Digital Communications Plan

This report focuses on forming an effective digital communications concept plan for Sunflower Solutions, a company in the herbal and health product industry. It discusses the need for digitization, formation of digital strategies, target audiences, media channels and tools, online marketing, implementation of digital strategies, monitoring and evaluation plan, and recommendations.

Running head: DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS PLAN
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Need for digitization of the business...............................................................................................2
Formation of Digital Strategies.......................................................................................................3
Target Audiences.........................................................................................................................3
Media channels and tools.............................................................................................................4
Online Marketing.........................................................................................................................4
Implementation of Digital Strategies...............................................................................................5
Monitoring and Evaluation Plan......................................................................................................6
Recommendations............................................................................................................................8
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
Reflection 1....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................12
Reflection 2....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................15
Reflection 3....................................................................................................................................16
References......................................................................................................................................18

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Introduction
The report is focused towards forming an effective digital communications concept plan
for an organization that currently does not have any significant digital presence. The organization
is considered to be Sunflower Solutions. The company engages in herbal and health product
manufacturing and sales. Currently, Sunflower Solutions has very low digital presence. This is
both in regards to e-commerce functions and digital marketing functions. Hence, there is a
significant need to address this area that is creating a gap in the development of the organization.
The e-commerce department has been only recently opened and it would need significant amount
of digital promotion to be actually effective in drawing online customers. The company focuses
on providing customers with products that help them towards leading healthier lives. Some of the
most important products are health drinks, healthy sugar supplements, health beverages, weight
gain supplements, organic honey and herbal body care products. Considering this importantly
there is a need to implement effective communication plan to reach out to the customer bases.
The focus of the plan hence is to identify the problem areas, identify the main market, create
strategies that focus on gaining the idealized market and develop effective implementation plan.
Emphasis is then provided towards regulating, monitoring and evaluating the implementation
effectiveness.
Need for digitization of the business
Digitization of businesses has become very important in the currently existing scenarios
across the corporate world. Most of the businesses, irrespective of medium or large, have to take
active participation in the online market. The product oriented businesses are realizing much
better profitability after taking their business online. Internet is bound to open a wide number of

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positive possibilities for Sunflower Solutions. It can not only help to reach newer target markets
but create much better profitability potential as e-commerce is witnessing a steady and fast rise.
Transactions, complaints handling, business optimization and communications would improve
greatly through the internet platform (Nazari 2016). It is this multifaceted benefit proposition that
is actually creating a strong online presence increasingly necessary for the company. Online
markets can help to reach customers that are present far and wide. Effective communication can
help these customers to get acquainted with both the organization and the products that it
provides to the consumers. Customers can be more aware of the needs for using health products
for having better and healthier lives. This can in turn help the company to improve its market
share. Another important factor is that most of the larger competitors have taken their businesses
online, thereby gaining essential competitive advantage over the company. This needs to be done
through a systematic communications plan that address all areas of the online communicational
needs of the organization. Some of the important things to consider are digital data transfer,
digital marketing communications and creation of effective digital framework and optimization
of the digital presence of the organization (Baral et al., 2016). The communications plan would
enable the company to strengthen relationships with the existing stakeholders and gain new
customers at the same time.
Formation of Digital Strategies
Target Audiences
One of the primary factors that should be considered is the target audience. The company
would need to form the digital marketing strategy keeping in mind the target audiences. It is
important to remember that the organization sells health products. Hence all kinds of public can

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use the products. The main target audiences can be divided into three categories. Children
between the ages of 8-14 who generally have health drinks. Another important target base is
women between the ages of 20-35 as they utilize herbal body oils and beauty products. Middle
aged people between the ages of 40-55 are an important customer segment. They have
significant need for using health products.
Media channels and tools
The communication plan should be made to reach the customer bases. The most
important channels that can be used are social media. Additionally, the company website would
need to be optimized for the e-commerce services. It becomes important that the organization
pays much importance to using multichannel communication strategy. Firstly, it is important to
let people know about the digital presence of the company. For this newspaper and print media
can be used. Smartphone optimized digital marketing can be done through the emails that can be
sent to a large number of audiences (Sajid 2016). Secondly, the existing customers would need to
be informed about the digital presence of the company. For this they can be sent notifications
through mobile messages, emails or through posters. Thirdly, the company would also need to
use audio-visual mediums to provide a stronger message about their digital presence.
Online Marketing
The message becomes the most important part of the online marketing. It is important
that an effective message is created. The message needs to be kept consistent though the various
mediums that are to be used. An important message could be “making lives better”. This would
also be the principle concept of the digital communications plan. The organization would enter
the digital world with a message that would put forward the mission and vision of the

