Four Steps to Successful Communication Campaigns
Great communicators are great relationship-builders. And that means they must be great listeners.
In previous blogs, we’ve discussed a standard research process. In this post, we’ll discuss a standard four-step communication process, and why it is completely dependent on research.
Building relationships requires dialogue, a conversation between two or more people. That conversation in an organization is often delegated to a communication staff.
Unfortunately, organizational communication today is too often defined primarily by tasks and tools: Writing, speaking, emails, podcasts, social media posts, videos, and websites. When I tell people I spent 15 years as a chief communication officer, that’s immediately what many envision: Written and recorded outputs.
And that gets back to the job of communication or education leaders. They are not writers and editors in chief, rather they are the listeners in chief. Their job is first to understand your customer or retirement plan participant. Then, consider how best to be understood.
And that’s where our four-step communication process begins:
1. Research: Listen to and learn from your audience.
As we often discuss on this podcast, one of the best ways to listen to an audience of thousands is through consumer and participant research: Surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one conversations.
The research stage helps us – through careful listening – to fully understand and describe the problem or opportunity related to our customers or audience.
● How was it identified?
● Is it your problem or your customer’s?
● Why would your customers want to help you solve it?
● If it is their problem, do they know they have a problem?
Often, we communicators, marketers, and educators have a goal in mind before engaging an audience. We want to persuade them to take a beneficial action. Perhaps to save more for retirement or purchase a product or service that will improve their lives or solve their problems.
It is all too tempting to leap into creating content and selecting communication tools before fully understanding the problem – from our audience’s point of view.
Begin with a solid research foundation, and the next three steps will help you achieve success.
However, this is a pay me now or pay me later proposition. Give this step a cursory, check-the-box approach today, and you may spend much more time, energy, and money managing a communication failure later.
2. Plan: What, why, how, and when
Your research has given you an understanding of your customer or retirement plan participant. As you seek to be understood, it will help you spell out realistic and achievable communication objectives. It will inform your choice of persuasive messages and the best tools such as email, video, direct mail, social media, and websites.
In short, you’ll describe your key persuasive messages and why you’ve selected them. And, you’ll outline your communication tactics, how you will deliver those, and exactly when.
There’s a significant budgeting and project management component to this step, but we won’t go into that now.
When you’ve completed this section, bounce it up against the Research section. Is there an unmistakable family resemblance? If not, adjust your planning until it does.
3. Get started: Initiate the communication
Content & Tools
This is the step your creative team loves. They’re finally turned loose to develop content and communication tools according to the plan.
Often this is the stage to which organizations skip as the creation process can seem quite fun. Yet, done right, this is one of the most challenging steps. Exceptionally talented writers and designers sometimes struggle to balance their creative intuition with the constraints of research-based requirements.
While it is important to meet timelines and budgets, your content must be rigorously compared to the research and planning documents. No matter how inspiring the writing or compelling the design, it likely will not achieve your objectives if it is off target.
The Roll-out
As you roll out communication, it is easy to forget that communication is a dialogue. It is a two-way conversation, and you’ve just spoken. Expect your customers or plan participants to talk back. Pay attention. What have they understood or questioned? What needs a better explanation?
Learn from the conversation and update your communication. This flexibility to modify your communication mid-stream is what makes it a conversation. It builds a credible relationship with those you’re seeking to serve.
4. Evaluate: Did you achieve what you expected?
Two types of evaluation will improve your communication. The first is the concurrent or mid-stream dialogue you began with the first communication.
The second is a deeper dive that may begin well after your communication begins. Are you achieving the responses you expected? Have your consumers or plan participants taken the desired action? If not, why not? Were your expected results realistic? Did your audience make solid progress toward taking action but need a little more nudging, educating, or persuading?
Minor course corrections are likely and do not indicate failure.
Ultimately, we serve our customers and plan participants through listening and building relationships. That takes a commitment of both time and perseverance. You only fail if you fail to learn, adapt, and press on toward success.
