5 Steps to Create an Effective Company Communication Strategy

What is a communication strategy?

A communication strategy refers to how you make sure all of your departments are working toward one common goal using cohesive, meaningful messaging.

In addition, your communication strategy has to cover how you will communicate with your customers. For example, if you want to get feedback from your customers, you need to incorporate this into your communication channels and business objectives as well.

As you put together your corporate communication strategy, you need to cover all of your potential communication outlets. For example, you need to focus on phone, email, text, and in-person communication. If you overlook anything, you risk leaving out certain parts of your business, and you may have a difficult time keeping all of your employees on the same page.

In addition, you need to think about what communication channels are going to be reserved for your customers and which ones will be reserved for your employees. That way, everyone understands who they should reach out to if they have a concern, but you keep private company information private. That way, you cannot only give key stakeholders the tools they need but also follow your customer’s journey.

Why does every business need a strong communication strategy?

There are several reasons why you need to put together a strong communication strategy for your business.

Employee fit

Your employees will have an easier time understanding how they fit in with the rest of your business if they understand your company's communication goals and business objectives.

Workplace communication strategies with clear communication goals make it easier for your employees to see the big picture, and if they understand how they fit as a part of your business machine, they will have an easier time doing their job.

Customer feedback

If you want your business to be successful, you need to ensure your customers are satisfied with your products and services. The only way you will know this is if you collect feedback from them regularly.

With strong communication strategies, they will understand who to reach out to when they want to share feedback.

Save time and money

A strong communication strategy can also help you save a significant amount of time and money. If all of your employees are working toward the same goal, you can reduce inefficiencies and mistakes. You can complete projects more quickly, keep your customers happy, and avoid potential sanctions.

Stronger company culture

A strong communication strategy can also help you improve your company culture. If you don't have communication objectives in place, your employees may have a difficult time speaking up.

Furthermore, if your employees don't talk to one another, they won't get to know one another, so your teamwork will suffer. A successful communication strategy can foster better company culture, which could help you recruit stronger talent.

Address problems faster

If you have firm communication strategies in place, you will have an easier time identifying problems because your employees will talk to one another. Therefore, you can identify problems before they get out of hand, helping to keep the business on track.

These are a few of the biggest reasons why your company has to have a strong communication strategy in place. At the same time, the right communication objectives for one business might not necessarily be the right ones for yours. How can you create a strong strategy for your company?

5 steps to create your company communication strategy

There are several steps you need to follow if you want to create a strong communication strategy for your company. They include:

1. Thoroughly define your purpose

First, you need to think about the purpose of your communication strategy. What do you want to accomplish, and what will your key messages be?

Of course, your goal is to boost business revenue, but how are your communication objectives going to do that?

A few examples of your communication goals could include:

You want to collect more information from your customers about your products and services. You want to make it easier for your remote employees to feel like they are a part of the team. You would like to reduce the turnaround time for company projects. You would like to reduce the information that gets lost in translation.

Think carefully about the overall purpose of communication strategies.

2. Narrow down your target audience

The next step in building your communication strategy is to define your target audience. Who are you trying to formulate communication objectives for?

For example, if you want it to benefit your customers, you need to think carefully about audience segmentation. Even though you would probably like to make a customer out of everyone, that is simply not possible. A younger target audience prefers different communication methods when compared to an older target audience.

You can use behavioral targeting to make sure your customers get the most out of your communication strategy, but you need to think carefully about what will benefit them the most. This is critical for your external communication strategies.

On the other hand, if your communication strategy is meant for your employees, you need to make this clear. There are specific tools that can help you keep your employees on the same page, so you may want to talk to your employees to see what tools they might prefer. This will be a very important part of your internal communication strategies.

3. Decide the means of communication

You also need to think carefully about your means of communication. For example, you may want to create personalized content using your communication strategy if you want to reach out to your customers. For example, creating personalized content for blog posts and infographics for social media could help you build your brand identity.

Or, if you have a slightly longer sales cycle, you might be using an email drip campaign to help you. In that situation, you need to think carefully about the subject lines that get opened if you want to maximize the results of your email marketing strategy. How do you think your emails will evolve as you move your leads down the sales funnel?

Keep in mind that there you need to pick your speakers carefully. Who do you want to produce content for social media, email marketing, and customer outreach? Will it be your executive team, your employees, or the company as a whole? Your speaker can have a significant impact on how your key messages are perceived.

4. Set a timeline

Timing is very important when communicating with your target audience. This is important for internal and external communications. You need to make sure that your customers see your marketing materials.

Some of the factors to consider include:

How often do you want to share a post or send an email? What time do you want to send out that information? What days of the week do you want to distribute your marketing materials?

You need to maximize your visibility, so you may want to do some A/B testing to see which options get the best results.

5. Collect feedback

Finally, you have to collect feedback from your employees and customers on your communication strategy. Do you want to provide an opportunity for anonymous feedback? Or do you want people to attach their names to your feedback portals?

How are you going to process the feedback when you receive it? You need to make sure you collect feedback efficiently and use it to improve your communication strategy.

Send your key messages effectively

In the end, it is important for you to think about how you can use your company communication strategy to separate yourself from the other businesses in your industry. You need to think about how your communication strategy can benefit not only your employees but your customers as well. If you find a way to keep everyone on the same page, you can work toward a common goal.

You can also use your communication strategy to increase your conversion rate, address customer concerns, and boost your brand loyalty. Remember that effective communication strategies could be a very important part of your brand identity, so you need to fine-tune it from time to time.

Fortunately, this is not something you have to do on your own. There are plenty of tools that can help you get the most out of your company's communication strategy. You may want to take a look at some of the tools from Mailchimp, which can help you identify the right tools for your internal and external communication strategies.

You might want to use a creative assistant to expedite the process, automating some of the tasks that you are used to doing by hand. You may even want to take advantage of custom sign-up forms that can help you expand your email list.