I tend to consider myself a bit of an entrepreneur, always have. I can remember reading my dad’s business magazines growing up and dreaming of some grand adventure I’d have in the business world, running my own show. I remember thumbing through quite a bit of franchise magazines, Entrepreneur Magazine, Money and others that the Old Man had lying around. I know, I know, a little odd for a boy of 7 or 8, but hey, my favorite sitcom star was Michael P Keaton, what would you expect?
I still read a lot of small business, entrepreneur type blogs and magazines. Most of them you can feel that energy and enthusiasm that you try to feel when you go to work on your business. One of them I found recently is The Entrepreneurial Mind, by Dr. Jeff Cornwall.
Insights on Planning
Reading through his archives this weekend, I stumbled on a blog post about planning and why we plan. It’s appropriate for our whole team as we finalize Q4 planning. Our communications plans, specifically, are being put together, and his article I could really relate to. It’s short and sweet and you can read it here.
Reasons for a Written Communication Plan
So what are the top 3 reasons we should have a written communication plan for our affiliate programs? Allow me to use Dr. Cornwall’s list as a starting point:
1. Uncovering Unknowns
Communication planning helps us find out the things we don’t know about the details of how, why, and in what manner we should be communicating. From a 30,000 foot level type of view, if you don’t lay out all the things you want to do, you aren’t going to be able to identify all the details of how to communicate with your partners, what method of communication (or mix of methods) is appropriate and what the content of each message will be when you need to communicate with your partners today. Planning now will identify all those items so you can address them.
2. Clarifying Roles and Expectations
Communication planning helps ensure that all the players in your plan know their roles and will be able to carry them out. Who will be designing your email, creative etc.? Who will be emailing, calling, Zooming? Do they know that you need certain things from them? Planning allows your entire team to know what is expected of them in advance and in detail.
3. Identifying Strategy Gaps
Communication planning will lay bare the holes in your strategy. Have you ever had a great strategy or idea in your head, that only when you were 90% through it, you realized that you missed one or several glaring concepts/tools/deliverables, and now the entire strategy is garbage? Planning helps you identify those holes and plug them, or allow you to adjust and pivot around them, before you hit them.
We are completing our communication plans as we speak for the remainder of the year and the first quarter of next year. With all that going on, I thought this information may really help any affiliate managers out there get a little more motivated to put down their plans in writing, take a step back and see how they really will work, or don’t…
