Do I need a marketing and communications plan?

In today's fast-paced digital environment, a well-crafted marketing communications plan is more than a tool—it's essential if you’re wanting to get people’s attention and achieve the outcomes you want for your business.

What is a marketing communications plan?

A marketing and communications plan is like a high-level roadmap for what you want to say, when you want to say it, and how you will deliver it. The plan needs to carefully consider your stakeholders or audiences and the best way to communicate with them to achieve your objectives. 

It will also highlight potential risks and how to mitigate them, while setting the targets that you want to meet. These could range from how much product you want to sell, to how many people you want to reach.

Ultimately, your marketing and communications plan will be your blueprint for building a successful marketing campaign.

Why do I need a marketing communications plan?

If nobody is steering the ship, you don’t know where it will end up! A marketing communications plan is essential for channelling your creativity into tangible results; identifying all of the things you need to do; and showing how you will keep everything on course.

It can help guide your wider team by setting out who is responsible for each task and when they need to have it completed to keep things moving swiftly. Marketing communications plans also contain your key messages, and importantly, the measures you’ll use to evaluate the success of your campaign.

A good marketing comms plan also sets out what tactics you will use and the various channels needed to get your message to the right audience. For example, what digital tools or social media platforms you should use to reach your target demographic. It also helps identify and mitigate potential risks.

Questions to consider

If you are using posters and social media graphics to illustrate your messaging, do you have an experienced graphic designer, who can produce campaign collateral suitable for mobile phones through to giant billboards? You’ll need printing and advertising partners too, who are able to deliver a high quality product on time and within budget. Are you also equipped to deliver high quality photos, video, branded products or presentations?

Do you have concise messages or a catchy slogan that will help people to remember you? A professionally crafted plan prepared by experts who have up-to-date insights into what is resonating with people across the country can help to ensure this.

Overall, there is a lot of detail to consider when creating a marketing comms plan, and this blog touches on the tip of the iceberg. That’s where having an experienced, well connected team (like us!) to take care of everything can save you a lot of headaches and allow you to focus on what you do best.

Help with your marketing communications plan

If you’d like to discuss how we can enhance your marketing and communications, or help with any of your other needs, please give us a call or email hello@prioritycomms.co.nz for a confidential chat. We’d love to hear from you!

Priority Communications is a highly regarded public relations, strategic communications and marketing business based in Christchurch, Canterbury. We work with clients across New Zealand in almost every sector. Alongside regularly producing award-winning marketing communications plans, we support our clients with expert internal and external communications, covering all areas of marketing and advertising, graphic design, photography and videography, branding, and crisis communications. Check out our full suite of services here.

You can also take a look at some of our work here.