Communications Plan: Who Is Your Audience?

Last week, we discussed the top items you should include in a communications plan for your small business. As the name suggests, communications plans can help you plan out your communications (both internal and external) over the course of the year to ensure that you’re “saying” what you need to say to your various audiences. Now, let’s discuss all the different people in your world that make up your audience. For this article, we’ll use a small wine shop as an example business.

Communications Plan Audience

While it may be tempting to say “everybody” that drinks wine is your audience, this is likely not the case. Further more, it would be hard to reach (and please) everybody that drinks wine in your area! However, it is likely that you will have several different audiences for your wine shop. The two main groups are internal and external audience.

External Audience

This audience is made up of people outside your business. They are your customers, your neighbors (both business and residential, think your 3 to 5 mile trade area), your city government, the Chamber of Commerce (if applicable), local wine associations or industries, and the local media.

Internal Audience

These are the people that operate “within” your business. They are your employees, your investors (if applicable), your management, and other folks that impact the daily operations of your business (vendors, suppliers, etc.).

What to Say?

For each of these audiences, you’ll have to ask a few questions to determine what you want to say to them, and how you say it.

• Who are they? List demographics that are relevant, such as age, gender, career, location, etc.
• What do they already know about your business?
• Why do they interact with your business?
• What do you want them to know?
• What communication tools are likely to reach them? Phone, email, social media, press release?
• What do they like/dislike?

Viewing your audiences like this will help you see your business from their point a view – a crucial factor in determining what information you should communicate to them. Above all, it’s most important to be personal, interesting and human. If you can use their language and jargon, even better!

We hope this helps you develop your communications plan! Let us know what questions you have in the comments section below.

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