A comprehensive guide to crafting the perfect corporate communication plan

As your company scales and expands, it becomes increasingly challenging to monitor every point of contact with internal or external stakeholders. This makes it difficult to ensure that your brand presents the professional, consistent, and high-quality image that your customers and partners expect, or that your workforce is properly informed, skilled, and unified.

That’s when a corporate communication plan becomes more important than ever. Let’s take a look at how you can create a strategy that keeps your brand consistent, and your communications something people look forward to.

What is a corporate communication plan?

To put it simply, a corporate communication plan is a complete breakdown of what steps your team will take to communicate with any stakeholders in virtually any situation.

It will include:

• Goals
• Target audience
• Key messages
• Communication channels
• Tactics
• Timelines
• Responsibilities

Whether it’s a crisis, a product launch, or a new initiative, you’ll be ready to get the right information to the people who need it.

Why is a corporate communication plan important?

Not having a strategy in place can lead to misinformation, confusion, an inconsistent brand image, and damage to your reputation. A communication plan helps you respond quickly and effectively, both in day-to-day interactions and during an unexpected situation. This helps you mitigate potential damage from convoluted messaging and keeps your brand image pristine.

By taking the time to set up this strategy, you can ensure your company has:

• • Consistency – Clients want to feel like they’re speaking with the same company every time they hear from you. This is especially important when you’re using omnichannel marketing and communications
  • Professionalism – A communication plan ensures that all communications are well thought out and reflect your company’s brand and values. This helps to maintain a professional image and builds trust with stakeholders
  • Clarity – It’s significantly easier to present a clear and concise front for your stakeholders when you’ve planned your talking points
  • Efficiency – When you know the basics of what you’ll be saying, it streamlines the communication process. There will be less confusion, misunderstandings, and waiting for answers
  • Customer relations – Your communication needs to be timely and relevant to make your customers feel heard and respected
  • Brand awareness – Every time outside audiences hear from your company, you should sound the same. This helps establish a clear reputation
  • Strategic alignment – Communicating with shareholders is always an opportunity to advance your business strategy. You need to plan to ensure your messaging is aligned with your goals
  • Accountability – Having information come from multiple disparate sources is an easy way to confuse your audience. When there’s a plan in place, everyone knows what they’re responsible for, and you can trust that everything gets done right

Without a corporate communications plan, everything from product announcements to customer service calls can end in chaos.

What are the key elements of a corporate communication plan?

When you’re creating your team’s corporate communication plan, there’s a lot to consider. Because this strategy is meant to encompass all the ways you engage with the world at large, it needs to be comprehensive.

Work together with all stakeholders to ensure you don’t miss any important points of contact. Craft a plan for each of the following elements:

Objectives and goals

As you set out on your communication journey, it’s important to have a guiding light or two. Your goals for communicating are likely going to be different during a large-scale event, a product launch, or routine customer service. Still, they should all tie back to your company’s business objectives.

Think about how you want your company to present itself. What tone should your communication take? If customers described your brand in one word, what would you want that word to be?

Your overall communication goals should be condensed to a handful of measurable outcomes. Maybe you want to increase traffic to your website or get more social media engagement. Whatever you choose, keep these goals in mind as you plan.

Target audience

The way you communicate with different customer segments will be different, let alone different types of shareholders. Clearly define these segments and decide how you want to be perceived by each.

This should include:

• • Existing customers
  • Potential customers
  • Employees
  • Shareholders
  • The media
  • Government officials

The audience you’re speaking to will determine everything from the amount of information you offer to the channels you communicate through. Your plan will need to account for every segment.

Key messages

To stay consistent across all communication channels, you need to have a few key messages. What information do you want each segment to take away from interacting with your company?

These messages should be clear but provide enough wiggle room to keep your communication from feeling formulaic. Customers have a deep desire for human connection, especially with the rise of AI. Find ways to leave space for this connection while getting your points across

Communication channels

Just as the way you speak with investors and partners will be different from the way you speak with potential customers, the channels you use for these interactions will vary. Remember, the medium is the message.

You aren’t going to close a B2B deal on Snapchat, and you won’t want to connect with your Gen Z employees through a printed newsletter. For each of your segments and key messages, decide what the best channel for communication is.

This isn’t only about social or traditional media. Some communication, like a product launch or workshop, needs you to think outside the box. Maybe a webinar or immersive guerilla marketing technique will work best.

