates, Examples, and Expert Tips

By Joe Weller | June 29, 2017 (updated July 22, 2021)

• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn

Link copied

Developing a communication strategy and formalizing it into a written plan is challenging, but it’s worth every bit of the time and energy investment it takes. A well-executed, tailored strategy and resulting message platform will get everyone inside your organization on the same page about how to communicate your company’s mission statement, and why and how you do what you do. 

In this article, you’ll find tips and examples from two PR CEOs, a step-by-step guide to putting together your own plan, and templates galore -- including a nine-step strategic communications plan template and crisis communication planning template -- and additional resources to help you craft a communication strategy to navigate a more successful future.

What Is Communications Strategy and Planning?

A communications strategy clearly identifies the objectives and processes of your organization's outreach activities. It covers what the organization needs to share and whom to share with to meet goals. Formalized as a written plan, it’s an important part of daily operations. It frames media activities, including both external and internal communications, defines priorities, time frames, target audiences, staff assignments, and resources.

Developing a communications strategy is a complex undertaking with lots of moving parts. PR pros like John Raffetto and Dianna Booher understand best practices and exactly what goes into creating and executing an effective communications strategy.

John Raffetto is CEO and Co-founder of RH Strategic, a PR firm based in Seattle and Washington, D.C. specializing in technology, security, healthcare, and public sector markets. John got his start in PR by way of the U.S. Senate, where he served as a press secretary and communications director. In 2000, he began consulting with technology companies, and moved to Seattle in 2004 with Infotech Strategies to open a west coast office. He started RH Strategic in 2007 with David Herman.

Dianna Booher , CEO of Booher Research, is a bestselling author of 47 books, including her latest: Communicate Like a Leader: Connecting Strategically to Coach, Inspire, and Get Things Done . She works with organizations to help them communicate clearly and with leaders to expand their influence by fostering a strong executive presence. Good Morning America, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily , Bloomberg, Forbes.com, Fast Company, FOX, CNN, NPR, Success, and Entrepreneur routinely interview her for opinions on critical workplace communication issues.

We asked Raffetto how he begins his planning process. “At RH Strategic we begin all strategic planning with the question, ‘Where do you see your company in five years?’ This reveals the highest level objectives and helps us layer in a communications plan that is 100 percent aligned with where the leadership is taking the company,” says Raffetto. “We then develop three or four communications plan objectives, and then we align every tactic -- whether it is a speaker placement, an event, a media campaign or an influencer engagement initiative -- with one or more of these objectives.”

Meanwhile, Booher has an eight-step process she uses to develop a communications strategy plan for a client, company, or specific event:

Step 1: Interview all the primary stakeholders to get their perspective on the problem and the goal. Step 2: Analyze the data to see where there’s agreement. Step 3: Decide if it’s necessary to collect more data to further investigate the misalignment. Step 4: Interview other stakeholders (second-tier people) to understand how they see the problem and the goal. Step 5: Reconfirm the goal with the primary stakeholders. Step 6: Design an implementation plan, along with measurements of success. Step 7: Execute the plan. Step 8: Measure success

Types of Communications Strategy Plans

There’s no single way to create a plan since, as Raffetto notes, you must customize it to your organization, goals, environment and situation, and there are different types of communications strategy plan. 

Booher concurs, and says, “Every situation differs. So I don’t routinely use any particular template all the time. But I do have templates that I use when I identify similar problems.”

Here are three general types of plans that any non- or for-profit organization may create to meet either long-term or short-term goals:

• Overall Communication Strategy for Organization: A communication strategy is both subservient and complementary to the overall marketing strategy, which takes its direction from the organization’s overall business strategy. The business strategy is general and pinpoints the desired bottom-line financial outcome. The marketing strategy supports those goals with strategies that incite target audiences to take what you’ve determined to be the desired action, whether it’s buying a product or service, making a donation if you’re a non-profit, or signing up for an online class if you’re a web-based university. The marketing strategy assembles all the other strategies, one of which is communications. The organization’s communication strategy plan is in fact more closely tied to tactics, as we’ll see as we move through the steps to creating your plan.

