Spring Cleaning for Strategic Communications

Spring is the perfect time to organize your communications, sort out the winners and declutter anything that wastes your company’s resources. So, tap into your inner Molly Maid to make your communications sparkle and shine – and achieve your business goals.

For a strategic spring cleaning of your communications, consider these 10 things:

1. Strategy: What are your communications goals and objectives?
2. Effectiveness: How well is your current communications plan working?
3. Clarity: Are your key messages clear and consistent?
4. Reach: Are you reaching the right key audiences with your messages?
5. Persuasion: Do your communications prompt your audience to act?
6. Patterns: Which types of communications have been most effective?
7. Impact: What do customers think of your communications?
8. Alignment: Do your communications support your overall strategic plan?
9. Enhancement: What would make your communications more effective in the future?
10. Comprehensiveness: What communications opportunities are you missing?

Reflecting on the effectiveness of your communications strategy, tactics and messaging can help to increase the ROI of your marketing efforts.

Exercise: Tidy Up Your Communications
To make your spring-cleaning efforts even more effective, try this exercise.

Spread a copy of all of your external communications pieces from the past year on a conference room table. Ask yourself and your team:

• How did we inform the public about our business?
• What worked? What didn’t?
• Who were our audiences?
• What were our key messages?
• What media coverage did we receive? Was it effective?
• Did we successfully tell our story?

Take the time to analyze each communications piece. List what worked, and what didn’t. Then repeat this exercise for all your internal communications for employees ranging from the frontlines to the C-suite.

Removing underperforming communication vehicles and messaging will free up your resources and help you to better connect with your target audiences.

How often does your company review the effectiveness of its communications?

Lisa Goller helps businesses tell their story. As a Toronto-based Strategic Freelance Writer & Editor, she helps executives and entrepreneurs stand out, look good and save time. Learn more at lisagoller.com

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