Speaker 1: Hello, my name is Jalyn Peckman. I'm an instructor of agricultural communications at the University of Missouri. I am really excited to share with you this presentation on how to create a communications plan because in the digital world that we live in, communication is at our fingertips at all times, which means for your meat business that your customers have that communication at their fingertips at all times too. So we're going to make sure that you know how to create strategic messaging and how to get that message in front of those customers. First what is an IMC? So IMC stands for an integrated marketing communications. That is a fancy way for saying that we create a plan that makes sure every single piece of content that you share with either the general public or with a prospective customer complements one another, that all of your content is strategic. It has a place. You don't say anything that's contradictory of a value of your customer. It's just really being strategic in your communication efforts. We can think that strategy may be really easy, but honestly it takes a lot of time to plan how to be strategic in your messaging. So sometimes we really like to just jump in and get the message of our company out to the public or share the story of our company with the general public. We just want to dive in and really get our message out to as many people as possible. And that used to be how communications worked. However, in the world that we live in today, we really need to be more strategic in the messages that we create and the platforms that we use to share that message. So even a dozen years ago, companies that would create messaging and get it out to as many people as possible, hoping that some people would maybe hear that message, it would resonate with them and they would rush into the store to purchase whatever that product is. However, that type of planning or implementation of a communications plan really looks like that target on the left. It's not strategic. Sure. There's a few pieces that hit that bullseye in the very middle. But if you're strategic from the very first step of your communications plan, then your efforts can be looking can look more like that bullseye on the right side of the screen to where you really took into account what your company stands for and how those values can translate to resonate with prospective customers so that it resonates with the most amount of people as possible and really is strategic. So this presentation is going to walk you through how to make your communication efforts look like that bullseye on the right. There's very little evidence that IMCs are used by companies and including meat processing companies. And this is because of four things time takes a lot of time to create an IMC. But I promise you, once you've got it, you just have to review it and update it every so often. The real workload is creating it in the very beginning, the knowledge of what goes into an IMC, we're going to cover that today, how to measure an IMC, we'll talk about some strategies in part two of this video, and then how to evaluate an IMC. Again, that will be covered in part two of this video. When we think of an IMC, it's really got six main parts, we're going to walk through the mission first. So if your meat processing company has a mission statement, that's phenomenal. If it doesn't take some time at the top of your IMC document that you can create on devoting some some time to actually create and put into words what the mission of your company is. A lot of times in the companies that we work in, our employees kind of know what our expectation is, right? What we want to do on a daily basis, what our overall mission or vision is. However, it's a really good first step to put it on paper and try to actually put into words what your mission of your meat processing company is. Here's some examples listed on the screen. Dunkin' Donuts, their mission statement is to make and serve the freshest, most delicious coffee and donuts quickly and courteously in a modern, well-merchandised store. Burger King is offering reasonably priced quality foods served quickly in attractive, clean surroundings. And Papa John's Pizza will create a superior brand loyalty through authentic, superior quality products, legendary customer service, and exceptional customer or community service. What I love about these three examples is they're very clear and explicit in what they want their company to be known for. So mission statements are not general, but rather really specific. Get your team together and figure out what words you want to describe your company and form a mission statement around those values. After your mission statement is created, the next step is to create goals that support that mission. You want to make sure that every goal you set, and if it's specific to communication goals or just your business goals in general, you can kind of pick an in this step, but you want to make sure that every goal is very specific. It's clear. There's no ambiguity. It's measurable. So it includes some type of way to evaluate if you reached that goal or not. It can't be vague. It's attainable. If you want to have a goal that you can achieve right now, that is very attainable. Put it on your paper, but you can also think long-term goals as well. But just make sure that they are attainable, they're realistic, something that you really can do, and that they are time bound. That way you can measure it. Whether that time is a short-term goal, like six months, two years, or long-term, which could be three to seven years down the road. It needs to have some type of timeline so that you can tell if you're meeting your goals. If not, revisit it and figure out what other supplementary goals you may need to reach that overarching one. The next step after you've got your mission statement and objectives is to do a situation analysis. This is a very condensed version of what a situation analysis would look like. There are internal forces that you should get your team together and sit down and just ask yourself questions that are relating to financial resources or management objectives. This is really just a place for you to kind of do a current situation analysis of what's impacting our company right now, and what can we do to fix the problems that we're having. Some financial resource questions may include, is the organization sound in finances? Is a reserve fund in place and available for new activities? It could be, do we rely on specific donors to help us stay afloat? There's a ton of questions that are going to be unique to your company that you can actually put on paper and think through how they're relating to your current situation. Management objectives. There are also questions that you need to ask you and your team. Are management objectives clear from the top down? Does the owner know what all of the employees are doing, and does the employee know what the owner's expectation of them are on daily tasks, but also big projects? Is staff aware of objectives? Is training needed? There are a lot of external forces that can affect your company in the current situation as well. We break these down into social, which allow you to think through questions such as, what are social or cultural trends in the marketplace? How does this affect us? Is there a way you can meet a need of a trend that you're seeing in the current social world? Economic. Is the economy shifting to ways that will cause a growth or decline in demand for our services and products? If it's growth, how can you latch onto that? If it's decline, what can you do to avoid being negatively impacted with the economic trend? Political. Are there local, state, or national issues that could