If you haven’t completed a marketing communication strategy, you’ll need to do that before you begin your communication strategy plan. This free annual marketing plan template can help you get started. Simply download the template and you can adjust it to reflect the necessary components of your individual marketing plan. It includes campaign type, project goals, target audience, response rates broken down into sections for national and local efforts, content marketing, online marketing, media relations, public relations, trade shows and events, sales campaigns, and branding efforts. Objectives are clearly identified along with total costs and target markets. At the top of the template, you can define monthly sales goals and at the lower section of the template you’ll find a place to record marketing effectiveness metrics.

Download Marketing Plan Template

Excel | Smartsheet

• Event or Product/Service Launch Communications Strategy: In addition to the overarching organizational communication plan, there is often a need to create ‘sub plans’ that support time-constrained events like product or service launches or a fundraiser. Event specific communications should still tie into the overall communication, marketing, and business strategies. Plan components (targets, budgets, and messaging) are the same as your overall plan, and you can use the same templates to work on the details.

Booher adds, “If delegating responsibilities is a problem, I use this 15-item delegation checklist to help the manager handle the what, why, when, and how productively.

Download the 15-Item Delegation Checklist by Dianna Booher

• Crisis Communication Strategy: Another situation that requires a time-constrained strategy and plan is crisis communications, which deals with unexpected or disruptive events that threatens the organization, stakeholders, or sometimes even proposes harm to the general public. Usually, these events garner negative media attention that you’ll want to preempt or have a response plan for. A business must be able to respond promptly, accurately, and confidently during an emergency. While you can’t anticipate a particular crisis, you can have a structure and process in place, and then quickly ‘fill in the blanks’ in a written document when it’s necessary. Examples are theft, legal disputes, or manmade disasters blamed on your organization. Conversely, your company could also deal with the repercussions of not reacting to these types of situations in the appropriate manner. You’ll find more information on crisis communication and templates to help manage these situations later in this article.

What Problems that Communications Strategy Plans Solve

There are multiple benefits to having a formal, written communications strategy plan for any organization (government agencies, consumer brands, charities, and universities) and the teams within it. Here are some:

• Form Consensus: Getting involved in the process and integrating participants’ opinions brings a sense of ownership. A written plan means that everyone is following the same playbook and working toward a clear, common goal.
• Realistic Timelines: Planning in advance and creating work-back schedules helps organize how to execute individual tactics and the overall plan.
• Identify Needed Resources: With timelines in place, it is easier to identify if you need to add outside help to the team, if you need to reassign existing team members, and how to budget based on the strategy.
• Assign Responsibilities: A plan will help manage people understand their contributions to the company and their responsibilities
• Channel Planning: There are many different ways to spread your message. Identifying which channels to use for what type of communication will help you focus your attention so that you aren’t continuously pulled in different directions.
• Identify Risks: Having team reviews at set intervals will help you determine what’s working and what needs to change, and will strengthen your strategy and plan.
• Success Metrics: Goals should be part of your strategy and serve as guideposts for plan evaluation and to highlight areas that should be improved in both current and future efforts.

The Benefits of a Communications Strategy in Action: Three Case Studies

How do strategic communication plans work in practical reality? Raffetto provides a client case study: 

RH Strategic has a client that has developed a game-like technology to help kids learn math. It’s incredibly powerful in that it ‘learns the learner’ and personalizes lessons to each student’s learning style. As a result, it closes the gap in math achievement. Teachers and students love it, but not everyone in education is aware of it or understands the opportunities it offers.  

RH Strategic was retained to build a PR strategy to change that. We spent a full day with various executives and a whiteboard to map out the company’s future and to develop top communications objectives.The top two were to grow brand awareness among school district buyers and selection in the market, and to leverage top executive’s thought leadership to change conventional thinking in the market. Knowing this, we then built a plan that mixed intense, month-to-month media outreach and media coverage with speaker placements and social media tie-ins to drive toward both objectives.  

