Communications Planning, Oversight, and Capability Building

Creating Impactful Strategies That Drive Business Growth

With the media landscape changing swiftly, pinpointing the most effective channels and allocating budgets accordingly can be a significant challenge. Some organizations have substantial budgets but are unsure if their spending is allocated effectively to drive the best results. Others may have limited budgets and struggle to determine the most impactful way to utilize them. My role is to develop a tailored strategic communication plan that aligns with your business objectives, ensuring that the most effective channels are selected for each message and audience, maximizing impact, engagement and return on investment.

My Approach

Communication is not just about visibility; it must serve an objective, resonate with your target audiences, and directly support your business goals. By acting as an extension of your team, I bring extensive experience and provide high-level strategic oversight, planning expertise, and capacity-building to your organization. This holistic approach ensures your communications are strategic, audience-focused, measurable, and designed to create impact for your brand and business objectives. Equally important is brand presence; I focus on elevating your brand, ensuring that every communication effort strengthens your brand equity and aligns with your overall business strategy.

The Four Offerings:

To address the wide variety of client needs, I offer four key services:

  1. Communications and Brand Audit

  2. Strategic Planning

  3. Oversight

  4. Capability Building

Flexible Engagement Options: The first three offerings can be engaged independently or combined to create a holistic communication service that fits your specific needs and challenges. Additionally, Capacity Building can be integrated with any of these services to enhance your internal capabilities, whether you're looking to develop your marketing and communications teams or streamline existing processes.

Providing a Comprehensive Leadership Role

When all four offerings are combined, I assume the role of acting communications lead for your organization, providing strategic leadership and oversight until you are ready to hire a dedicated, high-level communications professional. This flexible and comprehensive approach is also a cost-effective solution for organizations that may not have the budget to hire a full-time senior resource. It ensures that your unique needs are met, objectives are achieved, and communications efforts are effectively managed and optimized.

Scroll down for the details on each of the 4 offerings.

Offering 1: Communications & Brand Audit

Laying the Groundwork for Effective Communications

The first offering focuses on gaining a deep understanding of your organization’s objectives, business priorities, opportunities, and challenges. This audit serves as the foundation for all strategic planning efforts.  

The process starts with understanding your products and services, stakeholders, and messaging strategy. Existing brand assets are also reviewed along with available brand personas, guidelines, messaging and campaigns. Finally, the process also considers the competitive environment, providing insights from best practices and context to help position your organization more effectively.

This holistic approach ensures that any subsequent strategies are tailored to your unique needs, differentiating you from your competitors, enabling you to communicate more effectively, resonate with your audience, and achieve measurable results. By laying a solid foundation, the Communications & Brand Audit sets the stage for impactful communications that support your business goals.

Offering 2: Strategic Planning

Developing a Media-Agnostic Strategic Communications Plan

Building on insights from the Communications & Brand Audit, this offering involves crafting an integrated strategic communication plan that aligns with your business objectives. By maintaining a media-agnostic stance, the strategy emphasizes reaching the targeted audiences with the most effective messages, regardless of the medium. This approach ensures that your communications budget is optimized for maximum impact, fostering a cohesive and flexible communication framework that can adapt to changing market dynamics and business needs.

This strategic planning approach integrates various communication disciplines – such as web, social, traditional media, and community engagement - into a unified strategy that resonates with your audience. The outcome is a holistic plan leveraging optimal channels, and the development of a roadmap for campaigns and activities designed to achieve your strategic goals.

Offering 3: Oversight

Ensuring Strategic Alignment and Adapting to Change

Following the development of a comprehensive strategic communication plan, ongoing oversight is essential for its effective implementation and sustained success. This offering provides strategic oversight to monitor the execution of campaigns and activities, evaluate performance against established KPIs, and adapt to any internal or external changes that may arise.

By tracking campaign performance and maintaining alignment with your business objectives, strategic oversight ensures that your communication efforts remain relevant and impactful. This proactive approach allows for timely adjustments based on performance data and unforeseen developments, ensuring that your communication strategy and activities evolve with your organization's needs and the dynamic market landscape.

Strategic oversight fosters collaboration among stakeholders and ensures that communication activities adhere to the established strategy while adapting as needed.

Offering 4: Capacity Building

Enhancing Your Team's Strategic Communications Skills

Building a capable in-house communications team is vital for maintaining effective and strategic communication efforts. This offering focuses on upskilling your existing resources through hands-on training, practical learning experiences, and collaborative workflows. By working closely with your marketing and communications teams, I help enhance their strategic capabilities, build confidence, and provide the support needed to manage communications effectively. For organizations in transition phases, I also assist in setting up departmental structures and identifying necessary resource profiles.

Let’s Connect

I appreciate that selecting the right consultant goes beyond expertise and experience. It’s equally important to find someone who aligns with your vision and the dynamics of your team. If you’re looking for a partner who can share your values and bring fresh perspectives, let’s set up some time to connect and explore how I can help drive your business forward.