How to write an effective communication plan [+ templates]

An angry, influential customer tags your company in a LinkedIn rant about a buggy product release. You watch the impressions climb fast. Comments pile up as others vent their frustrations and feed the frenzy.

Welcome to a social media communication crisis. How do you respond?

You can’t predict every challenge, but you can expect moments like this. Small communication gaps snowball quickly — often because of the wrong response, or no response at all.

The same goes for moments you’re excited about. Maybe you’re launching a new product or rolling out a celebrity-backed campaign. You want your team aligned, your audience engaged, and your message clear.

I’ve worked on campaigns across that spectrum, from controlling damage to building buzz. One lesson has held true: You can’t afford to wait until something happens to figure out how you’ll communicate.

You need a plan.

In this post, I’ll share what goes into a strong communication plan and share templates you can use to build one that actually works.

Table of Contents

• What is a communication plan?
• How to Write a Communication Plan
• 7 Ready-to-Use Communication Plan Templates
• Tips for Stronger Communication Plans

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with these crisis management plan templates.

• Free Crisis Management Plan Template
• 12 Crisis Communication Templates
• Post-Crisis Performance Grading Template
• Additional Crisis Best Management Practices

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Along with armoring your company against crises and challenges, clear communication delivers better business value. Grammarly’s latest annual State of Business Communication report found that effective communication led to significant gains like:

• Heightened customer satisfaction
• Improved brand reputation
• Successful business deals
• Cost reductions

Organized communication happens at both the strategic and tactical levels. You can have plans for long-term organization-wide communication campaigns and for immediate needs like product launches, PR campaigns, or crises.

The important part is to write it down and hold your team accountable to it — a tough job given how many long-dead plans I find gathering cobwebs in clients’ Google Drive folders.

Can you use a communication plan template?

Yes, but before you do, consider what type and format of communication plan template you use. I find most templates handle the overarching concepts well (i.e., I can track my goals), but they fall apart with nuanced needs (e.g., planning social media posts versus email outreach).

A social media communication plan will look vastly different from a product launch plan. You’re tracking different goals and success criteria and require different channels to reach your audiences. Even formatting differences like landscape versus portrait orientation can crop up.

That said, templates can get your team started — and I’ll take communication momentum over perfection any day. HubSpot has several templates you can put to work immediately that cover a range of communication needs.

What about AI in communications?

If you’re in comms, you cannot escape generative AI tools like ChatGPT. They’re seemingly everywhere, and it sounds like it’s helping some workers do better work. Grammarly’s State of Business Communication report found that knowledge workers using AI are markedly less stressed and more productive at work than their non-AI-using peers.

However, Grammarly’s report references two limitations that I believe deeply affect communication plans:

1. An adoption gap persists, with 90% of leaders using AI but only 50% of knowledge workers doing the same.
2. AI literacy is low, as 52% of knowledge workers want improved education and training to use generative AI effectively.

These mismatches breed mistakes. Workers don’t know what data they should include in model prompts, potentially leaking sensitive information to a public space. Or leaders might remove human oversight from AI use too soon, leading to automated communication errors that hold up in a court of law — and cost you millions.

I see many organizations either rush adoption or back away because they’re afraid. Boundless enthusiasm can get you in hot water with comms, but like it or not, AI will probably become part of your comms ecosystem.

That’s why I suggest building an “AI in the workplace” policy now to govern tool use, especially if your comms team interacts with confidential or sensitive information. AI training is still nascent but growing as vendors like OpenAI grow their enterprise offers. Explore options that suit your team’s tech level and use cases. You don’t want to overwhelm them with features; instead, empower them to use AI responsibly.

Now that we’ve covered how a communication plan can help you, let’s learn how to write an effective one.

1. Use pre-built communication plan templates.

If you’re building your first comms plan for a specific need (e.g., product launches, social media campaigns, internal alignment), a template can guide your conversations with other stakeholders and build up something solid to get you going.

For solid templates for various business comms needs, check out these business templates by HubSpot. You can find comms plans and other templates for items like action plans, annual reports, business proposals, and other business cases. I’ll also walk through several communication plan templates later in this article — take any of those to begin this process.