Most recently, the CEO was featured in the New York Times Corner Office column as a thought leader – an article that not only reached millions directly, but was also shared repeatedly on social media and spawned many other media and speaking requests. In parallel, our team was also busy promoting the brand and the product to the education trade press and local media. As part of our original communications strategy, we developed a customer award program that drove a tremendous amount of local press coverage for the brand, which tended to get neighboring school districts’ attention and motivated them to investigate whether they should be customers as well. Prior to this effort the company got very little visibility in the local press. 

Each quarter we took a snapshot of the progress and were pleased to discover that the quantity and quality of results tied to each strategic objective expanded dramatically from one quarter to the next. That is a classic case of ‘success breeds success’ and demonstrates how a strategic communications program can take a company’s visibility to the next level.

Booher provided a case study that exemplifies how to strategize a communications plan to change the perception of internal stakeholders:

An executive vice president of a large utility company called me with this problem: “I’m concerned that the organization may be considering outsourcing the work that my division of about 2,000 employees now does. They continue to cut our budget and have capped headcount. Yet we provide essential services — IT, records management, HR functions. I feel as though I’m always on the defense to justify our existence.”   Rather than justifying budget and headcount, I suggested a strategy of education. The VP and his three direct reports admitted that the typical employee in the 50,000+ organization did not even know what function the ‘Administration’ division played. So why would they possibly fight to keep these services internal rather than outsourced? Answer: They wouldn’t.   Consequently, all the senior executives agreed on a strategy to educate the entire employee population about what back-office services the division actually provided to garner support to keep these services inhouse.   The tactical plan followed. A five-page communication plan containing a bulleted list of action items to implement the strategy. For example:

• Modify the email signature blocks to add an educational tagline.
• Train department representatives to take on a customer service attitude toward internal customers they serve.
• Have system analysts send follow-up emails after providing IT services, for example, to make sure a newly installed software package is running smoothly.
• Ensure that the Records Storage department regularly sends out a reminder of the archiving schedule.  

Result: The “Administration” division became visible to the entire organization, and 2,000 people kept their jobs.

In an altogether different situation, Booher developed another plan for her client to improve internal and external communication:

The goal was to improve communication flow across department lines and to improve communication with clients. Here’s how I handled it in brief:

The strategy:  Identify the roadblocks and improve the written communication (since almost all communication was in writing).   The tactical:

• Review their templates to see what they were using.
• Review sample correspondence.
• Interview department managers to get their perspective on the problem.
• Train their group of writers whose main role it was to communicate with customers.
• Rewrite/improve all their boilerplate documents so that they are starting with appropriate models.
• Change the physical layout of the office so that they have verbal interaction on a daily basis.
• Coach their senior executive on using more up-to-date methods of approvals/signatures and eliminating antiquated phrasing in his own correspondence.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Strategic Communications Plan

Like a well-built engine, a strategic communications plan has many specifically engineered parts to accomplish your goal. While every communications plan should be thoroughly customized, there are common, time-tested components that go into a high-performance plan. 

RH Strategic  uses proprietary templates to track communications strategy. “The RH Strategic team has developed its own templates over the years,” says Raffetto. They all include research and discovery where we assess the client’s market landscape and their strategic objectives; various programs to achieve those objectives; and measurement initiatives so that all parties can assess at any time the progress of the strategy and make adjustments. It’s a pretty simple and logical template, and it’s designed to be useful not just to the communications team but the entire executive suite and even the boardroom.”

Next, you’ll find descriptions of all the component pieces and templates you can use to develop your own plan.

Begin With Your Mission Statement

The mission statement defines the reason your organization exists and serves as a framework to evaluate current and prospective activities. Include your mission statement at the very beginning of the communications plan to show that the initiative doesn’t just come from the communications department or consultant. Your mission statement should also inform your key messages, which should be brief, non-jargony benefit statements.

Here’s an example of messaging that comes directly from defining a mission. Highfive, a video conferencing company, has a brief mission statement: Our mission is to make every conversation face-to-face . Their three key value-driven messages are:

• Highfive is beautifully simple video conferencing that you can initiate or join with a single click
• Twenty conference rooms for the price of one Cisco or Polycom system 
• Built for businesses, not social networking 

The messages support the mission statement, clearly states the benefits, and the copy is easy to use in all types of formats. Before you begin creating your own messages, there are other steps to take, beginning with research.

