A communication management plan (CMP) is a document that outlines a company’s communication strategy. The purpose of a CMP is to ensure that all members of the organization are on the same page when it comes to communicating with customers, partners, and other stakeholders.
Communication is a key component of any business, and the CMP provides a road map for how a company will communicate with its customers, employees, and partners. A CMP can be as simple as a one-page document or as complex as a three-hundred-plus-page plan. Regardless of the size of the plan, the purpose is the same—to ensure that everyone in the organization has the same understanding of what the company is communicating to its customers and how it is going to communicate with them. The CMP should be a living document that is regularly updated to reflect changes in the business and in the communication strategies of the company.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the process of writing a communication plan for your company. You will learn how to:
1. Define your communication strategy
2. Identify your communication channels
3. Determine your communication objectives
4. Develop your communication plan
5. Review and update your plan as needed
6. Measure the success of your CMP
7. Communicate the results
## Define Your Communication Strategy
The first step in creating a communication strategy is to define what you want to communicate to your customers. To do this, you need to understand who your customers are, what they want from you, and what you can do for them. Once you’ve identified your customers and their needs, you can determine what you will communicate to them and how you will go about communicating it. This will help you determine what channels you will use to communicate and what your objectives will be for each of those channels. The following are some questions you can ask to help you define your customers, needs, objectives, and channels.
Question 1: Who Are Your Customers?
Who are your customers? If you are a business-to-business (B2B) company, for example, your customers might be other businesses that you work with on a regular basis. If your business is a B2C company, you might have customers who purchase your products or services. You might also have customers that you interact with on an occasional basis, such as when they have a question about a product or service that you provide. Regardless, you should be able to answer the question, “Who are my customers?”
Question 2: What Do Your Customers Want From You?
What do your customers want from your company? This is a question that can be difficult to answer, especially if you don’t have a customer relationship management (CRM) system in place. If you do have a CRM system, it can be helpful to use it to answer this question. For example, you could use the CRM to identify your top customers and then use that information to determine what they are looking for from you. You could also use the information to identify the most common questions that your customers have about your products and services, and then create content that addresses those questions.
Question 3: What Can You Do For Your Customers
What can your company do for its customers? This question is similar to the one above, but it focuses on what your company can do to help its customers rather than what it can provide to them. This is an important question to answer because it helps you determine whether or not your company should focus its communication efforts on its customers or on its employees. If the answer to this question is ‘yes,’ then you should focus your efforts on communicating with your customers because they are the ones who are going to benefit from what you have to say. If, on the other hand, the answer is ‘no,’ you should communicate with your employees because they have the most to gain from the information that you share with them, even if it is not directly related to what they do for the customers.
As you can see, answering these three questions can help you develop a better understanding of who you are communicating with and what it is that you want them to know about your business.
## Identify Your Communication Channels
Now that you have an understanding of the people that your company communicates with and the things that it wants to communicate, it is time to think about the channels through which it will communicate. A communication channel is the medium through which a company communicates. Channels can be physical (e.g., print, radio, television, etc.) or digital (e-mail, social media, etc.).
Depending on the type of business that you are in, there may be more than one channel through which you communicate. For instance, if you are an e-commerce business, you may communicate through both physical and digital channels. If that is the case, you will need to determine which channels are most effective for your business and which are most cost-effective. You may also need to decide which channels will be used to communicate different types of information to different groups of people in your organization.
## Determine Your Communication Objectives
After you have identified your channels of communication and determined which ones will be most effective and cost-efficient, you are ready to determine your objectives for each channel. An objective is a goal that you set for a specific communication channel. Objectives can be short-term or long-term.