How To Create a Communication Strategy for Every Audience

Communicating with audiences is an example of a universal, high-stakes, recurring, and occasionally urgent business activity. This type of task calls for a communication strategy, or a set of guidelines and processes designed to help a business consistently and efficiently communicate well.

Here’s how communication strategies work, how to build your own, and how to use your strategy to improve audience communications.

What is a communication strategy?

A communication strategy outlines how a company will share information with its target audiences, both internal and external. It includes communication goals, key brand messages, audience information, selected communication channels, and timing and frequency guidelines.

Many businesses build out separate internal and external communications strategies to meet the needs of each group:

Internal communications strategy

Internal communications engage employees, board members, partner organizations, and other internal stakeholders. Effective strategies of this type clearly convey information and expectations, boost employee engagement, improve internal brand image, and facilitate two-way communication between stakeholders and leadership teams. Some businesses also create multiple internal audiences, building separate strategies for board members and staff, for example, or segmenting employees according to variables like in-office versus remote work or full-time versus seasonal employment.

External communications strategy

External communications are part of a company’s public relations and marketing strategy. They target current and potential customers, media entities, suppliers, potential investors, shareholders, and any other stakeholders outside of the company. Their purpose is to increase brand awareness, attract new clients, and boost sales.

Effective communication strategies improve internal efficiency and message clarity, helping you build stakeholder relationships, ensure brand consistency, and align communication practices with strategic business goals. You can also use them to outline and expedite crisis communications, minimizing the real and reputational consequences of unexpected events.

Communication strategy vs. communication plan

Although some people use the terms interchangeably, a communication strategy isn’t the same thing as a communication plan. Here’s the difference:

• Communication strategy. High-level and strategic. It outlines an organization’s general approach to communicating with its audiences and establishes how and where to reach key groups.

• Communication plan. Focused and tactical. It’s associated with a particular campaign or communication need and includes specific messages, timelines, and action items.

A plan is a strategy in use. A strong communication strategy expedites the process of building and executing plans, improves message consistency, and allows you to measure the effect of any tweaks to your approach.

How to create a communication strategy

1. Set goals
2. Identify key audiences
3. Analyze your audiences
4. List key communication channels and tactics
5. Create key messages
6. Outline frequency and timing
7. Define roles and responsibilities
8. Incorporate tools

Clear communication can make or break your business. Poor communication damages your reputation, while consistent, strategic outreach builds trust in your brand and gives you a competitive edge. Here’s how to build a successful communication strategy in eight steps:

1. Set goals

Communication strategies exist to facilitate effective, efficient communication with an organization’s target audiences, but they can also target more specific goals based on a company’s current needs. Examples include “increase employee engagement,” “improve brand reputation,” and “attract investors.”

Use the SMART goal framework to set strategic communication goals that support your company’s larger business and marketing objectives.

2. Identify key audiences

Determine which audiences your strategy will target. Start by listing all of your business’s potential audiences. Here’s an example:

• Internal audiences

• Employees

• Leadership

• Board members

• Partner organizations

• External audiences

• Current customers

• Prospective customers

• Prospective employees

• Regulatory bodies

• Suppliers

• The press

• Potential partners

• Potential investors

• Shareholders

• The general public

Next, identify the most important audiences for your business. You’ll target these groups separately (providing they have distinct needs) and combine others. If your primary goal is to increase sales, you might focus on current and potential customers and roll other external audiences into the general public category, for example.

You can also subdivide audiences into specific segments, grouping employees by location or job function, or current customers according to subscription status, purchase frequency, or any other metric relevant to your goals. Avoid the temptation to create more segments than you can realistically manage. You’ll see better engagement from consistent, high-quality outreach to one general group than from poor communication with nine hyper-focused segments.

3. Analyze your audience

Use an audience analysis to dig into each of your remaining audience groups, taking note of the following information:

• Demographic info. Age, gender, geographic location, educational background, and socioeconomic status.

• Media consumption habits. Preferred communication channels, styles and formats, engagement patterns, and expectations around company communication.

• Decision-drivers. Pain points, interests, needs, values, and goals.

You can also research organizations like yours that successfully communicate with similar target audiences and analyze their content, publication cadences, and channel selection for insight into what works with a particular audience. 

