How to build a successful communication strategy for business?

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A successful strategy helps increase sales through communication with potential or existing customers. The most optimal for achieving specific goals is to define them a year ahead with a clear step-by-step structure.

To make it effective, we recommend going through the following steps to take only unnecessary actions, avoid mistakes, and move in the right direction:

1. Current situation analysis.
2. Defining goals and objectives.
3. Target audience analysis.
4. Communication activities.

‍Conduct a Reputation Audit and Media Visibility Analysis

Analyze the target audience’s perception of the brand's key messages and the results of different approaches. Pay attention to the involvement of publications, their tone, and the level of publishing media. LOOQME Hub will help you with collecting these metrics.

‍Conduct a SWOT Analysis

Determine the project’s Strengths and Weaknesses. Detect Opportunities arising from its implementation and possible Threats.

Analyze Competitors

Research how they speak to their audience, what tools they choose, and what mistakes they make. It’ll help you measure and understand the company’s metrics.

Define Goals and Objectives

Forming clear goals is a part of an action plan to accomplish overall objectives. The communication strategy objectives rely on business goals as their basis. They usually relate to the following areas:

• Marketing.
• Media.
• Creativity.

The SMART method is one of the most popular and straightforward methods for assessing and forming goals:

• s — specific;
• m — measurable;
• a — attainable;
• r — realistic;
• t — time-related.

You can choose this method to check your goals and objectives. It’s easier to manage precise goals with established deadlines and measure the effectiveness of their implementation. In such a case, each team member will clearly understand the expectations regarding their work.

Target Audience Analysis

To say something to someone, you must clearly understand who you are addressing.

• Who are these people?
• What do they do in their free time?
• How much money do they spend?

You need to create a portrait of your customers. We recommend using Sherrington’s 5W method not to miss anything. It involves answering five questions:

• what? — what the consumer likes, the type of product, and its quality characteristics;
• who? — who buys the product, the type of consumer, their gender, and age characteristics;
• why? — motivation, need for a product, brand loyalty, price preferences;
• when? — the purchase algorithm, purchase time, and ways of making the purchase delayed in time;
• where? — places of purchase, where people most often request and buy goods, and goods distribution channels.

Communication Activities: Content and Media Plans

You need to determine the channels of communication to understand the specifics of each of them. Think about why people come to this or that channel and what information they seek. Based on this, you create:

• content plan;
• media plan.

You might not need some communication channels at all, but you should prioritize others. It all depends on what channels your target audience uses. For example, you can use push notifications or Viber/Telegram/WhatsApp mailing for promotions. Besides, you will need to content plan for social media posts to launch targeted advertising. If you want to work with reputation, you will need to get involved with publications in the media. And so on and so force.

Analyze TA, observe competitors, and inspire but do not plagiarize. And may your communication strategy be successfully working!