Planning for effective communications

Charlotte Poynton
Feb 1, 2023
6 min read

It’s not always easy to diagnose why a communications initiative was ineffective. If you’re not seeing the results you’d hoped for, a number of things could be to blame. Sometimes, there was not enough communication, or not enough to certain audiences. Perhaps you missed an audience? Sometimes it’s the opposite problem – many fast-paced organisations have so much going on that there is a deluge of communications and communications channels. In those situations, you are competing to make sure you are heard above that noise. Occasionally, you could actually have over-communicated, resulting in communications fatigue and disengagement (more about this latter point on another post “Why over-communication can kill your change”). Or perhaps you weren’t clear on what success looked like in the first place, and you are all left wondering how effective your campaign actually was.

There are a number of best-practice steps you can take to set you up for success, so in this post I want to talk through some of those fundamental elements.

Communications Framework

You communications framework covers the entire lifecycle of the communications project. It outlines what will be communicated, to whom it will be delivered, how it will be delivered, who will execute delivery, when it will delivered, and how you will measure success. The framework typically looks something like this.:

These are NOT chronological steps necessarily. Although you’d always start with strategy, elements of it should be re-evaluated throughout the project. Similarly, although the main measurements should happen at the end, it’s never too early to start measuring success and you should build that into your plan. The insights you gather when you measure in the final stage, will feed into your next “Strategy” phase for future projects.

Strategy Stage

This could be described as the “macro” level of the communications plan – defining the context of the message to the audience. Some things to cover in this stage:

Stakeholder analysis. Who are your key stakeholder groups? What is their level of interest in what you’re communicating? How much influence do they have on what you’re communicating? These stakeholder groups should constantly be re-evaluated for shifting interest and influence throughout your project, but analysis should begin here. For example, a C level executive with high influence but low interest might receive brief, high level updates via email, whereas a manager directly impacted by your initiative might need to be engaged more closely in regular 1-1s or workshops.
Key messages. What are the key messages for the project? Once you have these, break them down by stakeholder group – not all groups would receive the same messages or same levels of detail. You should make sure everyone working on the communications project knows these messages as they form the backbone of all materials written and help ensure consistency, continuity and clarity, particularly where a large comms team is working on a project.
Data analysis. Look at lessons learned from past communications initiatives with your audiences or at your organisation. Try to gather insight on your audience by looking at audience feedback on past projects and use this to inform your approach to what works or doesn’t work.
Key timings. Consider the wider context of the project – a communications plan will be supporting another project. This could be software implementation, an event, a merger or personnel change. Make sure you know key deadlines and non-negotiable milestones in the project so you can build it into your Planning phase.
Measuring Success. Think about success criteria for the communications. If you are rolling out software, for example, what are the things your audiences absolutely must have learned by the end of the project? If it’s an event, how do you want your audience to feel by the end, or what do you want them to go on to action? Think now about how you will measure if you have successfully achieved your objectives. This could be done by measuring people completing follow up actions, it could be a feedback survey, it could be interaction with your messages themselves (i.e social media activity), direct feedback in post-project workshops.

Planning Stage

This is where you take all your understanding of goals and measurement, and turn it into an actionable plan with owners, milestones and specifics. Here are some tips for writing a good communications plan:

Highlight all key milestones. As in any project, you should clearly highlight a smaller number of key milestones which are non-negotiable. This helps the team prioritise, and allows you to approach your project in a more Agile “sprint” focussed way. You should remember to celebrate milestones once achieved along the way, rather than just celebrating at the end of the project, as this helps build team trust, morale and momentum.
Every task has an owner and deadline. Highlight a clear owner for every task. If there is a discrepancy between who is accountable and who is responsible for execution, name both people. There should be no room for doubt on who needs to action specific items. Similarly, set clear deadlines for each phase of the plan. As you proceed, you may well need to shift deadlines as plans change, but at least for the milestone you’re working on all deadlines should be clearly outlined. You should also flag any dependencies, either within or without the project, that could affect it.
Keep a collaterals log. Alongside my communications action plan and risk/dependency log, I would always keep an inventory of all key collaterals for the project, as well as a copy of the key messages. This helps the team quickly find and access all relevant materials and encourages re-use of materials which can make the team more efficient.
Cover all audiences. In your collaterals log, it’s worth having a column for “audience”. Then you can review the holistic plan from each audience’s point of view, and make sure it is appropriate to them.
Set measurement milestones. Don’t leave all your measurements to the end, when it would be too late to make improvements. Try to build in gate points where you will measure communication effectiveness throughout the project. This allows you to evaluate and adjust mid-project if necessary.

Execution Stage

This phase is perhaps the clearest! You execute against your plan. Of course, it’s usually easier said than done as things will inevitably change and you’ll be forced to adjust accordingly. Some tips in this phase to ensure you stay on track:

Constantly re-evaluate stakeholder groups. Things can change, especially over longer periods of time. Make sure you evaluate regularly your stakeholder groups and key messages to each group. You need to ensure they remain appropriate, and that you aren’t missing anybody. How frequently you would do this will depend on the length of your campaign.
Measure as you go. Make sure you spend time with the communications team to evaluate feedback as the project progresses, and consider improvements you can make in real time. If things are going sideways, better to know as early as possible so you can maximise impact or, if necessary, turn things around.
Focus on key milestones. Many deadlines within a project are negotiable. I always try and build in buffer time by setting conservative deadlines, but some deadlines can’t be moved. Make sure you know the 4-5 key deadlines or milestones that are critical, so that you don’t lose focus when other things slip. Then you can drop / adjust other tasks as necessary to suit team bandwidth, without compromising your critical success factors.

Measurement Stage

You will hopefully already have gained insights throughout the project on how successful your communications have been. At the end of the project, take some time to do more thorough measurement, and write up your results in a Lessons Learned log for projects of the future to learn from.

My main tip for this phase is: Try to build rich measurement mechanisms that go beyond “email opens” or “email clicks”. Often, project teams will tell you they achieved an “open rate” or “view rate” on an email or memo of x%, but this does not really tell you anything about success. I open many emails and then immediately close them or delete them.

Pick a variety of feedback mechanisms that can paint a richer picture. Consider feedback surveys, feedback workshops, 1-1s, “scroll depth” or “link clicks” for emails or web pages, or actions taken as a result of communications (i.e if an objective was to get people to sign up for a follow up workshop, measure how many did). Having multiple different methods will help improve the insights you can gain.