4. List key communication channels and tactics

Use your audience research to identify key channels and tactics for each primary audience, including multiple communication channels, when relevant. Here’s an example that includes one internal and external audience:

Internal audiences

• Employees

• Channel: Internal email

• Tactics: All-company emails, personalized emails, email newsletter

External audiences

• Current customers

• Channel: Email

• Tactics: Email marketing newsletter, email blasts

• Channel: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook

• Tactics: Social media posts, reels, and stories; livestreams 

• Channel: Company website

• Tactics: Splash pages, hero image CTAs

5. Create key messages

Create messages that reinforce your company’s vision, mission, or value proposition and support your strategic communication goals. These are brand messages, not specific updates—think “committed to quality,” not “potluck next Tuesday.” Here’s an example from Soup Nation, a hypothetical ecommerce company that sells vegan soup bases and wants to increase brand loyalty:

Internal audiences

• Employees

• Your feedback makes us better

• Balance matters

• Help us help you

External audiences

• Current and prospective customers

• Nutrient-dense, 100% plant-based, organic,

• Functional ingredients for whole-body wellness

• A carbon-neutral company

• Sustainable sourcing, packaging, and shipping

• Subscribe for discounts, free trials, and early access to limited-edition products

• The general public

• Healthy, sustainable, delicious

• A carbon-neutral company

• Soup fixes (almost) everything

Your brand messaging helps you put messaging strategies into action and ensure message consistency across communication plans. Here’s how Soup Nation might announce a co-branding partnership with a vegetarian protein company, for example:

• Employees. We’re partnering with Fortunate Chicken to release a limited run of ready-to-eat high-protein soups. Got questions? We’ve got answers. Attend our optional remote all-hands this Friday to learn more, and contact [employee leading initiative] with feedback or questions.

• Current and prospective customers. Soup just got even healthier. We’re teaming up with award-winning plant-based meat company Fortunate Chicken to create four ready-to-eat protein-packed soups. It’s soup for your soul (and your swole). Early access for subscribers.

• The general public. We’re announcing our new partnership with Fortunate Chicken, a plant-based meat startup committed to reducing carbon emissions by transforming industrial food systems. Fortunate Chicken shares our love of healthy, delicious food and our environmental commitments. We’re excited to support our partner’s ambitious sustainability goals and offer our customers a new line of protein-packed soups.

6. Outline frequency and timing

Optimal communication timing and frequency will depend on your specific messages, audiences, channels, and business goals. Develop frequency guidelines for your internal and external communications strategies, incorporating parameters for different message types. Although you won’t be able to anticipate every possible scenario, you can create a plan for the messages you expect to send.

Here’s a sample by message type and channel:

Internal strategy timing and frequency

• Audience: Employees

• Message type: Company news

• Channel: Email

• Timing: Monthly internal newsletter

• Channel: Meeting

• Timing: Weekly company-wide all-hands

• Message type: Time-sensitive or action required

• • • Channel: Email

      • Timing: Immediate all-staff email, follow-up email one to three business days later, next internal newsletter

    • Channel: Meetings

      • Timing: Weekly all-hands

External strategy timing and frequency

• Audience: Current and prospective customers

• Message type: Product launch

• Email: Email blast 30 days, 10 days, and one day prior to launch, “reviews are in” email one week after launch

• Social: Organic social campaign at three posts per week from 30 days prior to launch to one week post-launch, paid social at one post per week for the same time period

• Message type: Sale or promotion

• Email: Email blast three days before event, one day before event, midday day-of

• Social: One post per day starting three days before event and concluding day-of

These guidelines can help you efficiently share key updates and optimize your distribution strategy over time. If you’re not seeing enough engagement, tweak frequency and timing, and evaluate the results.

7. Define roles and responsibilities

List key steps required to execute a communications plan and name the responsible employees. Here’s a sample plan from an internal communications strategy:

Internal communications strategy: Time-sensitive or action required

1. Send details to marketing communications lead and project manager: Leadership

2. Add tasks to project management software: Project manager

3. Draft key messages; share approved copy with project manager and leadership; send newsletter to admin assistant: Marketing communications lead

4. Send all-company email and schedule follow-up email: Leadership

5. Add to all-hands agenda and upcoming internal newsletter: Admin assisstant

8. Incorporate tools

Communications professionals use software tools to save time and reduce errors, so explore your options and note how you’ll use each technology. Here are a few types to consider:

• Email platforms. List internal and external email platforms, including relevant addresses, current admins, access procedures, and key in-platform features, such as auto-scheduling and A/B testing tools.

• Artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Generative AI tools can draft messages, proofread content, and provide insights and guidance to help you optimize tone and structure and improve clarity.

• Social media platforms. Include information about key social channels and social media scheduling software, specifying how and when to use embedded functions like post scheduling and publication time optimization.

• Project management tools. Build out communication plan workflows in your project management software, naming file-sharing tools and relevant integrations.