corporate and marketing communications

 

planning and strategy

At the heart of any effective marketing or communications campaign should be a solid plan. Whether the communications plan is for a company’s whole financial year, or in support of a specific programme or project, a plan that outlines objectives, key messages, audience and stakeholder groups, timeline and media will deliver better results than ad hoc communications and make better use of available resource.

In some cases the first step will be to fully understand what the communication issues are. n-plus can help review the challenges, and devise a pragmatic plan to achieve your communication objectives.

The first step is to really understand what the communication challenges are, so that realistic communication objectives can be set.

Key messages* need to be defined and articulated. Messages must be consistent, but they also need to be tailored for different audience groups.

And it therefore follows that identifying and understanding the different audience groups is the next stage. In all but the simplest of activities this will include multiple groups of people – and it is unlikely that any one media type will meet the needs of the audience. So this leads to the next element; establishing the most appropriate mix of media and timeline.

Once the plan is in place and agreed, implementation can begin. This can be done using a company’s in-house resource or by n-plus.

This planning and strategy service is equally applicable to large, and small to medium sized organisations. Large enterprises may have resource in house, but the internal resource may not have the bandwidth or the specialist skills to create an objective plan. On the other hand, many small to medium sized enterprises simply do not have the skills in-house to write and implement a communications plan.

* Key messages should be regularly reviewed. At the outset, messages are clear and feature prominently across all media but, unless monitored, new collateral and other marketing materials can gradually slipped off message.