A strategic stakeholder communications essay. A few notes to take care of for the essay writing..

1. Situation Analysis
-A brief overview of the market environment for campaign in relation to current and future trends.
-An analysis of your selected product/campaign in relation to its competitive environment and brand identity. This could include its positioning relative to competitors, trends, buyer behaviour, current customer segments and profiles, challenges and opportunities and current promotional activities.
-Mapping key stakeholders using a recognised mapping model.
-Identify and justify the target audience

Objectives:
– Communications objectives should refer to how the communications should affect the mind of the target audience.
– Eg. Generate awareness, attitudes, interest or trial
– DAGMAR – Defining Advertising Goals for Measuring Advertising Responses
– AIDA – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action

Examples
– To increase awareness from 35% to 50% within eight weeks of the campaign launch among 25-45 year-old ABC1 women
– To maintain brand X as the preferred brand (or number one brand) of soft drink among at least 50% of current UK buyers
– To include Orange Wines in the repertoire of possible wine purchases among 20% of ABC1 wine buyers within 12 months

Strategy
– Strategy summarizes ‘how we get there’ – how the objectives will be achieved.
– Drives tactics in the same direction
– Summarizes tactics
– Helps to harmonize and integrate all the tactical communications tools.

Strategy –STOP and SIT
– Segmentation – how is the audience broken up?
– Target audience – which are chosen? Who is the ideal customer/stakeholder?
– Objectives – strategy must fulfil objectives
– Positioning – of the product or service AND
– Stages – is there a sequence or series of stages?
– Integration – does it all integrate smoothly?
– Tools – channels to be used

Tactics
– Tactics are the details of strategy.
– Communications tools within the communications mix
– What happens when and for how much!

The MarcommsMix
– Advertising
– Public Relations
– Sponsorship
– Direct Marketing and Personal Selling
– Sales Promotion
– Events (including Experiential Marketing)
– Social, Search and other Interactive Media

Action
– Actions implement the tactics
– Project (media) planning
– Timeline
– Prioritising
– People management
– Get staff/agencies to deliver on time and on budget

Control
– How performance will be monitored, measured and controlled against the objectives.
– If a campaign is focused on boosting brand awareness this can be measured through surveys
– If campaign is focused on engagement then it is necessary to identify how many visitors, customers, enquirers are emerging from each communication tool.