Our firm has been providing outreach and education solutions to clients for more than 28 years - we specialize in agriculture

Successful communications plans are built from the inside out

Participation from your board means ownership

We always begin planning sessions with the end goal or objectives in mind

Goal - must identify measurable results and must be time-bound

Objectives describe what you want to accomplish

Identify your target audiences, then prioritize them each year

You probably don’t have the resources to talk to everyone you want to talk to

Remember, there’s no such thing as “general public”

We can tell our audiences what we want to say or we can tell them what they tell us they will hear - repeat that statement

Research is a great way to find out what our audiences want to hear from us

Our audiences only what to hear what matters to them

We set objectives for each target audience, then we tailor everything we do according to each objective

Once we identify our priority audiences, we need to identify where they listen

Research helps us choose the most effective channels - think about the Winter Survey

If you miss on channel selection, nothing else matters

We must make the message succinct and focused

30 words or less is the approach we use

Leave the jargon at home

Is there an opportunity to communicate with emotions?

I can’t emphasize this enough, know how and what you’re going to measure before you implement your first tactic

When you tell your board how you plan to measure results, there’s no information vacuum to fill

Stick to the plan, from beginning to end

Make adjustments according to the measurements you make