Do Your Research

To develop an effective strategy, you need to take a deep dive into understanding your operating environment, strengths and weaknesses, competitors, audiences, and how to message based on goals. An important element to explore is what communication platforms and channels you’ll use to spread your message, and finally the metrics you’ll use to ensure the effectiveness of your efforts. Here are some types of analysis you can perform to help you identify how to move forward:

PEST Analysis: PEST (Political, Economic, Social, Technological) analysis is the first step an organization can use to begin their overall business planning. It’s a tool to help you understand your business position, and market growth or decline, and scan your environment. By understanding these factors, you can determine overall opportunities and threats to your organization. 

Once you’ve completed your PEST analysis, you can move on to look at your direct competitors in the marketplace. 

SWOT Analysis  SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is an analysis framework that identifies and examines the internal and external environmental factors that can impact project, product, place, or person viability. Originally developed for Fortune 500 companies, organizations of all kinds have embraced SWOT as a decision-making aid. SWOT analyzes four areas:

• Strengths: Internal attributes and resources that provide advantages.
• Weaknesses: Internal attributes and resources that are a disadvantage to the organization when compared to others.
• Opportunities: External factors that a company can exploit to gain an advantage.
• Threats: External factors that could result in jeopardy.

This environmental scan is a means to help decision makers ascertain if the project or goal is worthwhile and what’s needed to make it successful. The next step is to match resources to meet the identified challenges and opportunities. Below you’ll find some templates you can download to help with your research.

SWOT Analysis Strategy Template for Excel

Use this template to examine the relationships between external and internal drivers, and determine what strategies you can employ to address different threats, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. You can find more SWOT templates here in a variety of formats.

‌ Download the SWOT Analysis Strategy Template  

Competitor Analysis Template for Excel

Use this template to perform a competitive evaluation of your organization and to inform your communication strategy based on product categories. A detailed multi-layered template for each product category will help you analyze major attributes and channels, pricing, credibility, promotional offers, and relevant research findings. It also enables the identification of opportunities and potential partners. 

‌Download Competitive Analysis Template

Create S.M.A.R.T. Objective(s)

To provide structure, guidance, and to better identify what you want to accomplish for your communication strategy plan, S.M.A.R.T. goals are especially effective. They are:

• Specific: A mission statement for your goal that clarifies what you want to accomplish
• Measurable: Think about meaningful metrics that will create a tangible way to measure progress 
• Achievable: You and your team agree on what’s attainable
• Relevant: Focus on what makes sense within broader business goals and realistic resources 
• Time Bound: Target timing, along with interim schedules, for deliverables  

To learn more, read The Essential Guide to Writing Smart Goals . You can also use the following template to get started writing your S.M.A.R.T goals.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals Template

This template helps clarify the five classic S.M.A.R.T. steps for your communications strategy or any other project. Once you complete the questionnaire, the answers will help fine-tune your strategy into attainable goals. You can use it as a tool for the whole team to make sure your goals are realistic, and to form consensus before moving on to the next steps in your strategic communication planning process.

‌ Download the S.M.A.R.T. Goals Template - WORD

Identify Audiences and Influencers

Knowing who influences you and who you influence will clarify the impact of the actions you take and the messages you create. Whether you’re carrying out a full communication strategy for your organization or developing a new campaign, it’s important to identify and understand the full range of stakeholders (internal, external, more remote influencers, or societal) you’ll need to consider. Once you identify your stakeholders, learn how to manage those relationships by reading The Definitive Guide to Stakeholder Management .

Stakeholder Analysis Matrix Template

Track which stakeholders are likely to have the most or least interest and influence in your communications strategy based on your research. This is a useful template for strategizing and creating an effective plan of action for stakeholder management. Visualizing stakeholders in this way makes it easy to understand which audience needs greater focus and which need less monitoring. 

