How to create the right communication strategy for the client using a presentation

Investing the necessary time and resources into developing a communication strategy is an important first step in getting your presentation or project to appeal to the most important audience. Because what good is that beautifully crafted keynote speech if it can’t move your audience to action?

A clear message strategy provides an essential roadmap that guides your audience along a path that educates, engages, and inspires them.

There are 3 components:

1. Know your audience

Ask important questions, thanks to which you will know exactly what your audience wants and what you can give them.

– Who are they?

– What motivates them?

What keeps them awake at night?

– And what do they need to hear from you, what is important to them?

When studying the target audience, you need to create characters that will be suitable for your direction. Imagine yourself as this character who would like a presentation, and describe yourself in detail (how old are you, what do you do, where do you work, your marital status, where you live, your income, your hobby, how much time do you spend working)

Without a full understanding of your audience, you won’t be able to convey important information in a presentation.

If you really know your audience, you must be well-versed in their needs. If this is an audience that you are unfamiliar with or not intimately familiar with, you will need to make some generalizations.

2. Interview your audience

Once you understand what drives your most critical audience, you can figure out what messages will resonate with them. And if you’re not sure, ask them. Take the time to conduct interviews to gain clarity on what your audience needs. You don’t necessarily need deep quantitative data to create a solid presentation structure, but you do need enough quality feedback to add nuance to your messages. For example, you need enough information to identify recurring themes related to why the audience is working with you/buying from you, common fears, or immediate objections that need to be overcome.

Often, the customer teams in your organization can serve as proxies for these customer voices. Consider engaging your key sales or account executives who are on the front lines every day listening to customers and providing feedback. This may include answering questions such as: What do our customers consider to be the most important value we provide to them? Or what is missing in our communications for clients?

Finally, consider how detailed your posts need to be to reach your audience because one size won’t fit all. High-level messaging can focus on value drivers and benefits, while audience-specific messaging can lead to more detailed benefits for your unique product or service.

For example, your messages may include the topic of how your product or service delivers value for money. Therefore, it is very important to take the time to understand these differences and create a layered communication architecture that meets their unique goals and needs.

3. Create a strategy

If you’ve done your best to identify and empathize with your audience in order to understand what they need to hear, the communication strategy will almost write itself. In other words, in your interviews, conversations, and testimonials, you will begin to see how key topics lend themselves to overarching messaging, and then how to communicate that message to the audience even more.

At this stage, one of the biggest challenges can be achieving internal agreement on what is most important to include in your strategy. That’s why it’s important to think ahead and often about your internal stakeholders — it can save you a lot of time and heartache. It is critical to form a team of internal stakeholders at the start of your messaging project and then engage them at critical times, such as after gathering initial feedback and topics, after completion of the first draft, and before finalization. These roles include:

Members. Contributors are your critical subject matter experts and confidants (such as account managers, sales leaders, etc.) who can provide valuable insights and should directly contribute to the development of the message strategy.

Reviewers: Reviewers are often experts in the subject area and their input is essential to ensure the correct structure of the message. Their input is important (especially for internal support), but the project does not depend on them. Ask yourself: “Who can stop or redirect these efforts if they are not turned on?”

Approver(s): Who has the final say in the communication strategy?

The approver(s) is the person (or groups) who can approve the strategy before it is finalized and implemented.

While marketers of the past had to work hard to break into this small pool of channels, today’s communicators have endless possibilities for getting their messages out there—and right in the palm of your hand. However, in the end, an effective message strategy based on what your audience most wants to hear ensures that your message becomes music and not just noise.

If you want to order a presentation design and a well-thought-out strategy, please contact the Dizz Agency team of professionals.