Across industries, businesses of all shapes and sizes have quickly pivoted as the coronavirus pandemic has changed life as we know it. While every emergency response is different, and we can’t predict when or how issues may arise, it’s important to take proactive steps to prepare.
Crisis planning is a critical part of every organization’s marketing and communications strategy. Whether you have habitually developed crisis plans to keep on the shelf as part of your annual strategy, or if you’re just beginning to consider developing them, now is the ideal time to build or review plans to ensure that your organization has the tools in place to prepare for the unexpected.
For those ready to prioritize crisis communications planning, keep the following six considerations in mind:
1. Purpose. Know and agree on the purpose of the crisis communications plan. Having an objective will not only help to maintain focus and alignment with internal stakeholders, but it also will prepare you to:
- Acknowledge the situation in an appropriate and timely way
- Offer transparency and inform audiences – both internal and external – about what your organization is doing to address the emergency
- Facilitate ongoing communications to key audiences to keep them informed and maintain trust and credibility for your organization
2. Foundational messaging. Once a purpose is established, the next step is creating foundational messages that will support your desired positioning and help to control the narrative. This messaging should include internal and external talking points. Always consider key stakeholders (media, employees, customers, board members, investors, etc.) and what they need to know and understand about you to maintain trust and credibility. The messaging should include broader components of your brand’s identifying factors, for instance, language taken from your boilerplate and updated for relevance as needed. Establishing these messages ahead of time will lay the foundation to help maintain consistency across all communications channels.
3. Strategy and approach. Planning for future crises can be daunting, but identifying how you’re going to address the problem in advance will make or break your crisis communications in the moment. This starts with defining your overall communications strategy and approach, including whether you’ll need multiple campaigns to effectively reach audiences or a single-campaign approach. Be sure to look at a variety of factors, such as the size of your market segment and audience, your competitive position and the average level of engagement from previous communications campaigns. If multiple campaigns are needed to ensure your message is received, consider a phased approach with immediate and long-term campaigns that can build on each other and provide a consistent story with the widest reach. This process can involve creating templates, pre-written documents or statements, and a review of technology tools that can be rapidly deployed when needed.
4. Communications vehicles. Identify the communication channels that work best for your audience stakeholders. These can include typical communication vehicles, such as your company website, blog and direct emails. But, thinking ahead about how to leverage other platforms or channels can give you a leg up to offer additional engagement and visibility. For example, personalized video messages from company executives can help establish authenticity and credibility. Infographics shared via social media can communicate data to key audiences quickly and in an easily digestible way.
5. Timeline. It is impossible to know if/when a crisis will strike, but you can preemptively set key milestones to keep your team on track when the time comes. Timelines should include a specific communications cadence, message or deliverables to be accomplished by day one, week one, week two and so on. Be sure to add in time for any necessary reviews and approvals, and be realistic about how long the process will take and who needs to be involved. Although timelines can be fairly broad, with room for updates as the situation unfolds, they help provide necessary guidance around how quickly to act and respond to the issue at hand.
6. Flexibility. With these elements in place, you should be on your way to a solid crisis communications plan. However, flexibility should remain a key priority. Having a plan ahead of time will help keep your communications focused and on track, but as we know, emergencies can unfold at the speed of light and in unexpected ways. Use your plan as a guide, but set the expectation with yourself and others that some responses and messages will likely change.
The pandemic has been eye-opening for all of us, and unfortunately many organizations were not properly prepared to roll out their communications until well into the crisis. This framework can help you prepare for the unexpected and polish your current communications in today’s volatile business environment.