I was once told that you should never leave your audience with more points to remember than the number of fingers on one hand of an experienced carpenter. I will assume this is a very safe carpenter and provide you with five points based on the word gaffe, which is exactly what you can avoid if you remember these five points when developing your communication strategy.

Goal

What is the goal of your communication? Do you want to sell, inspire, motivate, change behavior? The goal of the communication should be the first thing you consider. Often times the goal of the communication isn’t as clear as you might first thing.  For example, often times the perceived goal is to increase sales or encourage employees to take a particular action like signing up for benefits or completing their year-end reviews. Many times the error comes from focusing on the action, not what leads to the action.

If I want to increase sales, I first need to explain to the potential customer the need they have and how my product can help. Years ago in the Midwest, BP ran a radio ad that claimed its gasoline was better at preventing fuel line freeze up. The jingle talked about the dangers and frustrations of being stranded on a cold-weather day. It ended with, “If you don’t go, BP pays the tow.” It was brilliant. It identified a need – reliable transportation in cold weather – and explained how BP guaranteed that service. What it didn’t say is that the use of ethanol by BP and most other gasoline providers in the area virtually guaranteed there would not be fuel line freeze up due to the chemical nature of ethanol and water.

Audience
Who are you trying to reach? After determining your business and communication goal, this is the most important step. If you are selling

Early on in my career the human resources department failed to include the communications department when they looked to hire a new class of apprentices. They expected a large turnout and had rented an empty storefront at the mall to process the applications and screen the candidates. They created a classified ad for the Sunday paper, and a radio ad to play during drive times of a local radio station. The two-day window for accepting applications arrived but the applicants didn’t. Less than one hundred candidates applied during the two-day window. The pool of candidates was not sufficiently large enough to generate a quality class and the HR department decided to consult the communications department.

In reviewing the HR department’s efforts, I discovered it had made two major gaffes. First, the radio station they selected for the ads was the highest rated station in the area, but its main audience was listeners age 14-21, not an age group that would be interested or ready to work in a heavy manufacturing environment.  The second gaffe they made was apparent in both the radio and newspaper ads. It never listed the potential salary. The economy was booming and if the HR department wanted to attract candidates, it needed to let people know how much an apprentice could earn. There were a lot of well paying positions available.

Switching the radio ad to run on two stations with smaller overall audiences but the target age group, and adding the salary to both the radio and newspapers ads had a significant impact in the result the following week. More than 1,000 applicants applied over the two-day period, a ten-fold increase from the previous week.

Format

What is the best format considering the goal, audience and frequency? A billboard is great for the public, but not a great format for an internal audience. Likewise, video is great as long as the audience has access to watch the video. Also, depending on the frequency, you need to consider whether you can produce the communication in the desired format to meet the frequency goals. If the frequency is weekly, but it creating a video takes two weeks for production, than video is likely not the correct format unless the production time constraints can be overcome.

If the audience includes family members of employees, something that is delivered directly to the home might be more effective than an email sent to employees’ work email address.

After a significant safety accomplishment, plant management wanted to reward employees for a job well done. Previous efforts included gasoline gift cards, which were well liked and well received, especially as gasoline started to climb over the $2 per gallon mark. But the plant management wanted to ensure the families were aware not only of the accomplishment but the company’s recognition of the accomplishment. Gasoline cards would likely be used for gas, coffee, snacks and smokes and an employee’s family would probably never know of the $50 gift card. The challenge was to deliver something that an employee would be more likely to use with other family members and in process explain why they had received the reward. The solution was a movie package which included four movie tickets and credit for popcorn and drinks. The result, for the next four weekends I saw more employees at the local theater with their families than I had seen in the previous two years. Nearly all of the family members commented to me about the reason for the free tickets – safety. At first employees grumbled about the change from the gasoline cards, but the following year, they wanted the movie package again. It was popular with them and their families.

Frequency

How often should you communicate with the audience for maximum effectiveness and reach? Consider that surveys have shown that people need to hear something three to five times before it resonates, you should consider a frequency that achieves that minimum, preferably through multiple channels. Multiple channels are a double-edge sword. It allows us to reach the public or employee more frequently, but it also means that we need to create multiple formats of our message to do that.

For internal audiences, this may mean an article in the newsletter, talking points for the supervisor and a blog post on the intranet, and a slide in the all-employee presentation. This approach offers four opportunities but it is important to keep in mind that due to the number of channels, an employee may only pay attention to two channels so repetitive messaging on all channels may be required. What does that mean? A series of articles in the newsletter over two or three editions or multiple blog posts from different perspectives are two ways of creating multiple opportunities within the same channel.

The same applies to external audiences just with different vehicles. Direct mail, newspaper advertisements, radio promotions and television commercials may all be required to ensure the message reaches the audience. If one of these vehicles is more effective, the decision may be to use just one vehicle multiple times over a period of time to achieve the needed exposure.

Execution

How are you going to execute the communication? Who is going to prepare the communication? Who is paying for the communication? What is the approval process? What is the delivery process?

In the apprentice class example used above, the human resources department was on the right track, but it executed poorly. Radio and newspaper was a great vehicle to reach the audience, but there were a couple of mistakes in the execution. It is important to have the right business partners to ensure that the plan is executed properly. Poor placement, poor use of technology or poor quality all reflects on the communicator.