2. Audit your current communication materials.

Before you build a new plan, take stock of what you have already. A communication audit lets you see what’s working, missing, and broken.

You can run audits however you want, but I believe any audit should at least include:

• Reviewing all existing material related to your goal (e.g., website copy, email campaigns, ads, and social posts). I find people often forget internal communications, so also check places like Slack channels and Teams meeting notes.
• Evaluating performance data to see what content clicks and what’s underperforming.
• Gathering feedback from internal stakeholders — this helps you build agreement early. Also, connect with your target audience if you can via surveys or focus groups.

Consider a communication plan for a product launch. If your current content covers general industry trends but lacks specifics on your product’s features and value, that’s a gap. And that insight will guide your plan’s priorities.

One tip: Keep your goal (in this case, a product launch) at the core as you audit. You don’t need to solve every gap your audit finds, just the ones relevant to getting your product to market.

You can use lots of criteria to conduct your audit. If you’re struggling to know where to start, consider the “five Ms” format, as you’ll weigh materials against several key business criteria. This framework should deliver an audit with valuable and actionable results.

Source

3. Set SMART goals for your communication plan based on your audit.

Your audit will find strengths, weaknesses, and gaps. You’ll want to set measurable goals to address those points using data from your audit results. What do you want to achieve with this plan?

When in doubt, make your goals SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. A recent HubSpot poll revealed that over 52% of participants believe the SMART framework helps them achieve their goals more often than not.

SMART goals let teams plan communication strategies with delineated expected outcomes. I used them liberally when I was building my content team at a PR agency. I grounded the initiative in a SMART goal: to grow long-form content production 10x through a scalable team and workflow within 12 months. My goal was both a productivity benchmark and a foundation for an internal comms plan.

I used my goal to manage communication with stakeholders like:

• Executive leadership on hiring and performance standards.
• HR on recruitment timelines.
• New writers for onboarding and expectation-setting.
• Account teams to ensure we met client expectations.

The SMART framework’s clarity helps turn a complex, cross-functional initiative into a structured plan where we could hold each other accountable and measure progress.

Pro tip: Need a little help building your first SMART goal? Check out our free SMART goal template.

4 . Pick your plan’s target audience.

Who should hear your message? I’ve seen comms strategies flop hard because teams chose “everybody” as a target audience. It hurts to cut groups (and potential brand impressions) from consideration, but your comms plan needs to land with the right audience for maximum effect.

That audience can be internal or external, depending on your plan. For instance, my team-building comms plan included executive leadership as the primary audience because:

1. They needed to know progress — and success.
2. They tracked my team’s growth against overall agency growth and direction.
3. They bankrolled the operation and needed to know ROI.

But plans can have secondary audiences, too. My team members and other organizational managers and leaders had a stake in the outcome. Just be thoughtful about how many target audiences sneak into your plan, as each new audience subtly shifts your communication outputs.

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with these crisis management plan templates.

• Free Crisis Management Plan Template
• 12 Crisis Communication Templates
• Post-Crisis Performance Grading Template
• Additional Crisis Best Management Practices

Get Your Free Templates Learn more Get Your Free Templates

Download Free

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You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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5. Outline and write your plan, remembering your audience.

If you’re using a pre-built communication plan template, you’ll see exactly how to outline and write your plan’s details and tactics. If not, here’s a typical structure:

• Goals. What are you trying to achieve?
• Key messages. What are you saying?
• Target audiences. Who needs to know?
• Channels. Where will you communicate?
• Timing. When will messages go out?
• Responsibilities. Who owns each piece?
• Success metrics. How will you know your plan worked?
• Approval and escalation protocols. Who signs off on the plan, and what’s the process for changes or crisis response?

As an example, I’ll use an unfortunately all too common crisis: an IT company suffers a data breach. You have an immediate need to communicate that the breach occurred, what it affected, and how you’re remedying the situation. What might this plan look like?

• Goals: Keep your trust with key stakeholders and share next steps.
• Key messages: What happened, how it’s being fixed, and what clients need to do.
• Target audiences: Customers, partners, and employees.
• Channels: Email, press release, company website.
• Timing: Immediate, with ongoing updates as the situation changes.
• Responsibilities: Crisis response team, PR team, legal.
• Success metrics: Timely delivery of communications, views, engagement metrics, customer retention post-breach.
• Approval and escalation protocols: Legal and PR approve public-facing messages; executive team gets involved if the breach worsens.

