Basic business functions, from managing change to launching a new product, require good communication. Otherwise, you risk unclear messaging, resistance to change and jeopardizing the success of your project.
A communication plan clarifies key messages, timelines and objectives to ensure alignment and success.
In this article, you’ll find out what a communication plan entails, why it’s necessary for success and when to use one. You’ll also learn how to create a good communication plan and get access to a free template.
What is a communication plan?
A communication plan is an outline of how your organization shares information with stakeholders to achieve specific objectives, such as implementing company-wide change or launching new products. Business owners and leaders use these plans to determine key messages and communication timelines.
There are two types of communication plans:
An internal communication plan focuses on sharing information within the organization. For example, if you’re implementing a hybrid work model, an internal communication plan outlines how you’ll tell employees about new policies.
An external communication plan outlines how you’ll share information with audiences outside the organization, such as customers, investors, partners and the public. For example, during a product launch, an external communication plan details the plans for advertising, press releases and social media campaigns.
You can use both types of communication plans for the same project. Say you’re rolling out a company-wide digital transformation. Here’s how you’d use internal and external communication plans in this situation:
An internal communication plan updates teams on how the new systems will work and the impact on their day-to-day work
An external communication plan updates customers and shareholders about how the digital transformation enhances the buying experience
Free communication plan template
Use this template to create a clear communication plan that outlines your goals, audience and metrics for success:
Download our communication plan template
Key components of a communication plan
An effective communication plan includes specific elements that ensure that all communication activities align with the overall objective.
Here’s a breakdown of the essential components:
Key components | Definitions |
Objectives | The communication plan’s goals, such as aligning stakeholders on a new business initiative |
Target audience/stakeholders | Those who will receive the communication, including internal stakeholders (e.g., employees and managers) and external stakeholders (e.g., customers and investors) |
Key messages | The core information you want to convey to your audience |
Communication channels | The platforms for delivering communication, like emails, social media or in-person meetings |
Timeline | The schedule of when communications will take place, including key milestones and deadlines |
Roles and responsibilities | Those who are responsible for creating, delivering and monitoring each part of the communication plan |
Success metrics | The criteria for evaluating the plan’s effectiveness, like email engagement rates, survey feedback or changes in stakeholder behavior |
Although not essential, you may also want to create a contingency plan.
A contingency plan helps you prepare for potential challenges, such as unexpected delays in approvals from key stakeholders, that could disrupt the communication timeline. The plan ensures that you have alternative strategies and responses in place.
When should you use a communication plan?
A communication plan is useful for any project or business transformation that requires effective, strategic and consistent communication.
Here are a few examples of when to use a communication plan:
Launching new campaigns or projects. Sync information about new products to align messaging for internal teams and clients.
Planning complex initiatives. Clarify communication activity for complex projects, so project teams can easily manage communication amid busy and detailed work.
Navigating change. Inform employees about what to expect throughout a change, reducing uncertainty and increasing new policy adoption.
Addressing crises. Notify customers and stakeholders of urgent communications (such as product recalls) to manage your company’s reputation and brand image.
3 communication plan examples
Let’s look at three different use cases for communication plans. Each will show you how to structure a successful plan to achieve specific communication goals.
1. Ensuring cultural alignment in a company merger and acquisition
In this example, business leaders are merging two companies. The communication plan focuses on delivering a smooth transition and building a strong organizational culture.
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2. Increasing brand awareness
This communication management plan outlines how to share key messages and updates with stakeholders to increase brand awareness.
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Timeline |
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3. Launching a new product or service
This communication plan outlines how to share new product updates, such as sharing the product’s value with external stakeholders and ensuring internal teams know how the new product works.
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Why is a communication plan essential?
A communication plan ensures clear, strategic and effective information. These outcomes are crucial for several reasons:
Delivers relevant messaging. For example, during organizational change (like restructuring), a communication plan supports and prepares employees to adapt to the change successfully.
Aligns teams and individuals across the business. If you’re launching a new product, a communication plan aligns messaging in marketing, sales and customer service teams. Research also suggests that strong communication plays an essential role in project success.
Measures communication success. For instance, tracking email open rates and feedback to gauge employee engagement during a new policy rollout.
Creates targeted communications. In a merger and acquisition, a communication plan helps you prepare tailored messages to address specific concerns for each organization.