Download Stakeholder Analysis Matrix Template

Excel | Word | PDF | Smartsheet

Internal and External Stakeholder Communication Plan Template

Don’t forget your internal stakeholders. As we saw from Booher’s case study above, it’s critical to engage with internal stakeholders. You need to align employees and other internal agents to your messages and actions, and clarify who acts as important conduits of information to the outside world. This simple communications template clarifies stakeholder interest and power, type and frequency of communication for each stakeholder, and provides a space for  comments.  ‌ ‌ Download Internal and External Stakeholder Communication Plan Template - WORD

Check In with Colleagues

Take some time to learn what your colleagues know and the strengths they can bring to your communications efforts. Then use the RACI model (Responsible Accountable Consulted Informed) to help team members understand their roles and responsibilities to ensure collaboration and project success. This activity is especially important when team sizes are large, when team members are in different geographic areas, or if you need to rely on staff from multiple departments.          Roles and Responsibilities Template for Excel

      Use this template to keep tasks organized by team members, save time or eliminate the need for extended status meetings, and ensure that communication strategy plan goals are tracked and met.

‌  Create the Roles and Responsibilities Template in Smartsheet  

Define Your Key Messages

Now that you’ve identified your key stakeholders and target audiences, you need to determine what you want them to know, think, and do as a result of your communication strategy and tactics? You should be able to refine your message to three key points, and if necessary to adjust those statements slightly for specific target audiences. 

Key Messaging Tips

• Keep it Concise: Limit key messages to three and keep them brief. A good test is to see if they take 30 seconds or less to read out loud. 
• Think Strategically: Define, differentiate, and address your benefits/value proposition.
• Be Relevant: Consider what your audiences need to know as you balance what you must communicate.
• Compelling: Stimulate action with meaningful information that incites a response.
• Keep it Simple: Avoid jargon and acronyms, and use easy-to-understand language.
• Memorable: Avoid run-on sentences, and make the messages easy to remember and repeat.
• Be Active: Avoid the passive voice. Get your message across briefly, but don’t use tricky advertising style slogans.
• Be Specific: Tailor communication to different target audiences.

Theme Development

Do some team brainstorming and develop a list of topics for your website, social media, and email marketing strategy. The themes should be relevant to all your target audiences and contribute to your organization’s positioning. 

It’s a good idea to roll out themes weekly to maintain momentum and keep building interest in the next messaging installment, whether it’s email, direct mail, or social media. You also need to consider key dates for your organization like anniversaries, conferences, or seasonal activities, and build messaging around those.

All of this legwork should also inform upcoming campaigns to support product rollouts or other key events. Once you line up your themes and campaigns, you can put them into your planning documents and templates.

Tips for Selecting Strategic Communication Channels and Platforms

A major part of the channel and platform selection process relies on the target audience and stakeholder research. For internal audiences, you’ll be able to simply use text, emails, and internal newsletters for your ‘captive’ audience. When it comes to external audiences and stakeholders, if you’re number one audience is teenagers your channel selection will likely be different than if you’re trying to reach CEOs. You can use purchased data or your own research to determine the media your individual audiences use most. 

Try some testing to get to the most appropriate communication channel mix to promote and encourage the specific behavior or outcome you want. If your budget allows, hire a professional PR, advertising, or media firm to help you determine the most streamlined way to get to the right media mix. If outside resources aren’t in your budget, here are some tips on how to strategically choose your marketing channels and platforms. These ideas apply to both internal and external communications channel planning:

• Know Your Audience: Do your research on current stakeholder behaviors in multiple channels and determine what media outlets they use and which are most influential.
• Experiment: Add channels into the mix slowly, to reach specific audiences and check response rates.
• Automate: Use a tool like Hootsuite to add communications based on your schedule. Add and use different channels more frequently as they become more popular. 
• Listen: With social channels, it’s important that you continue to "listen" and respond in real-time. It’s the only way to gain and keep mindshare. 
• Evaluate: Use data and your own metrics to see what’s working and what isn’t, and adjust your plan accordingly.

