Communications Plan Template
Communicate a clear, effective message to your audience.
About the Communications Plan Template
A communications plan is an end-to-end strategy for delivering a message to your audience. At every stage of your business, you will need to command the message, control the narrative, and compel your audience. Whether you’ve secured funding, hired a CEO, hit a revenue goal, or suffered a data breach, a clear communications plan is vital to your business’s success. Regardless of your company’s size, vertical, or stage of growth, you need a communications plan.
How to use the communications plan template
You’ve heard the saying: if a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Quite simply, if your business hits a milestone, and you don’t have a communications plan, it will not make a sound.
But it’s cumbersome and unscalable to draft a communications plan every time you want to reach your audience. Use the Communications Plan template to simplify the process, streamline your messaging, and grow with your business.
Who should use a communications plan?
1. Marketing teams. From startups to enterprise businesses, every marketing team should have a communications plan.
2. Non-profits. In the fast-paced world of nonprofits, some things never change: namely, the need to communicate. Since non-profits rely on the public to stay afloat, it’s important to craft effective messaging.
3. Agencies. Both agencies and their clients should draft communications plans to stay ahead of the game.
4. Leadership. CEOs, VPs, spokespeople, and public figures should each have a communications plan, regardless of whether they’re sending a weekly company email or presenting to a board of investors.
How do I use the template to create a communications plan?
Step 1: Develop a brand statement. Before you can begin working on your communications plan, you need to figure out who you are as a brand. Your brand statement will shape the tone, voice, and structure of your plan.
Think of the brand statement as your charter, or your promise. Think about the audience you want to reach and the purpose your organization seeks to serve. Here’s a popular guideline:
Our organization exists to provide [benefit] [benefit], and [benefit] to [audience] through [product or service].
Step 2: Figure out your unique selling proposition (USP). Your brand exists to fill a niche that no other brand can fill. So, what is it? What problems do you solve? What needs do you address? What can you do that your competitors cannot? What do you do better? These core questions will inform your communications plan, so it’s important to get them right.
Step 3: Define success. Think about what objectives your company must achieve to be successful. Every team in the organization is working toward these objectives.
Step 4: Map out your audience personas. Imagine you’re giving a speech about the importance of making art. Your personaes are the people who you would expect to sit in the audience. Think about who your company is trying to reach so you can create messages that resonate with them.
The Communications Plan template helps you map out personas step-by-step. Begin by contacting your customers to learn more about them. Use a survey tool to poll them on their demographics, their perceptions of your brand, their wants, and their needs. If you have content on your site, use analytic tools to see who is consuming it. If you have social media accounts, check out your followers and see if you can identify any trends.
Once you’ve gathered this data, you can start to craft the personas themselves. Specify exactly who the personas are. Returning to our speech about making art: one key persona might be a 25-year-old MFA grad. If you’re a business that sells environmentally-friendly tee shirts, a persona might be a 30-year-old, college-educated male with disposable income.
Step 5: Craft your narrative. This is the story you want to tell. What makes your brand unique? How did you get started? What do you hope to do? And relatedly, what misperceptions do you want to dispel about your type of organization? Remember, you’re wading into a dense competitive landscape. It’s important to set yourself apart by distinguishing your brand from those that came before you.
Step 6: Choose your communications channels. How are you going to get the word out there? Your channels might change depending on the size of your company, the resources you have, and the audience you hope to reach. Many companies use a blog, downloadable assets, and social media channels to tell their story, but you might also invest in online ads, commercials, or mailers, or you might give interviews or conference presentations.
Step 7: Set goals. These goals should tie into the objectives you established earlier. For example, if your objective is to raise funds, then you could aim to send marketing emails to 30 investors this quarter. Make sure your goals are reasonable and measurable.
Step 8: Schedule out your communications. If you have a blog, create an editorial calendar. If you’re sending out social media posts, write up a social media plan that corresponds with your product launches or other major initiatives. The bottom line: stay organized, focused, and on task -- and pace yourself.
Step 9: Take stock of your success. Delve into the data to see what went right and what you can do better.
Why make a communications plan?
Crafting a communications plan puts you ahead of your competition. It ensures that your brand is always putting your best foot forward. A robust communications plan allows you to tell your story to your audience in a way that is compelling, focused, and streamlined. It sells your product, wins customers, and earns investors.
When to use the communications plan template
Use the communications template any time you need a strategy to communicate to your audience. You may find this especially beneficial when you know a big event such as a new product release is about to occur.
Get started with this template right now.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Strategic Planning, Project Planning
Clarity, focus, and structure — those are the key ingredients to feeling confident in your company’s directions and decisions, and an OKR framework is designed to give them to you. Working on two main levels — strategic and operational — OKRs (short for objectives and key results) help an organization’s leaders determine the strategic objectives and define quarterly key results, which are then connected to initiatives. That’s how OKRs empower teams to focus on solving the most pressing organizational problems they face.
Community Building: A 5 Step Roadmap
Works best for:
Roadmap, Planning, Mapping
Use this five step process for building a community development roadmap.
Marketing Campaign Timeline
Works best for:
Timeline, Planning
Plan and execute your marketing strategies seamlessly with the Marketing Campaign Timeline template. This tool allows you to map out every stage of your campaign, from planning to launch and analysis. Visualize key milestones, set deadlines, and track progress to ensure your marketing efforts are well-coordinated and effective. Ideal for marketing teams looking to optimize their campaign management.
Change Canvas
Works best for:
Kanban Boards, Agile MEthodology, Agile Workflows
Change Canvas template empowers teams to manage and visualize change initiatives effectively. By mapping out stakeholders, goals, and actions, teams can ensure alignment and transparency throughout the change process. This template fosters collaboration and communication, enabling teams to navigate change successfully and achieve desired outcomes while minimizing disruption and resistance.
Marketing Campaign Timeline
Works best for:
Timeline, Planning
Plan and execute your marketing strategies seamlessly with the Marketing Campaign Timeline template. This tool allows you to map out every stage of your campaign, from planning to launch and analysis. Visualize key milestones, set deadlines, and track progress to ensure your marketing efforts are well-coordinated and effective. Ideal for marketing teams looking to optimize their campaign management.
Product Ownership Evolution Model (POEM)
Works best for:
Product Management, Planning
The Product Ownership Evolution Model (POEM) template guides product teams through the evolution of product ownership roles and responsibilities. By illustrating the transition from individual ownership to shared ownership, this template fosters collaboration and accountability. With sections for defining roles, establishing workflows, and setting expectations, it facilitates smooth transitions and enhances team effectiveness. This template serves as a roadmap for optimizing product ownership practices and driving continuous improvement.