Create an effective communication plan in 8 steps
Follow this step-by-step overview to create an effective strategic communication plan.
1. Clarify the purpose
Clearly define the need for your communication plan. Are you launching a new product? Implementing company-wide change?
To clarify the purpose, ask yourself:
What you want to achieve
How effective communication can help you achieve it
Let’s use a product launch as an example:
What you want to achieve |
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How effective communication can help you achieve it |
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2. Establish key stakeholders
Identify the specific people or groups you want to reach. Knowing who you want to communicate with helps you tailor your communications to their needs and preferences.
For example, a busy sales team may prefer concise updates via an instant communication channel (like Slack). High-level executives might value more detailed breakdowns via email or face-to-face meetings.
Establish key stakeholders by listing all the teams and individuals (internal and external) affected by the project.
Let’s again use a company merger as an example. Here are all the stakeholders impacted by a merger:
Internal stakeholders | External stakeholders |
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3. Identify the appropriate communication channels
Select the most effective communication channels to reach your ideal demographic. Using the right channels ensures the audience receives and understands your message.
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Here are some ways to research communication preferences:
Conduct surveys. Collect feedback from internal and external stakeholders to understand their expectations, preferred communication methods and key concerns.
Analyze past interactions. Review past communications to identify trends in engagement, common questions and effective messaging styles.
Use CRM data. Leverage insights from your customer relationship management (CRM) tools to understand communication habits, preferred channels and previous responses to similar messages.
You might also assess your existing communication efforts to identify what works well and what needs improvement.
Perform a communication audit to assess your current efforts. Analyze the effectiveness of different channels through metrics such as:
Impressions (how many people see your communication)
Open rates (how many people open your communication)
Engagement levels (how many people engage with your communication by clicking, liking or sharing it)
Note: When choosing the ideal communication method, consider the nature of the messaging. For sensitive topics like job restructuring or changes to organizational roles, use in-person updates. For detailed and broad updates, email might be a better alternative.
4. Create a timeline
Develop a communication roadmap that outlines the essential updates and messages for your audience. For example, if you’re launching a product, set dates for the teaser campaign, official announcement and post-launch follow-ups.
The timeline enables you to monitor progress and ensure the plan stays on track.
Here’s how to create a communication plan timeline:
Identify the ideal start date. Choose a date that aligns with the project’s kickoff or the first key milestone. For example, if your digital transformation starts on March 1, plan your first communication on February 1 to prepare teams for the change.
Plot necessary communications. Determine the key messages and add them to the timeline.
Consider the frequency of communication. Ensure you have enough time between communications to prepare and write the messages.
Finalize the timeline. Review the timeframe to ensure that you schedule messages at appropriate intervals. In a new product launch, you might send customer follow-up emails at least two weeks after the launch date so people have time to try the product.
5. Assign roles to team members
Assign roles and responsibilities to ensure everyone understands what they need to do to deliver the plan successfully. Clear assignments will ensure a smooth and efficient execution.
To assign roles, clearly define who’s responsible for each task. Here’s how this would look for a new product launch:
Leaders communicate updates about the new product to internal teams and key stakeholders
The marketing team crafts and sends updates to potential and existing customers
The sales team engages with potential customers and drives product adoption
The customer support team prepares and shares FAQs and troubleshooting guides for customers
The product team provides detailed information on product features and timelines
Share these roles with your team via email, in person or using technology. In a sales CRM, for example, you can assign tasks to users. That way, all the responsibilities are in a central and accessible location.
How to assign tasks in Pipedrive
Use activities to outline communication roles and responsibilities directly in your CRM calendar. To streamline your communication efforts, create all your tasks in a central location.
Find activities by clicking the “Activities” icon on the left-side navigation menu:
Choose the format for your activity, including tasks, calls, meetings, deadlines and emails (or create a custom activity).
Head to the sales calendar or list view of the activities tab and click the “+ Activity” button:
When the “Schedule an activity” prompt appears, add the following activity details:
Title – the name of your activity
Type – the default or custom activity type
Time, date and duration – when and how long the activity is
Busy or free – activities are set to “Free” by default. If an activity is set to “Busy”, your customers can’t book that time slot through any Scheduler links
Note – a description of your activity (this is private and only visible within your Pipedrive account)
You can also link the deal, organization and contact to the activity. For example, if one of your tasks involves contacting a customer, you can link their contact information to the activity.