Another consideration is to use marketing resource management (MRM) software. It’s software that helps users manage marketing processes so companies can be more agile in planning, management, and execution on marketing programs and campaigns, all while consistently maintaining your brand image across communication and marketing channels. MRMs usually provide planning, budgeting, and tracking capabilities, as well as the means for managing digital brand assets, workflows, and approval processes. You can find extensive coverage on this topic in this Marketing Resource Management article . 

Setting and Measuring Metrics

As mentioned earlier, you need to set clear, measurable goals to ensure that your communication strategy plan is effective -- or to determine if you need to make some changes to reach those goals. That means you need to not only set metrics, but also measure them over time, and at the conclusion of campaigns. 

As you develop your communications strategy plan, build-in quantitative measures not just for a final evaluation, but also at interim dates. That way you can assess if your communications efforts are progressing at the right pace. For example, are you amassing more Twitter followers or requests for more information, and meeting business objectives like total sales. As you write your plan, include:

• Starting Point Metrics: Identify where you are in your current efforts by the numbers.
• Midpoint Metrics: Determine how far you’ve progressed to your goal.
• Final Assessment Metrics: Iterate the ultimate objective for your company, campaign, or crisis plan.
• Platform Metrics: Set goals for each communications platform. Use web analytics and track your progress to benchmarks.
• Budget Metrics: Check results against your total budget regularly (weekly is best) to make sure you’re tracking to your allocated spend.

Raffetto is emphatic about the use of metrics in his plans. “Metrics are a must in communications. Anyone can feel that the program is winning or having an impact, and often that is the case, but at the end of the quarter or year all executives and even board members want hard evidence that the investment in PR and communications made an impact on the top strategic objectives of the company,” says Raffetto. “The only way to show that is with credible metrics. We use a heavy dose of quantitative measures – everything from media impact to video views to domain authority to UTM link tag analytics – and then we also look at more qualitative measures such as Are reporters now reaching out to us for a perspective on breaking news? or Does the CEO get invited to speak at key industry events? These are measurable as well and are built into the metrics in the planning phase.”

Social Media Considerations in a Strategic Communication Plan

The power of the social media ecosystem in reaching consumers and other audiences continues to grow, notes Raffetto. “Social media is indeed important, and is extremely powerful when it’s closely integrated with other communications programs like media campaigns or events. For this reason we do not treat it as a separate program, but rather we layer it into all other programs. So for example, if we are doing a speaker program for a top executive, we will build in a social media component to that,” explains Raffetto. “The tactics will include channel selection, content development, audience identification and engagement, and measurement. Measurement is fairly easy now with all of the analytics tools available. It is fun to see a client's social media program and engagement get supercharged by PR wins like a huge media hit or a keynote address.” 

Booher advises, “Far too many people and organizations spray paint on social media. They have no strategy. Therefore, they spend a little time here and a little time there on the various platforms, staying virtually invisible on all of them. Social media experts advise that you formulate a strategy to master one or at most two platforms. Decide where you’ll find your audience and go there. Then master that platform. Use those one or two platforms to drive traffic to your own website — the one place where you actually have control of the traffic and what they see. The tactics on social media are all the magnets you use to put buyers into your funnel on this platform and gradually lead them to your website. Finally, know what you want them to do when they get to your site: Read a blog? Buy a product? Sign up for an ezine? Register for a free webinar? Attend a paid event? The more specific the action you want them to take, the easier to measure your results. Give them a vague action, and you’ll likely have a vague notion of whether you’re succeeding.  

Social Media Audit Template

‌ Auditing your metrics monthly and comparing them to the previous month and year helps you understand if your objectives are being met and what you may want to change to accomplish goals. Edit this simple spreadsheet to include all of the social channels and metrics you want to track, and update it when you make any shifts in your social media strategy.

‌ Download Social Media Audit Template

Social Media Marketing Plan Template

This social media marketing plan template and calendar makes the complex planning involved in multiple channels easier. You can gather intelligence about how target audiences respond to content and which sites are sending you the most referrals. Use the data you gather to understand which outlets are most effective, and which days and times to post work best.