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organization. Hence, through making lives better the products of Sunflower solutions are actually
going to provide better value over synthetic or artificially enhanced products that are available.
This message will also be important to reach all the essential stakeholders of the company. It will
be presented though the online channels and also the print and the television media. Primarily a
message would be sent confirming the presence of the organization online. To optimize the
messages across all the levels, the website needs to be further enhanced.
Implementation of Digital Strategies
The implementation of the digital strategies need to take place through various stages.
This would help to keep a systematic flow of work that can ultimately help in realizing the
complete potential of the communications plan. The first phase would need to be the planning
phase. The planning would need to be done in regards to how the online presence of the
company would be communicated to the potential customers and existing stakeholders. It is
important to create a list of people that would be targeted through the entire communication plan.
This would include the customer segmentation of children, young women and middle aged
people. The advertising mediums would be finalized and the media channels would be decided.
The second phase would be the creation of the message. As mentioned earlier the concept
of the message would be “making lives better”. The newspaper, TV and online messages that
would be provided would need to be formed. Firstly, the audience would be informed that the
company has started its operations online. Secondly, the product offerings would need to be
communicated to the audiences.
The third phase would be the online campaign. After the website of the company is
established effectively, the online campaign would need to be optimized. This will include social

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network advertising and sending emails to the target audiences. The focus will be towards
attracting the attention of the target customers towards the product offerings of the company.
This phase would be more about generating the interest of the online audiences.
The fourth phase would be to create a feedback mechanism. Thorough this the opinion of
the online audiences can be easily gathered. This would mean that the online audiences can
provide their feedback in relation to the online activities of the company and help to make the
online presence of the company more effective. Another important factor would be gaining the
opinion of the target audiences about the product value and quality from the customer’s point of
view. This would help to make the product much better as well as provide information that can
be used to improve the online interface of the website.
In order to accomplish the implementation objectives it is important that both an
organizational digital e-marketing team and third party companies are used. This would provide
flexibility to the plan.
Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
Monitoring and evaluating the plan becomes very much important. This would define
whether or not the communication plan has been effective. The plan would involve many stages
and various communication mediums it is important that each of the instruments that are being
used for the communication purpose is effectively utilized. This would help to make the
communications plan more successful. The main factors that need to be monitored is the
audience reach and the audience feedback (Engesser, Fawzi and Larsson 2017). It is important
that the monitoring techniques are aligned with the various communicational channels.

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An important monitoring tool that would be used is website traffic. The number of people
visiting the website of Sunflower solutions would be an important consideration. This would
give an initial hint as to how many people have actually come into contact with the website of
the organization. This would help to determine the initial success of the website.
Moving forward conversion rate would be calculated to actually understand how many
people that approached the website actually became the customers of the company. It is
important to understand that how many potential customers that come into contact with the
content of the company actually buy the products. The ideal conversion rate that the organization
wants to have is around 5%.
The average session that the customers are spending on the website would also be noted.
This would help to understand exactly how long the customers are spending on the company
website. This would help to develop deeper understanding of the customer behavior in terms of
the product offerings of the company.
Since, social media would also be used as a communication tool. It would need to be
monitored that how much views, likes or shares a post is getting. The social media comments
would also need to be checked and evaluated in order to understand how much the public is
actually getting acquainted with the campaign (Liu and Park 2015).
The audio-visual messages would need to be monitored in terms of audience reactions or
views. This would give a strong view of the whether the actual wants of the customers have been
addressed through the messages that have been provided.