Here’s how this information appears in Pipedrive:
Next, add guests, locations or descriptions to your activity by expanding the section under the time, date and duration section of the activity window:
To complete activities, mark them as done in the activities list or calendar view:
Note: You must activate calendar sync to send activity invites. This process involves syncing your Pipedrive account to your preferred calendar system, such as Google Calendar, Microsoft Calendar or Outlook.
6. Set goals and milestones to measure success
Identify performance metrics to determine success. These metrics help you understand whether your communication efforts support the overall objective.
Imagine that the objective is to ensure employees successfully integrate and use a new company-wide system. To measure success, your metrics could include:
Monitoring employee questions about the software. Track the volume and nature of questions to identify common areas of confusion. A decrease in repetitive questions over time indicates a better understanding (and therefore implies better communication from you).
Gathering post-implementation feedback. Evaluate employee satisfaction and ease of use of the new system. High satisfaction indicates that your communications gave team members the knowledge and skills to use the software effectively.
Use the SMART goals framework to create clear, measurable and time-bound goals.
For example, a SMART goal for a plan around implementing a new internal system might look like this:
Increase employee understanding and engagement with the new system by 90% within three months by sharing effective communication and training materials about using the software.
7. Write the communication plan
To streamline the process, add all the information to a communication plan using a ready-made template (like the one provided in this article). Writing the plan allows you to add more detail and context about specific communications.
For example, here’s how you might detail the contents of each email around implementing a new system in the timeline component:
Announcement email. Introduce the new initiative or system, explain its purpose and outline the next steps: “We’re excited to launch our new company-wide system to streamline workflows and enhance collaboration. Here’s what you need to know to get started.”
Training reminder email. Provide details about upcoming training sessions, including dates, times and registration links: “Don’t miss your chance to join a hands-on training session to learn how to maximize the new system.”
FAQ email. Address frequently asked questions or common issues: “We’ve compiled answers to the top questions about the new system. Check out our FAQs for quick solutions.”
Post-implementation email. Request feedback and highlight success stories: “Now that the system is live, we’d love to hear from you. Share your experience and see how other teams use the platform.”
Implement systems to create and send emails to segmented groups using email marketing software. For example, you can use Campaigns by Pipedrive to build emails, filter your audience, automate messages and analyze performance.
Note: Artificial intelligence (AI) is growing in popularity. Consider how AI tools might enhance your communications. For example, you could use AI-powered writing assistants to draft emails faster and ensure consistent tone and style across all communications.
How to automatically generate emails with Pipedrive AI
Use Pipedrive’s AI email writer to craft professional, high-quality emails in just one click. It saves time, minimizes writer’s block and ensures that communication aligns with your tone and style.
To use Pipesrive’s AI email writer, enable email sync. Go to “Personal preferences” > “Email sync” > “Email AI”. Then, enable the Email content generation option:
The email creation feature will appear in your email composer. Click “Write my email” to get started.
You’ll see a prompt with three fields for adding additional information about the email's content, tone and length.
Select “Generate email”. After a few moments, you’ll see an email content suggestion.
You can copy the content into a new email or select “Regenerate” to create a new response.
Note: Pipedrive’s AI email creation feature is available with Professional and higher plans.
8. Share the final communication plan
Distribute the plan to the relevant team members and stakeholders. Sharing the plan ensures everyone understands their roles, responsibilities and objectives.
Upload the document to a central location to ensure everyone can access it. You can use document storage platforms like Google Drive to upload and share your communication plan.
Adding the plan to a central location also makes collating feedback and answering questions easier. Team members can leave suggestions directly in the plan, and everyone can see your responses.
This process also reduces duplicate feedback, making it easier to sift through suggestions and provide valuable responses.
Final thoughts
Communication plans are valuable for clarifying key messages, audiences, timelines, responsibilities and objectives. They align teams on the tone, direction and purpose of communication and ensure that all messaging supports the overall objective.
Manage internal and external communications with Pipedrive’s CRM system. Automate emails, schedule calls and monitor performance in a central location. Start a free 14-day trial today and see how Pipedrive can support your communications.
