1.1 Overview of the Strategic Communication Plan

What Is the Purpose of the Strategic Communication Plan?

The strategic communication plan is part of an organization’s overall strategic planning. Strategic planning is a systematic process that uses an organization’s mission and priorities to develop a plan through a consensus among stakeholders. Strategic planning takes into account the current social, political, regulatory, cultural, and organizational climates and develops strategies to adapt to changes in these environments. By doing this, strategic planning helps to address challenges as they arise.

Once strategic planning is complete, a strategic communication plan is developed to help implement all or part of the plan. A strategic communication plan

• uses communication strategies to achieve an organization’s mission and core functions;

• uses planning and research to identify priority audiences or audience segments and design strategies, tactics, and messages to effectively bring about an attitudinal or a behavioral change;

• helps public relations and communication officers focus efforts and resources on needed areas and get the largest return on the investment; and

• allows the organization to proactively seize opportunities rather than simply react to issues that arise in the environment.

The Structure of the Strategic Communication Plan

Strategic communication plans can have many different sections, depending on the need of the organization or nonprofit. The most common sections are listed below:

Introduction

The introduction should give an overview of the organization, a brief discussion of the organization’s strategic plans, and the organization’s overall mission and goal statements. The introduction should also broadly discuss the problem, issue, or aim to be addressed by the strategic communication plan.

Analysis and Research

The analysis and research section should briefly discuss the findings of the research conducted concerning the problem. In general, there are three types of studies that need to be completed so a comprehensive strategic communication plan can be developed (all three types of studies will be discussed in more detail in Topic 2).

Situational Analysis

A situational analysis looks at external conditions that could create opportunities or challenges and need to be addressed by the organization or agency.

Audience Analysis

An audience analysis identifies key or priority audiences and then collects demographic and psychographic information, information needs, and message type preferences, along with other information about the priority audiences.

Program Analysis

A program analysis looks at the organization to determine how well it is currently positioned to address problems or issues. We will discuss three types of studies that will help to identify organizational readiness (SWOT, Force Field, and Constraint Analysis) in Topic 2.

Goal/Vision Statement

Goal statement and vision statement are interchangeable terms. Both indicate what the strategic communication plan is designed to accomplish. To avoid confusion with an organization’s “mission and vision statements,” we will refer to this as a goal statement.

Identification of Internal and External Partners and Stakeholders

A stakeholder is a person, group, or organization that is connected to your organization. Internal stakeholders are people or offices that have some function within your organization. If your organization is successful or unsuccessful, internal stakeholders will directly feel the effects. External stakeholders are people and organizations that are not directly affected by your organization’s success or failure but are affected by what the organization does. The public relations and media office within your organization is an internal stakeholder. A client that uses your organization’s services is an external stakeholder. Partners are organizations that share an aim or goal with your organization and work with your organization to better serve a population. A church food bank may partner with a local supermarket so that the church has food to distribute and the supermarket has a way to donate produce and canned goods to help the community. Your priority audiences and priority audience segments are external stakeholders who can be defined as the groups who are your target audience. These are the groups you will design strategies, tactics, and messages to reach in an attempt to create an attitudinal or a behavioral change.

A Guiding Communication Theory

A theory is used to explain what has happened and to predict what will happen. Adopting a theory will give you a way to predict what strategies and tactics will be effective and how your audience will interpret the messages you send. A good theory will help you to make decisions about what you can expect and how well you will fulfill your objectives.

Objectives

There are two types of objectives: (1) global objectives, which indicate where you want to be at the end of the process, and (2) intermediate objectives, which are objectives or markers you will achieve as you work toward your global objectives. Meeting intermediate goals can show that you are on track to meet the global objectives. Objectives include considerations for the audience, the change needed, the amount of change needed, and the time frame in which the change takes place. Objectives are guided by the theory, and they also should be SMART—Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Realistic, and Time-bound. Remember, you are creating a strategic communication plan, so your objectives need to deal with the use of communication to affect attitude or behavioral change.

Strategies and Tactics

A strategy answers the how question—how should we go about achieving an objective? In other words, what themes and approaches, suggested by the theory selected, will we use in order to reach the goal of each objective? Strategies lead to tactics, the actual tasks that need to be executed to achieve the objective.

Messages and Messaging Strategy

Messages and messaging strategy focus on two things: (1) the key points to be communicated across all of the messages that are developed and (2) the messages that deliver the key points to priority audience segments.

Media Placement

Messages need to be placed in the correct vehicles or media to reach the targeted priority audience segments. The vehicle has to be justified by the audience analysis because that research will uncover the individual channel preference of the priority audience.

Measurement and Evaluation

You need to have ways to measure the effects of the messages. First, baseline data is gathered to measure the current attitudes and behaviors of the priority audience. The research is repeated during and after the plan in order to assess changes in attitudes and behaviors. Secondary measures can be used to determine if there has been a change in attitude or behavior. For example, if you are trying to increase traffic to a particular store, changes in the number of customers can help to determine if the messaging is successful.

Who Are the People Involved in Developing the Plan?

Many people will be involved in developing the strategic communication plan. You should include everyone directly affected by the issue or problem, starting with the external stakeholders. Getting their input will help you better define the problem, identify who else may be affected by the problem, and design and place messages to address the problem.

For example, if a social service agency is attempting to solve problems with school truancy, its internal stakeholders will include teachers, parents, principals, superintendents, and students. The internal stakeholders within the agency will be the people and departments who are dealing with the problem and who will be tasked with designing messages, strategies, and tactics to address the problem. These stakeholders will include agency counselors, caseworkers, and external communication offices (public relations, marketing, and communication). These groups either have firsthand knowledge of the situation, are experiencing the situation, or are working to ease the situation. External stakeholders include community members and community leaders, such as members of the clergy, activity center directors, and local business leaders. These groups will work with the affected population and may be able to make suggestions to solve the problem. The agency will want to identify potential partner organizations, such as the Parent-Teacher Association and the teachers’ union, who are working to solve the same problem. All of these parties will bring something different to the process that will help to develop a complete strategic communication plan.

An organization attempting to deal with a morale problem provides a second example. The internal stakeholders would be the senior leadership team, Human Resources, the employees, and the marketing and communication office. These parties are either experiencing the problem of low morale or trying to find ways of raising morale. The external stakeholders might include mediators, counselors, and consulting firms brought in because of their experience in addressing similar problems. Potential partners might include the Society for Human Resource Management and other companies in the industry who might have predesigned programs and training to find the best practices to address the morale issues in the organization.

How is the Timeline for the Plan Developed?

A strategic communication plan can take weeks or months to create, depending on issues such as the depth of research needed, the difficulty of the problem or issue, and the complexity of the strategy. It is important that the process is not rushed to meet an artificial deadline. Cutting off the research before it is complete or failing to bring all the necessary stakeholders together will make it difficult to develop a coherent and effective strategic communication plan. Make realistic estimates of the time needed to complete each task.