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Lastly, the sales volume in the first three months after the communication plan have been
implemented would be important in measuring profitability. It can be measured easily if any
significant headway has been made in terms of improving the profitability.
Recommendations
Some of the important recommendations that can be made are in regards to the
consistency of the communications plan. The language should be kept simple to understand for
the target audiences. There needs to be a separate plan for communication strategy in case the
first one tends to be ineffective. The major goals and milestones need to be set in order to
achieve better results from the implementation process. These should be proper reviews of the
social networking sites, media channels and agencies that the organization would use in the
communication plan. Preference should be given to social media platforms that have a much
higher viewership rate than the other social networking sites. Preference should be given to sites
such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube (Ashley and Tuten 2015). The communication plan
needs to follow a smooth flow of the message so that the audience can identify with it and move
on to the product offerings of the organization. It is very much important that ample scope is kept
for changing the communications plan as per the views or demands of the customers if
necessary.
Conclusion
The implication derived from the communication plan pints towards the fact that
Sunflower solutions would need to effectively manage the channels they want to use for
communication. Likewise the message has to be optimized as per the communication medium
that has been selected. It is important to understand that communication is an essential part in

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case of online functions of businesses. The concept of making lives better should always be kept
consistent throughout the process. It is important that the message is formed in a way to reach the
identified target publics effectively. The focus should be given on a one message for all customer
segments model.

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References
Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., 2015. Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology &
Marketing, 32(1), pp.15-27.
Baral, C., Son, T.C., Gelfond, M. and Mitra, A., 2016, August. Plan Failure Analysis:
Formalization and Application in Interactive Planning Through Natural Language
Communication. In International Conference on Principles and Practice of Multi-Agent
Systems (pp. 376-386). Springer, Cham.
Batra, R. and Keller, K.L., 2016. Integrating marketing communications: New findings, new
lessons, and new ideas. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), pp.122-145.
Doan, P.T., 2018. What is the online marketing communications plan that helps AdLaunch grow
its number of online users?.
Engesser, S., Fawzi, N. and Larsson, A.O., 2017. Populist online communication: introduction to
the special issue.
Liu, Z. and Park, S., 2015. What makes a useful online review? Implication for travel product
websites. Tourism Management, 47, pp.140-151.
Nazari, A., 2016. Developing a Social Media Communication Plan. In Strategic Integration of
Social Media into Project Management Practice (pp. 194-217). IGI Global.
Sajid, S.I., 2016. Social media and its role in marketing.

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Stephen, A.T., 2016. The role of digital and social media marketing in consumer
behavior. Current Opinion in Psychology, 10, pp.17-21.
Reflection 1
The course and the assignment were both very important for me in my learning process.
When I took the business communication course as my essential academic endeavor I wanted to
know everything that can be associated with business communications. I wanted to know how
businesses operate and how they communicate with various stakeholders. The course helped me
to learn about the several dimensions of communication especially if done in business purpose. I
believe that the most interesting part of the assignment was the group project as it helped me to
learn more about business communications. Till beginning the project the knowledge I gained
was mostly concentrated with the theoretical aspects of business communication. However, the
group assignment helped me to know the practical implications and application of all that I had
learnt till that point. However, there were various other learning dimensions to the group
assignments rather than only understanding the practical parts. The group assignment helped me
to understand how to function in any group. Especially, how one can coordinate with his group
mates to get his assignment done was an important aspect of the learning that were done. As part
of the group assignment the first thing was to divide the roles among the teammates. My role was
to gather a significant part of the reference materials and compile all the reference materials
gathered so that note taking becomes easy. I learnt how effectively one has to communicate in
any group activity scenario.
In the previous units I had learnt about how communication mediums can be utilized
towards establishing value enhanced interactions. This was much importantly learnt through the

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group process as I had to coordinate with my group mates in various ways. Sometimes we
communicated through messages, sometimes over phone and sometimes through file sharing
mediums. It became challenging at a point as the group members did tend to have different
opinions about the process through which the assignment has to proceed. This caused a brief
period of ineffective coordination and a part of the assignment became much lengthier to
complete than it should have been. However, the difficulties were overcome through maintaining
effective communication between the team members. The elements from the unit that were used
to complete the reflections were business marketing, e-commerce activities and understanding
the target audiences. These concepts helped us to gather essential resources for the group
assignment. While at the same time these also helped to apply the theoretical frameworks to our
real life experiences. The group assignments were very important as they helped out team to
coordinate well. This helped the group members to learn and grow more effectively than they
would have otherwise been able to. In the future this kind of teamwork would help all the
members to create better performing teams. This is not only in case of the academic endeavors
they will take but throughout their professional lives. It was learnt from the entire process that
teamwork actually helps to learn more effectively. This experience can be used in the Future
endeavors to reach greater milestones in life.

