September success strategies
Four steps for creating a powerful communications plan
If you read our previous blog post regarding re-calibrating your brand, you’ve taken the first step towards long-term success.
Ok, so you’ve gone through the mini-branding evaluation. You’ve identified the specific types of clients you want, clarified your direct and indirect competitors, defined your differentiators, aligned your business goals with the marketplace, and evaluated your visual identity. Ready for the next steps?
Here at Design of the Haus, we’re taking it further and we’re going to give you an exclusive look at the components of a good communications plan, a document that helps our clients target their messaging, find opportunities to raise their companies’ profiles, promote projects and their firms, and create a calendar of immediate action steps.
Step One: Target your messages
Create your firms’ key messages by answering these sample questions. What differentiators set your firm apart from your competitors? What types of work do you do or aspire to do? Does your firm have a rich history or milestone that you would like to highlight? What special value do you bring to your clients? To create consistent and impactful messaging, create statements that address the questions above and use them for all of your firms’ marketing and outreach material.
Step Two: Raise your company’s profile
To increase your firm’s visibility in the media and get in front of prospective clients, your firm should get involved in professional networks.
- Research and join relevant professional organizations that can help your firm build valuable relationships. Involvement in these types of organizations is an effective way to reach decision makers, gain networking and introduction opportunities, and open new avenues for different types of potential work.
- Seek speaking opportunities at professional events and conferences. This will further establish your firm as experts in a specific industry or market.
- Submit for awards, because winning awards is an excellent way for your firm to get press and impress clients and potential clients. Awards also give your firm credibility and further enhance its reputation that may lead to interviews, speaking engagements, and invitations to panel discussions.
Step Three: Promote your projects and people
It is critical to maintain visibility in your industries and markets. Consistent outreach in a variety of media outlets will keep the company mainstream and “buzzworthy”. Review your recent projects and come up with story or trend ideas to pitch to editors. For example, say your firm is designing the first passive house in Florida. Capitalize on the trend of how passive house technology is crossing over from Europe and becoming mainstream in the US. So you could pitch a story about fitting passive house design into any American landscape, from the hot climates of Florida to the icy winters of Michigan (where its already been applied).
You can also keep your company in the news by having a member of your leadership team write a by-lined article for a professional trades publication, for example, describing your firm’s innovative approach to combining modern technology and traditional materials.
Step Four: Initiate an immediate actions calendar
Plan for the next four to six months and end 2015 strong. First, figure out your immediate, mid-and long-term activities. Include pitch ideas, potential editor meetings, competition deadlines, social media implementation dates, etc. While creating a calendar is the last step of this communications plan, this is not a static document. You will need to review and update it on a consistent basis. In fact, this plan should serve as a starting point for an in-depth communications program for the end of 2015 and well into 2016.