Communication Plan: How to Create One?

You're certain: your product or service has the potential to revolutionize the world. In fact, you've already pitched it to your colleagues, your grandmother, your friends, and your dog, and everyone has responded with enthusiasm!

Having confidence in your offering is an excellent starting point. But to really get the word out about your product or service, you need to communicate! And to communicate effectively, you need a well-crafted strategy with defined objectives and a powerful message.

Defining objectives, identifying the target audience, and setting a budget... Today, we'll explain in detail how to create a communication plan that stands out!

What Is a Communication Plan?

In both external and internal communication, an effective communication plan is essential for a clear and comprehensive overview of your strategy. But that's not all!

Having a detailed communication plan allows you to:

• Structure your ideas to deliver a consistent message that is aligned with the company.
• Maximize the impact of each communication action.
• Determine the best timing for each communication medium.
• Mobilize your resources (human, financial, material, time, etc.) wisely.
• Monitor and evaluate the impact of your communication strategy.

Why Is a Communication Plan Important?

Think of a communication strategy as your trusty roadmap to success! It helps you orchestrate all your communication efforts seamlessly, ensuring your message reaches exactly who it needs to reach. Just like a conductor leading an orchestra, your strategy brings harmony to all your communication channels and actions, making sure every note hits the right chord with your target audience. This coordination isn't just about keeping things organized – it's about making your message truly resonate and stick with the people who matter most to your business.

What Is Included in a Communication Plan?

The key ingredients of an effective communication plan are: defined objectives and targets, a clear message, and communication tools and channels that are carefully chosen to suit the target audience.

What Are the Four Types of Communication?

You've probably heard of the four types of communication. To refresh your memory or for your general knowledge, let's take a moment to look at these different modes and their strengths in a communication strategy.

Written communication encompasses all communication media that use the written word, such as email, social media posts, posters, blog articles, and text messages.

Its advantage lies in the persistence and clarity of the message: once written and transmitted, the message is easily traceable and can be understood in detail. This mode of communication also facilitates mass distribution due to the relatively light weight of written files!

As part of a communication strategy, written communication is used, for example, in email campaigns, on a brand or company's social media, or in newsletters.

By the way, would you like more ideas for your corporate communication? Here are 10 tools for your internal communication!

Visual communication includes media incorporating graphic or visual elements. These media obviously include photos, images, videos, and infographics, but also logos, pictograms, and text typography.

The strength of visual communication? Its ability to immediately capture attention, to leave a lasting impression on the retina and the brain, while allowing for quick understanding of the message. It also helps to reinforce a brand's visual identity.

For example, visual communication is used in social media campaigns, which prioritize photos and videos. But make no mistake: visual communication is everywhere, even in the choice of font for your newsletters!

Verbal or oral communication refers to all communication actions that use the voice to convey a message, either in person or remotely.

This mode of communication has several advantages in the context of a communication strategy. First, it allows for instantaneous exchange, facilitating the provision of additional information and helping to adapt the message to the interlocutor.

In addition (unless you have assigned your Labrador to handle communications), verbal communication breathes humanity into the exchange: the listener is dealing with a real person, which promotes trust.

Verbal communication occurs both in person, for example at a trade show, and remotely, for example when a presenter speaks in a video or during a videoconference.

Nonverbal communication is unconscious communication: it refers to the subtle elements inherent in the transmission of a message, such as body posture, facial expressions, and tone of voice.

Nonverbal communication is one of the most difficult modes of communication to master, as it relies on elements that are both less noticeable and more difficult to modulate (e.g., your poorly concealed expression of disgust when your best friend makes you their famous homemade pineapple pizza...).

However, when used correctly, this mode of communication helps to create an atmosphere of trust and relaxation. For example, a friendly smile or an "open" face makes interaction flow more smoothly and facilitates the transmission of your message.

What Are the Four Pillars of Effective Communication?

Solid, effective communication is based on four pillars, which we will describe below. Because your success can't wait!

Effective communication is, first and foremost, communication that knows where it is going. The first pillar: clear and defined objectives!

There are three types of objectives that prevail in the context of external communication:

Communicating without a target audience is a bit like shouting at the top of your lungs in the mountains. People may hear you, but your message will be lost among the peaks and valleys, without really being understood...

For a communication strategy to work, it must know who it is addressing. Without a clearly identified target, the message has much less impact and does not reach anyone in particular.

The target of a communication strategy can be broken down into three "layers": the main target, the core target, and the secondary or peripheral targets.

The primary target refers to the brand or company's audience in the broadest sense: it includes all those already concerned by the communication, or likely to be reached.

The core target is the priority audience for the communication strategy. Part of the primary target, it represents a smaller group because it is more specific. Most of the efforts of a communication strategy are focused on this group, as it is the most likely to be affected by the message and to adhere to it.

Secondary or peripheral targets are located beyond the main target. They are not directly affected by the communication, but may participate in its relay. This is the case, for example, with the main target's entourage or influencers on social media.

The third pillar of effective communication is the definition of the message. The message must correspond to the defined objectives and be appropriately addressed to its target audience.

