Why You Need a Communications Plan

“If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” —Yogi Berra

Museums are navigating a lot right now. Shrinking budgets, shifting audiences, and more channels than ever to manage. In that environment, it's easy for your team to end up busy but misaligned. Everyone is working hard, but pulling in slightly different directions.

That's usually what I find when I start working with a new client: not a lack of effort, but a lack of a shared roadmap. Posts go out. Emails get sent. Events get promoted. But the message isn't consistent, ownership is fuzzy, and nobody's quite sure what's actually working.

The fix? A communications plan.

The very first thing I do for all of my clients is create one. Not a document that lives in a Google Drive folder that no one opens, but an actionable, working document that your whole team uses regularly.

Here's what every strong communications plan answers:

1. What is the goal?
This sounds obvious, but it's where most teams skip ahead too fast. Before anything else, you need to get your primary goal out of someone's head and into writing, and make sure everyone on your team agrees on it.

Weak goal: "Grow our social media presence." Strong goal: "Post once a day for the month leading up to the opening.” OR “Increase awareness of our new permanent exhibit among local families with children ages 5-12 by visiting schools and giving a presentation to 3rd graders."

The more specific your goal, the easier every other decision becomes.

2. What are your key messages?
Just like the consistent visual elements of your museum's brand build lasting recognition, so do the words you use. Your key messages should be clear and used consistently across your marketing, advertising, and media relations.

Putting those messages in writing, in one central place your team can always reference, is what keeps things from drifting over time.

Weak message: "We're a great museum for the whole family." Strong message: "We make science accessible and exciting for curious kids and the adults who love them."

3. Who are your audiences?
A communications plan doesn't just define what your messages are. It defines who they're for and how they'll be delivered.

Your message to a first-time family visitor looks completely different than your message to a major donor or a school group coordinator. Trying to reach everyone with the same message is like shouting into an empty stadium. Technically, you said it, but nobody heard it.

For each audience, your plan should answer: Who are they? What do they care about? Where do they spend their time? And what do you want them to do?

4. Whose job is it?
This is where plans either come to life or collect dust. Every action item in your communications plan should be assigned to a specific person with a specific due date, not "the team" or "marketing."

This plan is also a living document. Schedule regular time to review it with your team, and update it as your goals and circumstances evolve. A quarterly check-in is a good starting point.

5. How do we know if we succeeded?
Don't skip this one. Before you launch anything, decide as a team what success looks like. That might be ticket sales, email open rates, press mentions, social reach, or event attendance. Whatever connects back to the goal you set in step one.

Having a "Measurements for Success" section in your plan keeps everyone accountable and gives you something concrete to learn from, whether it goes well or not.

Ready to build yours?

A communications plan doesn't have to be complicated, but it does have to exist. If you're not sure where to start, or you want a thought partner to build one with you, that's exactly what our first conversation is for.