The Amazon guide to
preparing a
communications
strategy
The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
What makes a good comms strategy?
A good comms strategy gives careful consideration
to what you should communicate, to whom,
and how, based on insights drawn from across
your organisation and beyond it. It also tells
you what you shouldn’t waste your time on,
which is just as valuable.
Most crucially, a good communications strategy is tied to wider
organisational objectives, so it doesn’t just serve its own purpose,
but those of the charity as a whole.
Your strategy must be thorough, and yet relevant and appropriate
to your organisation. There’s no point creating a huge document,
pulling in every view, every opinion, every bit of theory and the
highest imaginable targets – you’ll never be able to follow it, you’ll
never be able to fulfil it, and you’ll end up pushing it to the back
of your mind in favour of just ‘getting on with the job’.
Not every organisation needs, or should have, the same sort
of strategy. Small charities, with a small number of services
and a few key audiences, should have a strategy that reflects
that, focusing on what’s needed, rather than everything that
might be possible. Bigger organisations, juggling lots of different
viewpoints, large and complex stakeholder groups, multiple
services, products and sub-brands, on the other hand, will
need to invest time and energy in assessing all the elements
and building a strategy that takes account of them all.
Whether it’s short and sweet or longer and more complex,
your strategy also needs to be robust enough that it won’t
be toppled every three months by a new development.
Give thought to everything the strategy might need to weather,
and build in enough flexibility so that, if new and unexpected
opportunities come up, you can adapt and shape it accordingly.
When embarking on a new or updated strategy, think about the wider value
you could get from the process. Strategy development can be a great chance
to highlight issues, confront difficulties, or make the case for an undervalued
comms function.
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The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
Doing it for real
There’s a gap to bridge between understanding the principles
behind a good strategy, and the process of getting it down
on paper. A number of things need to be considered, and
a number of difficulties or issues may crop up.
1. Encountering differing views
When you bring people together to establish what comms should be trying
to achieve, or how best to talk about your organisation and its work, for example,
you may well encounter differing views. Differences could be minor (in terms
of the specific wording of a message, or perhaps the order of priorities), or they
might be more significant points of conflict (fundraising, programmes and welfare
all pulling in very different directions, for instance). We’ve been in situations
in the past where developing a new comms strategy has made departments across
a charity realise they all describe the organisation in completely inconsistent ways.
It’s always worth exposing these differences, even if it does seem like it’s just
making your life harder at the time. Facilitate a wide discussion, and try to guide
people towards consistency. But if it all gets too tricky, bringing a third party into
the process can often help you find the best and most valuable common ground.
2. Exposing problems with the brand
Conversations around messaging and positioning may also highlight issues with
your brand. For instance, comms strategies can sometimes bring fresh attention
to any weaknesses or complications caused by a charity’s name, which may create
a partial or confused impression of its work and remit among target audiences.
Or you might realise your strapline or logo don’t quite hit the right notes anymore.
Maybe the brand isn’t as consumer-facing as you’ve become over time, or you’ve
lost pace in look and feel with others operating in your area.
While your strategy can help you to navigate and minimise some of these issues,
through strong key messages and robust tactical plans, don’t overlook the opportunity
to consider a rebrand or a refresh.
3. Shifting the organisational strategy
The focus on agreeing clear and strategically valuable communications objectives,
tied to a strong understanding of priority audiences, can also draw attention
to the need to revise wider organisational goals. As a communications expert,
the clarity you are able to bring to bear on who and what is the most valuable
target can be useful in informing plans at the centre of the organisation, hence
the need to forge a strong relationship with your senior management team,
and lobby for a voice for comms at the top table.
“Amazon helped us define a strategic plan to raise awareness and extend our support base.
They became our thought partners and we really valued their involvement and dedication.”
Phil Reed, former Director of Marketing and Development, Elizabeth Finn Care
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The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
The process
There are a number of stages to work through, and
a number of related questions to ask when creating
a new strategy. As a general rule, we’d recommend
a strategy covers the following sections.
Situational analysis
This establishes where you are now, and the context in which your
comms strategy will operate. You should think about the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats within your organisation
(a SWOT analysis), and possibly also explore the external
environment, by looking at the political, economic, social
and technological considerations (a PEST analysis).
Depending on the nature and extent of the communications your
organisation has done in the past, you may choose to include
a comms audit as part of this work, taking stock of what you
do, what channels you use, and what works well or not so well.
Aims and objectives
This is where you set out what you intend to achieve and when
you want to achieve it by.
Make sure you connect this section to wider organisational
objectives and focus on outcomes instead of outputs – what
will add value, rather than just give you column inches or random
Facebook likes, for example?
Audiences
A key part of your strategy is the confident assessment of who
you should be communicating with, and where they stand
in relation to you. Is their position one of influence, or interest,
or both? What do they think of you at the moment?
How do you want that to change, if at all?
Ideally, you’ll end up with a clear set of priorities, possibly even
two or more ‘tiers’ of audiences, to reflect the amount of resource
they require, relevant to their value in meeting your objectives.
