Stay On Message and On Strategy
Prepare strategy statements and link them to business goals

Team members are more likely to get behind your communication initiatives if they understand what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to say—so you’ll need written versions of your strategies and a set of key message points.

Your communication strategies should be designed to support the overall business goals of the organization, so it’s a good idea to link directly to those goals when preparing written descriptions of your communication strategies. Consider the example below that describes a communication initiative for improving customer retention:

Customer Retention Initiative. Support the organizational goal of improving our annual customer retention rate from 83% to 90% by increasing the quality and frequency of inbound and outbound communications.

• Initiate standards for maintaining a quality customer data base.
  
  
• Increase frequency of recognition emails from quarterly to monthly.
  
  
• Conduct and archive quarterly thought leadership webcasts.
  
  
• Establish an opinion survey to benchmark customer satisfaction levels.

Notice that the example statement is specific and easy to understand, so it will help team members internalize the strategy and stay on message during customer contacts. Additionally, consider how the reference to the opinion site mentioned above can be converted into a message point and shared directly with customers.

Your business is valuable to us, and your opinion is important. That’s why we’re establishing a customer satisfaction survey on our website—so you’ll have an opportunity to give direct feedback about our performance. At your convenience please visit our web site to share your opinions—so we can create more value for your organization and do a better job of supporting your business goals.

Sound bites like these should be prepared in advance to make sure key points are shared directly with customers. When your team members understand the specifics they’ll be more likely to stay on strategy and on message during their customer contacts.

Crawford/Mikus offers a full range of marketing, sales and communication services, from brand execution to selling tools, and we implement end-to-end solutions across all media-from concept to execution. We’ll help define your visual voice, and we’ll convert your business goals into solutions that deliver bottom line results. Click on the Contact Us button to the left or call 404.875.7753 to speak directly with Scott Mikus.