impact you? If so, what can you do to communicate to the public about what you're doing to not let that trend negatively affect you, your quality, your company, et cetera? And then technological. This changes all the time. We always have new devices, new trends out in the technology space that our company can choose to latch onto or avoid for whatever reasons, but just thinking about what are some of those current technology trends that we're seeing in the marketplace? Should I join in? If I'm not, why or why not? Creating a target audience will really allow you to have a clear person in mind of who your company provides services and products to. So when you create a target audience, you really need to think through these three characteristics. First, demographic. My ideal customer, the snapshot of who I see when I think of a customer of my meat processing company. What's the age or age range of that person? Is there a certain gender that uses our company more than others? What's the income, socioeconomic status level? If it's a high socioeconomic status, are they willing to pay for fancier cuts or do I serve a low SES group that wants more reasonably priced products? What's the education level? What are their careers? Are they busy working during the day and so I can't use Facebook at 10 a.m. because they're working to communicate with them or do they work in other areas where they can be active on social media during the day? What's the geographic components or segmentation of this audience? Do we serve people only in Missouri or all across the United States? Is it the Midwest? Do we have any local ties with our small town community that we could we can really understand who our target audience is because they identify with our local town? And then psychographic segmentation are honestly where you really get to learn the most about your target audience. What motivates my customer? What do they care about? How can I latch on to what they care about and include that in my company? What's their lifestyle? Do I serve people that have families and not a lot of time to cook meals in the evening and so they want ready to go into the oven foods or do I serve people that have all the time in the world to cook a ravenous meal? What are their attitudes to different processing methods or things that I may do in my company? What are their hobbies and interests? Marketing communication goals really help you figure out what you want to do in an IMC. Is your goal to develop a brand image so that people can identify with your meat processing company? If you've got an image, is it to increase your brand awareness to get more target audiences or to let your target audience know more about you? Or is it to increase consumer engagement? Do you post things on social media or on your website, but are finding that people aren't responding back or are not engaging with you in this platform so you're not getting more foot traffic in your store? If so, what can you do so that you do meet those goals? So really it's comes down to the strategies that lead into tactics that you use to get people in the door of your store and there are a ton of strategies and tactics, especially in the communication space that you can you can use to reach all of those goals that you've listed in your IMC. The first step is if you don't have a company logo, create one. It's a good way to get some brand recognition for people to resonate with your brand. Get some merchandise, whether it's a business card or caps, just to get that logo out there in front of not only your local community, but whoever, wherever that target audience lies. Do you have a website? If not, get a website up and going and see if you can keep some analytics on how many people visit your website, what pages they go to, if there's certain products that they're viewing more than others, because then you can kind of know what people are wanting from your your product. Do you have advertisements that you use? Do you support local communities like the county fair? How can you share what you're doing with the community on outlets such as radio or in magazines that people know what you what you are doing in your local community? Do you use photo, video? If so, get them on as many platforms as possible, whether it's your website, if it's in an advertisement or even on social media. Blogging is becoming a really big deal in the communications space. It's a place for somebody to really write just how they speak and what they're thinking about. If you have somebody on your team that's a really good writer, maybe give them a task of writing a weekly blog and just about a day in the life of working at your meat processing company or maybe a behind the scenes take or about the goals you have or your company's values. Everything that we've talked about so far can be a part of this blog, as with any type of communication platform. Word of mouth. How can you use word of mouth to meet your company's goals and complement the content that's present in all of these other communications activities? Last but not least, maybe you have a really unique idea of something you can use or a platform or a tool you can use to share about your company's values, their goals and meet the needs of your target audience. So last couple of things. You really need to think about your company's positioning. What do you wish to communicate to customers? Thinking about all of those pieces that we've worked from the bottom up of that pyramid on your IMC, you're now to the point where you know the foundational information and can really start to think about how you position, how you want to be positioned with your customers. What makes you and your company unique? Plus, what does the target audience care about? So an IMC helps you connect the parts of what you and your company cares about with the values and care of your target audience. And it's a place for you to bring those two needs together through key messages. I think of key messages as very short golden nuggets that you can share about your meat processing company with your target audience and the general public. We use key messages that are only a couple words long so that they resonate with our end user. Does your company really care about local pride in a small town community? Or do you value innovation and trying new cuts or new technology? Do you value family and ready to cook meals that someone can stop in and have a parent can stop in and have a meal prepared for their family that night? Do you value service that if somebody needs something at any time of day, they can give you a call and you'll help them meet their needs? Or is it tradition? Has your company been in the family for generations and that's a value that you want to share with your target audience? Or is it trust that you know your customers can come to you with any and every problem and they can trust you to help them? There are a ton of key messages and the cool part is it looks very different for every single meat processor in Missouri. So last practical tip, as we look through this pyramid, I recommend that you create an IMC document with headings of mission, goals, current situation, strategies, tactics, and last but not least, those key messages. Create this plan and sit down with your communications team or your leaders in the organization and fill it out together. That's how you can create a really strong integrated marketing communications plan that's strategic and hits those really main points of the middle of that bullseye. My name is Jalyn Peckman. Please feel free to send me an email or give me a call if you have any questions at all. I'm more than happy to review an IMC plan or answer questions that you may have when developing yours. Take care.