Try to avoid only having a bullet-pointed list. It’s worth spending
time adding nuance to your audiences, or at least those with
highest priority. Think about what makes a difference to them.
What do they need to hear? Who influences them, and who
else do they influence in turn?
Channels
Now think about where these audiences get their information
from, and build as complete a picture as possible of the channels
you could use for your own communications. This might include,
among other options, editorial coverage in relevant media spaces,
attending, sponsoring or speaking at events, social media
engagement, signposter services, and so on. The list should
be closely correlated to your audiences, ideally with a separate
set of channels identified for each key group, and areas
of crossover highlighted as a strategic priority for you.
With audiences and channels defined, you should be spending
some time with your marketing, digital and fundraising teams
(if those areas fall outside your own remit), to understand what
they are doing or have planned for the same groups and which
channels they are using for their own purposes.
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The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
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Messaging and content
When you know who you want to talk to, and how to get through
to them, you’re in a good position to decide what you should
be saying. Your strategy should include a set of detailed, carefully
constructed key messages that will act as the foundation
for all communications to provide clarity and consistency.
This section may also include ‘key drivers’ – a handful of one
or two-word personality traits and characteristics you want
to demonstrate through your communications.
You may also choose to include wider content development plans,
as well as the key messaging. For instance, it can be helpful
to think about what content you already have that could be made
more use of, or you might be able to pinpoint content you need,
linked to the audiences, channels and objectives you’ve set out,
but don’t yet have (think about case studies to evidence need
or impact, or high profile supporters, for example).
Evaluation
You’ll need to set out how you’ll monitor results and measure
success, with clear plans for capturing required information
throughout the period. Look back at your objectives when
working on this section, as thinking about evaluation will often
lead you to add detail and depth to them, such as timescales,
specific targets, or associated milestones.
You may choose to include a tactical plan as part of your strategy document,
with specific projects and actions plotted out in detail, or you may wish to create
this separately. Either way, the links and dependencies running across both must
be made clear.
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The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
The value of workshops
We often find that workshop sessions offer
a great way to explore many of the core elements
of a comms strategy, as they draw in a range
of viewpoints and help to establish buy-in
from across the organisation at an early stage.
Make sure you have people from different levels in the room
with you – senior managers, service delivery staff, trustees
and department leads, for example. Sometimes it’s also good
to have service users and volunteers represented.
The best bits to workshop are those that focus on insight and
perspective, not necessarily detail. Don’t attempt to craft your key
messages by committee, but do draw in people’s views on the
situational analysis, and which are the most important audiences
and what makes them different from others, for example.
“Amazon helped to steer us through a highly important and somewhat daunting exercise.
They provided us with invaluable strategic and objective insight into our current identity,
and our future priorities.”
Bharat Mehta, Chief Executive, Trust for London
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The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
What to do with it afterwards
Writing your strategy isn’t the end of it - you need
to make sure it’s usable and remains relevant.
The last thing you want is for all your hard work to be ignored by
those you need to rely on to support it – such as other departments
or teams including marketing, fundraising, welfare, or area managers.
Those people don’t necessarily need, or want to, use the entire
thing, but there will be core elements you need them to embrace,
particularly key messages and key drivers, and audience
prioritisation. So when you’re putting your strategy together
think about ways to distil and reproduce those and any other
fundamental points for wider distribution, perhaps in the form
of posters to be displayed in workspaces, or clear handouts
or checklists for regular reference.
You might also want to consider running training or information
sessions to help people understand how this strategy relates
to, and depends upon, their own part of the organisation.
It’s also important that you make time to review your strategy
at regular points, no matter how flexible you’ve made it.
These reviews are crucial to making sure what you’ve set out
to achieve is still relevant, and still achievable. If it’s not, then
you need to think about what’s changed, and why, and make
the adjustments necessary to reflect the reality of the situation
you’re now working in.
This is one of the most common weaknesses in comms strategies
– not the initial development and drafting, but their use across
the months and years. They are so often overlooked or adapted
‘in conversation’ or in people’s minds, as time marches on,
and although those adaptations probably have very good
reasons behind them, they need to be committed to paper
in order to have clarity, and the opportunity to inform wider
work in a meaningful way.
Remember, your strategy will only work if it works for you, not against you.
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The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
More food for thought
Communications strategies often lead organisations
to see a need and a value in additional, linked
projects, to inform or underpin the strategy itself,
or fill a gap exposed by the process.
One of the most common of these is the need for a reputation
management strategy or crisis communications plan. These are
often linked to strategies which set out to drive a significant
increase in profile for an organisation, as the bigger your profile,
the greater the spotlight on you when things go wrong. A reputation
management and crisis plan will allow you to prepare for the worst,
and use comms to mitigate against risks wherever possible.
“We appointed Amazon because of their down-to-earth approach and their understanding
of our work. They supported us at all levels - developing strategies, advising on crisis situations,
coming up with creative ideas and generating media coverage. We valued their honesty,
flexibility and insight. Above all, they were easy to work with - valued partners.”
Steve Scown, Chief Executive, Dimensions
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The Amazon guide to
preparing a communications strategy
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