Timeline

Based on your team’s resources, how often will you communicate with your audience? Again, this will change and shift based on the situation and the audience you’re speaking to.

For example, when touching base with a specific client, you’ll avoid overcommunication, while during a product launch, you’ll have a specific timeline for rolling out information.

Crisis management

No one wants to think about a crisis, but having a plan in place can help mitigate the damage and protect your company’s reputation.

Your crisis communication plan should include protocols for handling different types of crises, designated spokespersons, and a clear chain of command.

How to measure the effectiveness of a corporate communication plan?

As you work to implement and improve your corporate communication plan, you need to have specific benchmarks to keep you on track. Each of your goals and objectives can be tied to a specific KPI. This way every time you connect with your audience, you can learn and improve your strategy.

• • Media coverage – How often are you mentioned, and what’s the tone that you’re spoken of by print, digital, and broadcast media outlets?
  • Social media engagement – Based on followers, likes, comments, and shares, what level of response are you getting from users on social media?
  • Customer feedback – Utilize reviews, surveys, and interviews to gauge customer satisfaction with your communication
  • Website traffic – Examine page views, unique visitors, and time spent on your site to see how successful are your communication efforts at bringing people to your site
  • Stakeholder relationships – Gather qualitative data on how your communication efforts affect your relationships and standing with your stakeholders

Post-communication, you and your team can have a meeting to note the strengths and weaknesses of your strategy. These post-mortems are made far easier and more effective when your communication solutions are built with them in mind. Look for tools that prioritize data collection and arm you with the advanced analytics you need to continuously improve.

Frequently asked questions

How often should a corporate communication plan be updated?

Your communications plan is a vital part of your brand’s reputation. If it gets out of date, it likely won’t reflect your company’s values and goals anymore. A good rule of thumb is to review and revise your plan at least once a year.

Of course, if your team goes through any significant changes you’ll need to update your communication plan as well. You don’t want to wait until there’s a fire to know where your extinguishers are.

Who should be involved in creating a corporate communication plan?

The short answer is anyone who may be communicating with those outside your company and anyone whose department may be communicating about. Having all the stakeholders in the room when decisions are made ensures you don’t miss anything important in your planning.

If we zoom in on the key people who should be involved, you’ll want to include:

• • Senior Leadership – The senior management team should be actively engaged in the creation of the communication plan to ensure alignment with the overall corporate strategy and goals
  • Marketing and Communication – As one of the main groups that will be using the corporate communication plan, the marketing team must be involved
  • PR Team – Any communication that happens with the media requires input from the PR department
  • Legal Team – You need to be sure that all your communications adhere to relevant regulations and guidelines
  • Customer Service Team – As another group that will regularly be using this plan, the customer service team needs to have a say and fully understand the strategy

The goal is to cover all your bases and ensure everyone involved in external communications is involved in planning for them.

How does digital media impact corporate communication plans?

As soon as you include digital media in your corporate communication plan, you open up the door to:

• • • Extended Reach – Every message your company shares digitally will make it to more people and exist for a longer time
    • Increased Interaction – Unlike more traditional ways of communicating with your audience, digital media has space for two-way conversations. You’ll need to plan for real-time feedback and questions
    • Brand Image – People expect a look into the workings and values of your brand when you’re online. This is a great way to connect with your audience and build credibility
    • Data – When you use digital media for your advertising, you gain access to a wellspring of information and data. You can empower data-driven decisions and utilize precise targeting

Going digital means you’ll have to be even more precise with your communications plan because there’s far more connection happening. However, it also allows you to make a far bigger impact.

Meet the Kaltura Video Solution for corporate communication

Successful corporate communication is engaging, interactive, and visually appealing. Video checks all these boxes, especially when you use the right tools.

Kaltura Events lets you easily create and share engaging video-based experiences at scale while providing a wide range of features to keep viewers hooked. With an extensive suite of branding tools, you can customize any video content to fit right in with your communications strategy.

With granular data and performance analytics, you can track the success of videos, understand viewer behavior, and make data-driven decisions to improve your communication efforts as you scale.

Furthermore, Kaltura’s growing set of AI tools offers automation and simplification. By harnessing the power of AI, you can streamline your communication, save time and resources, and ultimately grow your audience with ease.