A communications plan is the cherry on the marketing strategy cake. Market research, segmentation, targeting, positioning, sales funnels, and objectives should have been conducted prior to a comms plan. Once these items have established, a marketer is ready to tackle how they are going to get their message to the market.

Understand your target market and positioning

Knowing who the brand is targeting is imperative. A brand cannot be all things to all people. Segmentation mapping in marketing strategy will give a marketer an idea of who they can target, and what they need to achieve in that segment. It’s best to keep this tight, perhaps only targeting two or three different groups depending on budget and resource.

There are a plethora of communications channels a brand can use: search or paid search, LinkedIn or Instagram, TV or radio, and a lot more. Which channel a brand chooses should reinforce the brands positioning. The channel should also be able to reach plenty of customers. One thing to consider though, is that different channels work better or worse for various aspects of the sales funnel.

For example, the chart above from Field & Binet shows that PR is great for brand building, but poor for bottom-of-funnel sales, however in contrast, email is better for selling but poorer for brand building.

Get the message right

Whatever a brand's position, and whoever its target market, the message should be one of self-interest to the customer. There should be a clear benefit to the customer. That is developed by understanding the tension, the pain points or the aspirations of your target market. What are their problems, what are they trying to achieve and how can your product help them?

To get the message right, a good tip is to always ask ‘so what?’ to a product benefit, until you can’t anymore. The highest order benefit is usually quite emotive, such as status or security. But it’s not necessarily the case for all products. Going too far down this route may end up making a brand look slightly silly (see: Pepsi and Kendell Jenner for a great example of a brand taking it too far).

Develop dual campaigns and respective goals

Picking the right blend of channels will differ for each brand, but they should attempt to balance sales and brand communication activities. Field and Binet suggest splitting brand communications and sales communications by a 60:40 ratio for business-to-consumer brands, and 50:50 for business-to-business brands. It’s a general rule of thumb, and changes depending on a host of variables. However, the message to take away is to ensure that you don’t forget to invest in brand.

Brand advertising is often more emotive and helps position the brand in the mind of the consumer, with the use of its brand assets. An example of this may be Corona beer, where they often show the product in beach settings. Their message is – when you go to the beach (or summery days perhaps), the beer of choice is a refreshing corona. What they’re not trying to do is get you to buy now, but priming the mind of the consumer so when a certain buying situation arises (beers + hot sunny days), you immediately think of Corona.

In contrast, a more sales focused approach may include the use of promotions or perhaps more rational reasons why they should buy a product. For example, 20% bigger for the same price – it’s better value for a limited time only, or perhaps more sales presence at outlets near a beach front.

Ensure you reach considerably more customers than you currently have

Unfortunately, when it comes to advertising, budget matters. The aim of the game is to reach considerably more customers than you currently have.

There is a formula for this, called ESOV (excess share of voice). You must reach relatively more customers than your market share. So, if you command 10% market share, your relative advertising spend (share of voice) must be higher than 10%. Share of voice is best described by imagine an entire industry advertises on one sheet of paper, if you have a quarter of than page then your share of voice will be 25%.

Share of voice above market share is called excess share of voice. So, in our example, if we have 25% share of voice and 10% market share, our ESOV is 15%. For every 10% ESOV, it typically results in 0.5% additional market share per annum.

It can be hard to work out ESOV, but the message is clear: over-invest in advertising.

Bring it all together

Getting the big things right first is important. Here’s a checklist:

Know your target market
Know your positioning
Know your message
Invest in both brand and sales messages
Over-invest to reach more customers than your currently have

Of course, there are nuances in communications planning. But start here, and you’re on the right track.

Want to know more? Brandwerks is a marketing agency based in Brighton & Hove and London, UK.

About BrandWerks —

BrandWerks is a design resource company focused on advancing the practice of brand strategy.

We know that brand strategy can be a difficult beast to master. We create brand strategy templates and resources that help designers, agencies, and brand strategists master brand strategy.

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How to Develop a Communications Strategy