Your plan would get more specific on each point, but this outline shapes what you’d write in your full document. Involve your key stakeholders and their representatives throughout this process to keep everyone apprised and to get faster approval.

I’ll also note that knowing your audience matters so much at this stage and can derail even highly detailed plans if skipped. For instance, I’ve reviewed many media outreach plans for events like a product launch or funding round announcement. These plans require an external audience (reporters) you can’t control.

In this situation, take more time to understand who reporters are, what they need for a good story, and how they might respond to your communication. I’ve seen CEOs flail or say, “No comment,” when a reporter asks who’s funding their latest VC round. A good comms plan not only outlines tactics but also anticipates the target audience’s needs and M.O.

6. Choose your communication channels.

Your message is only effective if you reach the right people at the right place and time. That’s why channel selection is worth extra consideration.

Your channels should align with both your plan’s audience and goal. What might that look like?

For internal audiences, turn to tools your teams already use, like Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, or all-hands meetings. If you have sensitive or high-impact news, like a data breach or imminent layoffs, pair written communications with live conversations to better manage your people’s responses (because they will have responses with or without you).

I find external audiences vary, especially as digital marketing has proliferated. Common channels include:

• Customers. Email newsletters, blog posts, and in-app push notifications.
• Partners and stakeholders. Personalized emails or virtual meetings.
• Media and the public. Press releases, social media, a “newsroom” section on your company website.

Whatever channel you choose, be consistent. People build trust through repeated interactions. If they know to expect your product launch announcements on Instagram, they’ll follow and engage more regularly.

Pro tip: Critical messages like a major change or crisis usually require a multi-channel approach. Repeat your primary message across platforms to reinforce key points. And monitor closely, as channels like social media (with ever-larger AI presences) can spiral out of control quickly.

7. Assign a DRI (Directly Responsible Individual).

With your plan in hand, you need to choose who will deliver the message. This person is your DRI, or directly responsible individual.

The DRI clearly communicates the message on time and through the right channels. Without one, even the best-laid plans will stall.

Let’s say you’re handling a layoff announcement, an especially tough and emotional comms scenario. The CEO is usually the right DRI. They need to communicate the message promptly and humbly to a nervous internal audience.

Tone, timing, and delivery matter. Get it wrong, and the damage can ripple across morale, media coverage, and long-term brand trust. For instance, one tech company in 2024 laid off its entire staff during a “two-minute Google Meet,” and the backlash hit TechCrunch’s front page within hours.

In this exact situation, you’re probably leaving the company instead of choosing a DRI. But in less severe cases, make sure your DRI understands the why behind your plan, feels supported, and is ready to deliver hard news with care.

8. Estimate a timeline for each step.

A communication plan without a timeline is just a wish. Deadlines keep you on track and aligned with your stakeholders.

Your SMART goal should’ve set an overarching timeline (e.g., 12 months to 10x content production). You’ll also want to map out a realistic timeline for major milestones, including:

• When to deliver key messages.
• How long approvals or reviews may take.
• When to expect follow-ups or updates.
• How long it might take for the message to saturate your audience.

For example, if your message needs to move from leadership to employees, plan for the time needed to review, handle feedback, and gain approvals from legal and HR.

Or if you’re handling media outreach, think fast. Modern media cycles demand fast responses to stay ahead of the narrative. I see teams miss their moment when a reporter has a 24-hour turnaround for the story and the company’s DRI disappears.

Build buffer time into every step. Hofstadter’s Law holds especially true in communication plans: Even when you account for delays, things still take longer than expected. Give your team breathing room to keep things moving smoothly under pressure.

9. Measure your communication plan’s results and adjust as needed.

Whether it’s big or small, every communication plan deserves a postmortem. Measurement and analysis help refine your approach and improve future outcomes.

After executing your plan, ask:

• Did you meet your plan’s goals?
• Did your audience respond as expected?
• What delays, misunderstandings, or challenges did you encounter?
• Which channels performed best?

