Welcome to the 2022 summer hacks series Part Two! These are really short ‘food for thought’, bite-sized episodes, so you can dive in when you have a moment.
I decided to focus on planning tips over the summer. Why? Because when people think about comms planning, they often focus on what they are going to say. You have a great product or service and you want to tell people about it. Focusing on the message seems the logical first step, but before you start typing, let alone promoting your offer, there are some vital actions you need to take.
The summer hacks is an overview of the 7 steps to effective comms planning. I use this process with all my clients, whether it’s a brand new product or we’re marketing a built environment project.
Part two is about implementation, review, and evaluation. This is the first episode of Part Two all about getting your message out there – this is often where people start!
Let’s dive in.
Links mentioned in this episode
My FREE Seven Steps Webinar – https://mailchi.mp/henbe.co.uk/free-webinar-7-steps-190722
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Full Transcript (unedited)
Welcome to the 2022 summer hacks series Part Two! These are really short ‘food for thought’, bite-sized episodes, so you can dive in when you have a moment.
I decided to focus on planning tips over the summer. Why? Because when people think about comms planning, they often focus on what they are going to say. You have a great product or service and you want to tell people about it. Focusing on the message seems the logical first step. But before you start typing, let alone promoting your offer, there are some vital actions you need to take.
The summer hacks is an overview of the 7 steps to effective comms planning. I use this process with all my clients, whether it’s a brand new product or we’re marketing a built environment project.
Part two is about implementation, review, and evaluation. This is the first episode of Part Two all about getting your message out there – this is often where people start!
Let’s dive in
So in this episode, we are going to talk about how you are going to ensure maximum impact with your strategic communications. If you’ve been listening so far to the summer hacks, you know what you want to achieve, who you want to reach, and what you want to say, now you need to get your message out there.
This stage of communications planning is all about tactics and it is a vital part of the process. If you are linking your activity to a particular goal like the launch of a new website or the release of a report, then timing is also key. You want to plan to release your content and get your message out there around that milestone. This can be a really effective way of creating a lot of buzz in a short period of time. It also intensifies your message rather than doing a little bit and drip feeding over a longer period of time.
This is also where you can get super creative. If you know that your product does well on a particular social channel like Instagram, you can do some really good targeting with paid ads. You can also use organic social content. For example, you could have a competition-led piece to generate interest, awareness, and engagement by giving something away at a discount or a freebie like a download that encourages people to come into your world or book a call or buy a product. This could be something that says how they can work with you or how they can get hold of your product or service.
There’s a wide range of tactics you can use to get your message out there. This includes social media, email, blog posts, media coverage, events, and paid advertising. Choosing which ones you use depends on what you want to achieve and who your audience is.
Each one has strengths and weaknesses, but when used together, they can exponentially increase the number of people who hear your message.
There will be tactics that work for some specific audiences but not for others, down to the preferred social media platform, for example, so go back to your research on who your customer is and work out how best to reach them – choose tactics that will stand the best chance.
One of the biggest mistakes I see in this area is people want to sell more B2B products and might choose mainstream media rather than targeted sector media, or they don’t complement media targeting with direct email or mail and digital tactics that can target so much better and make the most of that spike in website traffic following an article being published.
If your goal is to create awareness for your product or service, media coverage placed well can do this as can speaking at events where there is likely to be a volume of people all interested in the specific subject you are talking about. It’s important for the latter to make sure that you have a target in place to capture the moment if it’s a speaking opportunity, whether that’s through encouraging website traffic during and post-talk or through social media.
Generally, there is no one size fits all and every situation is different.
If you like this summer hacks series I am running a free webinar in the autumn on this topic, so ask me questions, and where you can also find more and find out about my masterclass which is a deep dive to help you plan, write as well as execute your very own communication strategy.
If you want 1:1 advice and insight on how to be more strategic with your plans, get in touch to see how I can help you. I added a link in the show notes today to my cheatsheet for you which covers the 7 steps – give it a go. I would love to know how you got on.