Download Social Media Marketing Plan Template

Overall Work and Activity Planning

Putting all the work and necessary activities in a calendar with key communications tasks, budget, and resources goes a long way in delivery on strategy. Highlight specific projects, events or publications that you know need to happen in a particular timeframe.

Communications Strategy Planning Calendar Template

This detailed calendar template provides a way to track annual plans or in a single month snapshot, and helps you work back from upcoming deadlines. Call out metrics at the top of the template, while there is a space to note marketing effectiveness data at the bottom of the spreadsheet. This comprehensive template offers sections for social media, online content, press releases, email, advertising, and more. Adapt the fields to make them appropriate for your organization to more effectively track your weekly and monthly progress.

‌ Download Communications Strategy Planning Calendar Template

Crisis Communication Planning

There are crisis that come out of the blue and some that you can anticipate based on past history or what you know may be coming up in your organization such as a move, a merger, or layoffs. By creating a plan in advance you can do a lot to prepare so your team is ready to handle a completely unforeseen or foreseeable crisis when it happens with a process that’s already in place. The crisis communication template can make sure you’re in control when the (inevitable) crisis occurs.

Crisis Communication Strategy Template

This Crisis Communication Strategy Template will help you identify the crisis communication team, set up responsibilities, identify and train spokespersons, determine the potential crisis, and set up a process and response plan, establish systems, and more. 

Download the Crisis Communication Strategy Template

Putting Your Strategic Communications Plan Together

All of the material reviewed so far can seem overwhelming, but like most things, if you take them one step at a time and enlist the help of the right people and technology, you’ll be successful. How do you put all these different aspects together?

The strategic communications plan provided here is a template that you can use to guide your process. There are steps along the way where you should include some of the downloadable templates in this article to lighten the load, and keep communications transparent to team members and management. It will be a living document, like the templates, that change as you learn and assess the process. 

9-Step Strategic Communications Plan Template for Word  

This template sets the stage for your full strategic communications plan in nine sections: 

• Identify your mission 
• Write an executive strategy 
• Set out your situation analysis 
• Determine stakeholder and target audience 
• Create key messages 
• Select tools and tactics
• Set budget 
• Develop project plans and schedules 

 Use the template to build your own custom plan.   Download the 9-Step Strategic Communications Plan Template

Excel  | WORD | PDF

Marketing Plan Template for Excel

This marketing plan template holds the component pieces that go into your overall strategic communications plans. It has sections for media relations, online marketing, trade shows and events, sales campaigns, and branding efforts. Overall objectives are identified along with costs, target market, and you can schedule activities by the week. Adjust the template to include whichever elements are essential to your communications strategy.

Communications and Marketing Budget Plan Template

Use this communications and marketing plan template to display itemized categories by type and channel, the estimated costs, subtotals, and grand totals for each item and a space for additional notations. It’s designed to be easy to understand, so everyone from team members to the C-suite can track where money is going. This template can be used for campaigns or for annual plans.

Download Communications and Marketing Budget Plan Template

Additional Communication Strategy Planning Tools & Resources

Find more templates, books, and professional organizations to start or improve your planning process here.

More Helpful Templates You can always make tasks easier for yourself and your team with easy-to-use templates like these:

To Do List & Progress Monitor Template

Get your team on the same page with a consolidated view of responsibilities across multiple projects and priorities with this comprehensive action tool. Use the template to create transparency as it tracks task progress with Harvey ball symbols, and also flags high-priority items.

‌ Create a To Do List & Progress Monitor Template in Smartsheet

Check out more templates in this 15 Free Task List Templates article.

Project Budget Template

Creating and tracking an accurate budget is the make-or-break factor of managing successful communication plans. Stay on top of budgets with this template, that helps you track labor, material, and fixed costs. You can also monitor the difference between your actual and budgeted amounts for each task.

Download Project Budget Template

Find more useful budget templates for download at Top Excel Budget Templates .

Tactical Marketing Management and Project Team Template for Excel

As you implement your marketing strategy, track tactics that you need to complete to keep your plan and team on schedule and assess progress. This template lets you list your project team, monitor who’s responsible for which tasks, dates, expenses, action, and status every step of the way.

