One of the most common mistakes organizations make when planning their communication strategy is doing it based on their own needs rather than the needs of their strategic stakeholders.
But first, let’s assume that all organizations, companies, businesses, and projects engage in some form of communication management. Regardless of their level of complexity.
A common flaw when making a communication plan is emphasizing “sales” of services or products rather than “relationships” with target audiences in the long term.
Organizations often make the mistake of planning their strategies, focusing solely on the buying customer, resulting in short-term communication plans that overlook all strategic stakeholders for the project or business.
The solution is relatively simple. And it’s not about neglecting our organization to think about others. No. It’s precisely the opposite. We seek to understand who all the strategic stakeholders are so that our business can move forward comprehensively.
We have two paths.
We can make a macro list based on the main key activities for our organization. By doing this, we will know who all our strategic stakeholders are.
Or, if we have a strategic plan, we can review the organization’s main objectives. By doing this, we will know who all our strategic stakeholders are.
Identifying key activities or strategic objectives of our organization will allow us to understand where we want to go. And knowing where we want to go will help us define the messages we need to send to our strategic stakeholders to achieve the objectives.
The sequence is as follows:
Easy. Once we have identified objectives, strategic stakeholders, and messages, we can task the communication or marketing manager with defining how we will ensure that communication operates according to the established sequence.
Translation of the above: as leaders of the organization, it is sufficient to know the objectives, strategic stakeholders, and messages that we need to convey to all our audiences.
From there, the construction of a communication work plan defining the communication channels, formats in which we will materialize the message, and the indicators with which we will ensure to measure our management, etc., will be left to the experts in the field.
See you soon!