Don't Forget to Ask "Why?"

It's a common occurrence: a coworker comes in my office and asks for a brochure, 1-pager, summary, some specific communications tool. Makes sense, right? I am the Director, Communications, after all. When this happens, my first thought is usually my workload and trying to balance when I'll be able to get to this request against when the person needs it.

But that shouldn't be my first thought. My first thought should be "Why that tool?" It's usually my second, or even my third, thought. But it should be first, because effective communications doesn't start with the tool. It starts with the audience.

When you have data, results, a story, any information to share, first think about who you want to tell. Be as specific as possible. What are they like? What do they already know? What motivates their decisions? And then think about how they like to find things out: read it, hear it, experience it, see it, etc. Once you know that, you can start looking for tools that make sense for that audience.

As an example, one of my coworkers said she would need 1-pagers to describe her work to multiple audiences. Each 1-pager would describe a different segment of her work to each of those audiences. We planned to set a meeting to talk about this. Today, I was talking to her about a different communications project and she said that one of her audiences prefers to hear and talk about things before they get involved. This same audience is the target for one of the aforementioned 1-pagers. Pieces of paper, by themselves, don't work for people who prefer to hear information in a conversation. Instead of 1-pagers for different audiences, then, we'll plan to use a combination of tools that will be appropriate for each audience.

So before you start working on that brochure, 1-pager, or other communications tool someone asks you for, don't forget to ask "Why?" Make sure that the tool is the right one for the intended audience. It'll be more effective in the long run. And if you need help figuring out your audience and which tool is the right one, sign up for our Marketing Plans workshop on April 20 (visit http://www.healthfoundation.org/events/market_plan.html for details). We'll lead you through the steps of determining your audience and selecting the tools that make sense.