For example, my content team’s communication plan significantly exceeded its SMART goal, but not without challenges. Working with a new team meant learning how to communicate effectively with executive leadership. I encountered gaps in consistent reporting that made it harder for stakeholders to stay aligned. With experience and time, we built stronger reporting systems that communicated our impact and growth.

Approach every communication plan as a chance to learn. Review the data, gather feedback, and make thoughtful decisions to strengthen your next plan.

7 Ready-to-Use Communication Plan Templates

Communication plans can get complicated, but a solid one will serve your team long after you write it.

I’ve included seven plan templates below to help you respond to different comms needs and audiences so you can build strategies that actually work.

1. Internal Communication Plan Template

Slideteam built this template for internal communication teams needing to keep stakeholders aligned through regular updates. It gives a clear, high-level snapshot of tasks, timelines, and responsibilities. That makes it easy for leadership and teams to stay on the same page.

Core elements include:

• Frequency
• Communication channels
• Key stakeholders
• Escalation procedures

And you get it all in a layout that’s simple to follow and easy to customize.

Source

What I Like

Since it’s formatted in PowerPoint (a marketing professor’s favorite lecture tool), it’s easy to tweak. You can switch colors, layout, and text to fit your brand or structure without a total rebuild.

2. Go-to-Market SOP Communication Plan Template

I’ve helped put products in-market, so I know a good GTM communication plan takes precision. This go-to-market SOP communication plan from HubSpot makes that happen. From stakeholder agreement to brand messaging, pre-launch tactics, and press outreach, this framework keeps vital information from slipping through the cracks.

It’s designed to guide teams through every phase of a launch, clearly outlining responsibilities, messaging timelines, and execution steps. Plus, it’s flexible enough to reuse for your next product launch with minimal tweaks.

Source

What I Like

This template strikes a healthy balance between structure and flexibility. You can tailor the SOP to your launch specifics while leaning on a reliable framework that spells out who does what and when.

3. Strategic Communication Plan Template

This text-based template from Bright Hub covers how communication should happen within your organization, especially when dealing with crises or major strategic shifts. You get everything from setting communication goals and analyzing stakeholders to tracking costs and identifying risks.

If you’re a marketer or project manager without a formal comms team, use this template. It’s divided into twelve well-organized sections, including external environment, context, and stakeholder analysis, making it a solid pick for small- to mid-sized teams.

Source

What I Like

Bright Hub is a project management firm; you can see its expertise reflected in this template’s logical, strategic structure. It covers not only what to communicate but also why and how, with thoughtful prompts for evaluation, budgeting, and audience-specific messaging.

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with these crisis management plan templates.

• Free Crisis Management Plan Template
• 12 Crisis Communication Templates
• Post-Crisis Performance Grading Template
• Additional Crisis Best Management Practices

Get Your Free Templates Learn more Get Your Free Templates

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Download Now

4. Project Communication Plan Template

Simplicable used this template for a billing system upgrade project. It offers a clear and structured communication plan, laying out the essentials:

• Who needs to be informed.
• What they need to know.
• When communication should happen.
• What format the communication should take.

I see this template’s value in managing cross-functional projects where you have multiple departments or stakeholders involved. The columns for audience, goals, schedule, and communication format make it easy to track how teams share project updates.

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What I Like

The template includes a dedicated section for communication channels, so you can plan whether something’s best shared in a meeting, email, or formal report. You also get a clear DRI for each communication step, limiting dropped handoffs.

5. Marketing Communication Plan Template

This detailed marketing communication plan template from Smartsheet can support multi-channel strategies across multiple audiences like customers, prospects, internal teams, and media partners. If you’re launching a new product or rolling out a huge campaign, this template can keep you organized.

The layout helps you segment audiences and define messaging, timing, and channels for each group. Whether you’re using internal messaging platforms for team updates or social media and email newsletters for customer outreach, this template helps close the tactical gaps across your marketing mix.

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What I Like

Each objective includes a defined timeframe, which helps coordinate campaign timing and keeps comms streamlined. You can also document any marketing automation tools you plan to use, which is nice if you’re juggling multiple systems.