Download Tactical Marketing Plan Template

Find more templates to download in this Free Marketing Plan Templates for Excel article .

Risk Assessment Template

     Particularly helpful for crisis communication planning, this template gauges and captures essential information your organization needs to assess potential risk. List and categorize each risk, rate its relative likelihood and severity, and chart all the risks in an aggregated view. Risk can be color-coded to denote risk rankings for a prioritized, at-a-glance view to enable readiness.

Download Risk Assessment Matrix Template Below Excel  | Word  | PDF  | Smartsheet

Find more risk assessment templates here: All The Risk Assessment Matrix Templates You Need .

Glossary of Marketing, PR, and Communication Terms

For those who are new to communications strategy and planning, terminology may be hard to understand. Here are some free, easy to use guides to marketing, PR, and communication terms for you to download and refer to as you develop your communications strategy and plans. 

• Dictionary of Media and Communications by Marcel Danesi: A comprehensive, 349-page reference to terminology that covers every aspect of media and communications terms.
• IUCN Commission on Education and Communication Glossary edited by Frits Hesselink: A handy international guide to terms used in effective communication. 
• The Oxford Dictionary of Media and Communication by Daniel Chandler and Rod Munday for Oxford University Press: Over 2,200 entries on terms used in communications arranged with A to Z tabs for easy access.

Professional Marketing Organizations

Keep up to date with the latest best practices in communications strategy with information from these professional organizations that cater to communications and marketing professionals:

• American Marketing Association (AMA): The AMA provides thought-leadership, research, webinars, technology, and other resources for marketers and academics. 
• Public Relations Society of America (PRSA): The PRSA provides articles, publications, research, and other resources to communications professionals and students in every industry sector. 
• Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI): The SMEI is a global association that provides online forums, webinars, courses, and certification for sales and marketing professionals.
• International Association of Business Communicators (IABC): The IABC is an international network of communication professionals whose goal is to improve organizational effectiveness through strategic communication and provides articles, podcasts, videos, and more to its members. 
• The Data and Marketing Association (DMA): Formerly known as the Direct Marketing Association, this organization champions deeper consumer engagement and business value through the innovative and responsible use of data-driven marketing. They provide coursework, information about regulatory impacts, and other resources to members.
• Business Marketing Association (BMA): The BMA is geared to B-to-B marketers. They offer training, career development, online resources, research, and more to its membership.

Strategic Communication Planning Books

Some current, in-depth books that detail every aspect of strategy and strategic communications planning: 

• Brand Media Strategy: Integrated Communications Planning in the Digital Era , by Antony Young. A guide to planning in today’s more sophisticated media landscape. 
• Crisis Communications: The Definitive Guide to Managing the Message by Steven Fink.  A complete toolkit to create communications and business success in the face of crisis.
• Crisis Communication: Practical PR Strategies for Reputation Management and Company Survival , edited by Peter Anthonissen. Proactive crisis communication and proper planning guidance.
• Simply Communicate: A Business Guide to Strategic Communication by Kristel Keys Running. Steps businesses and managers through the details of communication strategy. After reading the book and following the steps, readers will have a customized and solid organizational communications strategy.
• Strategy Builder: How to Create and Communicate More Effective Strategies by Stephen Cummings and Duncan Angwin. An interactive, visual guide that uses practical tips and real world examples to build your optimal communication plan. 
• Strategy-In-Action: Marrying Planning, People and Performance (The Global Leader Series Book 4) by Thomas D. Zweifel. A holistic approach to the design and execution of strategic process for organizational leaders.
• Strategic Public Relations Management: Planning and Managing Effective Communication Campaigns (Routledge Communication Series) . An evidence-based, applied approach to strategic public relations management -- this is an instructional textbook.

Improve Your Communications and Marketing Efforts with Smartsheet for Marketing

The best marketing teams know the importance of effective campaign management, consistent creative operations, and powerful event logistics -- and Smartsheet helps you deliver on all three so you can be more effective and achieve more. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time. Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Improve your marketing efforts and deliver best-in-class campaigns.