The message must be well-formulated and easily understandable in order to convey information effectively. It must also resonate emotionally with the target audience, hence the importance of adapting the content, vocabulary, and tone to the latter.

When defining its message, the brand or company must also ensure that it is formulated in line with its identity and values.

In its corporate communications, it should therefore not hesitate to personalize its messages to align them with its brand. A touch of humor, an optimistic tone, or good storytelling will both make the message more memorable and help it stand out in the constant flow of information.

The final pillar of a successful communication strategy is choosing the right media and relevant channels through which to convey the message.

Once again, it is the objectives and profile of the target audience, as well as the type of message, that will determine the most suitable media. The various channels include traditional advertising media (TV, radio, press), events, street marketing, emailing, and social media.

While certain channels/media are preferred by certain target audiences, it may be wise to use a multi-channel communication strategy to ensure optimal dissemination.

How Do You Create a Communication Plan? (the Steps of Communication Planning)

Enough theory, it's time to get down to business! Here are the eight steps to follow for developing a communication plan.

As mentioned above, a good communication strategy is based on a predefined destination. The first step in your strategy is to set your cognitive, affective, and conative objectives.

To help you, you can ask yourself the following questions: Do you want to make yourself known, or promote a product? Reach potential customers? Is your goal to build loyalty? Strengthen the bond with your target audience or existing customers? Is your goal to increase your sales/average basket size and conversion rate?

If you're finding it difficult to define your goals, you may need to take another look at your offering, identifying its strengths, limitations, and the problem it aims to solve. To know where you want to go, you need to understand your starting point by making an accurate assessment.

And don't forget the SMART formula! Your goals must be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.

For your message to have a real impact, you need to know who you are talking to.

Create a profile of your target audience (the persona), particularly your core target. To do this, you need to take into account not only demographic data (age, gender, socio-professional category, etc.), but also their lifestyle, tastes, and hobbies.

The idea is to put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and ask yourself what kind of communication would resonate with them.

Find your communication focus, which is essentially the backbone of your strategy. Your focus will help you determine your editorial line and tone. It will also enable you to create a coherent strategy with logical development.

Let's imagine you're looking to sell a protein bar. Your communication focus could then be on well-being and vitality. For example, "with [name of protein bar], get your energy boost naturally."

Based on this focus, you could choose to focus your communication on the health benefits of your product, adopting an optimistic and energetic tone. You will use appropriate means of communication that allow your audience to visualize themselves (for example, videos showing athletes performing physical feats against a backdrop of a sunrise, etc.).

We are now getting to the heart of your communication strategy! Carefully considering your message is crucial to ensuring that it resonates with your target audience.

To define your message correctly:

• Adapt the tone, vocabulary, and content to your target audience.
• Use the right arguments for your audience.
• Be as precise, concise, and clear as possible.
• Make sure your message matches your medium/communication channel: you don't speak the same way in a press release as you do on social media! And don't forget the principle: one medium = one message.
• Ensure that the message is consistent with your overall strategy: does it fit logically into your timeline? Is it consistent with the other messages communicated on your other channels?

Now you know what you're going to say and who you're going to say it to. It's time to think about your channels and media. This fifth step should actually be considered in parallel with the message, as one cannot exist without the other. Your communication channels depend on what you want to convey.

Choose your tools, media, and channels based on your message, but also and above all on your target audience. Depending on the latter, some channels may be more relevant than others.

For example, for a young audience, you might choose to focus on digital communication, particularly via social media (Instagram, TikTok). If your target audience is older, opt for more traditional channels (press, television, radio, etc.) or older social media platforms such as Facebook.

An effective communication plan is a well-timed plan! You need to identify the right time to roll out your strategy and to disseminate each message. First, to ensure the consistency of your strategy and stay on schedule, but also to ensure maximum visibility with your target audience.

So determine the different dissemination dates for each communication according to a detailed schedule. More generally, think about the most appropriate time to launch your strategy, depending on your target audience and your message.

Let's go back to our protein bar example. You could, for example, launch your strategy at the end of the year, just before the New Year's resolutions period (aka, the time when people get back into exercise and healthy habits!).

To save time, money, and energy, for example when negotiating with your service providers, plan your budget, as well as all the material and human resources necessary to implement your strategy.

A realistic and clear budget will give you a good overview of your future expenses and help you optimize your return on investment. You can either draw up a detailed budget in advance or assess your expenses based on your specific objectives and then have the budget approved!

"It's great to have a beautiful strategy, but don't forget to look at the results." - Winston Churchill

When you develop a plan, you also need to evaluate its performance! By analyzing the impact of your current strategy, you can make adjustments if necessary and review certain actions in order to better reach your target audience and achieve your goals.

You now have everything you need to develop a killer communication plan! All that's left is to wish you every success.

And Whan About Crisis Communications Plans?

Crisis communications plans are specialized documents that outline communication procedures during emergency situations. These plans identify key stakeholders, establish communication methods, and define roles for each team member during crisis situations.

And you know what? It happens to the best of us. Don't panic, and check out our tips for effective crisis communication, as well as some concrete examples.

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