6. Corporate Communication Plan Template

Smartsheet comes through again with a strong three-page corporate communication plan template, offering a roadmap for internal and external communication strategy. You get nine key sections, from the executive summary and mission statement to audience segmentation and budgeting.

It also includes frameworks like SWOT and PESTLE analysis to contextualize your comms within your market or organizational dynamics. Whether you’re aligning internal teams or preparing external outreach, this template delivers strategic depth to your planning process.

Source

What I Like

The included milestone chart helps you outline tasks, assign owners, and set due dates to move everything forward. Combined with defined tools, tactics, and messaging elements, this highly detailed planning template is a steal.

7. Crisis Communication Plan Template

This Excel-based checklist from Prezly offers an actionable guide to crisis communication, outlining what to do before, during, and after an emergency. It can help organizations deliver fast and consistent responses to unexpected situations, covering everything from regulatory compliance to media outreach.

The template includes dedicated tabs for each crisis phase (pre-crisis, live crisis, and post-crisis), with checklists for messaging, DRI assignment, and distribution methods like press releases, email, and social media.

Source

What I Like

I like the tab specifically for tracking social media comments (a powder keg for many modern comms crises). You can give leadership visibility into audience sentiment and show your responses in real time. It’s an accessible format that can easily slot into any crisis playbook.

Tips for Stronger Communication Plans

By now, you’ve developed a good understanding of a communication plan and have tried out a template or two. But what elevates a good plan into a great plan?

Here are a few tips to refine your plan for the best results.

Break down your audiences.

I often see comms leaders stop their target audience development one level too soon. For instance, they’ll write “customers” as the primary audience — but who is a customer? Does that mean your most loyal buyers? Your newest customers (or even hottest leads)?

It’s an age of personalized communication: BCG research shows that about 80% of consumers globally expect personalization, but two-thirds reported they had at least one inaccurate or invasive personalized experience with a brand. You need to know your specific audience, or they may remember you for the wrong reasons.

If you think you’ve reached your ideal target audience, I challenge you to push one level lower. What insights do you find? And how does that inform your comms plan?

Clarify ownership and escalation paths.

Don’t stop at one DRI, especially if your plan calls for escalation paths. Your plan should define what happens at each step and who handles that step.

I’ve been in the middle of plans where we forgot to define an owner for reporting information to clients, and that led to project delays, escalation to leadership, and unhappy reviews. Make sure your plan shows clear ownership and a chain of command.

Keep your plan simple and focused.

Scope creep isn’t just for contracts and statements of work. As more stakeholders get involved in building your comms plan, you may need to fend off extra ideas, directions, and desired outcomes.

A communication plan thrives when it’s focused — the fewer words, the better. Say what you need to say and do it with clarity and precision.

Use AI (but don’t over-rely on it).

Generative AI can make plan construction and execution much easier. That’s true with prompt-focused LLM interfaces like ChatGPT and with AI agents that can autonomously produce communication content.

However, AI’s help doesn’t come without potential costs. Research shows that overreliance on AI can affect remembering what you wrote and potentially weaken important communication skills.

I find AI makes a brilliant assistant for gathering examples of other communication plans and breaking down your goals, audiences, and measurements. But you should build your message your way before calling in ChatGPT’s help.

Ensure your message reflects your goals, voice, and the impact you want to make. AI can extend your message, but you need to get the core right first.

Build Communication Plans That Work and Last

In the end, I believe a strong communication plan should do one thing: deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. I’ve seen firsthand how a thoughtful plan turns the potential chaos of product launches and crisis responses into clear, successful outcomes.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that communication planning doesn’t need to overwhelm you, especially when you start with the right structure. That’s why I assembled the strategies and templates above. Use them to build a focused, actionable plan you can feel good about putting into motion.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in September 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Crisis Communication and Management Kit

Manage, plan for, and communicate during your corporate crises with these crisis management plan templates.

• Free Crisis Management Plan Template
• 12 Crisis Communication Templates
• Post-Crisis Performance Grading Template
• Additional Crisis Best Management Practices

Get Your Free Templates Learn more Get Your Free Templates

Download Free

All fields are required.

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Download Now