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References
Adler, R. B., Rodman, G. R., & Du Pré, A. (2016). Understanding human communication (Vol.
10). Oxford University Press.
Akers, R. L., & Jennings, W. G. (2015). Social learning theory. The Handbook of
Criminological Theory, 4, 230.
Christie, M., Carey, M., Robertson, A., & Grainger, P. (2015). Putting transformative learning
theory into practice. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 55(1), 9.
Goldie, J. G. S. (2016). Connectivism: A knowledge learning theory for the digital age?. Medical
teacher, 38(10), 1064-1069.
Xing, W., Wadholm, R., Petakovic, E., & Goggins, S. (2015). Group learning assessment:
Developing a theory-informed analytics. Journal of Educational Technology &
Society, 18(2), 110-128.

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Reflection 2
Learning is an important part of any given educational endeavor. Without learning the
education derived from any course is worthless. However, as I enrolled in the institution for
studying business and communication, I found that gaining knowledge is a difficult proposition.
It can be difficult if not good support is provided by the peers or the faculty members. I was
lucky enough to get peers and faculty members that always focused on helping others. I learnt
about many concepts related to the factor of business communications. The group assignment
opened a new dimension for me. I realized that better learning can be gained when people tend to
work in groups. The group learning phase was important as I had to overcome some essential
challenges to be actually able to integrate positively with the group members. Some of my initial
problems were faced due to the fact that the group members were not much known to me. There
was significant communication problems initially that were sorted out as the assignment work
progressed. It can be said that group work is important as the same problem can be solved
through various different perspectives. The unit lessons learnt helped the team to bond well
together. The work of the assignment became easier to do as the group members began to
contribute effectively to the studies that were being made. The unit lesion pointed out how
communication has to be the key towards stakeholder engagement. This was definitely a part of
the learning but at the same time the group members used it to keep an effective environment for
learning. The group assignment helped us to discover more of our individual abilities. Group
learning is important for the holistic development of the learning process. Hence, the group
interactions actually helped us to become more focused individuals. I took up the responsibility
for coordinating the various milestones of the group assignment in order to make sure that they
were effectively achieved. The group interactions helped us to understand that communication

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was an ongoing process. It was continuous in nature and kept increasing with the flow of work.
The unit concept of stakeholder relationship was very well understood through the group
activities that were undertaken. The readings from the earlier classes also helped us in making
the assignment better. The results of the assignments became clearer with passing time. The
stakeholder theories, the business communication mediums and the marketing concepts were
very helpful in forming the communications plan activities. There were instances when the group
failed to perform as per the required agenda. The group held meetings to discuss the further
courses of actions. Essentially, it was the task of the group to actually utilize the concepts that
were learnt throughout the course in actual group situations. This helped us to learn better and at
the same time finishing the assignment became easier as the group activity served like a role play
model. The learning derived from the group learning process would help to achieve good team
work oriented goals in the future academic or professional endeavors.

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References
Cochran, J. K., Maskaly, J., Jones, S., & Sellers, C. S. (2017). Using structural equations to
model Akers’ social learning theory with data on intimate partner violence. Crime &
Delinquency, 63(1), 39-60.
Goldie, J. G. S. (2016). Connectivism: A knowledge learning theory for the digital age?. Medical
teacher, 38(10), 1064-1069.
Illeris, K. (2018). A comprehensive understanding of human learning. In Contemporary theories
of learning (pp. 1-14). Routledge.
Miller, B., & Morris, R. G. (2016). Virtual peer effects in social learning theory. Crime &
Delinquency, 62(12), 1543-1569.

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Xing, W., Wadholm, R., Petakovic, E., & Goggins, S. (2015). Group learning assessment:
Developing a theory-informed analytics. Journal of Educational Technology &
Society, 18(2), 110-128.
Reflection 3
The learning that was derived from the group interaction helped to redefine and enhance
the aspects of learning that were generated from the theoretical learning processes. It was
actually very effective in forming better notions about the concepts that were related to business
communications. In the beginning of the project the knowledge that I gained was mostly
concentrated with the theoretical aspects of business communication. As the course progressed
the group assignment helped me to know the practical implications and application of all that I
had learnt till that point. Additionally, there were various other learning dimensions to the group
assignments rather than only understanding the practical parts. The group assignment helped me
to understand how to function in any group. The group assignment actually helped to open
various other avenues through which the learning process continues. Assignments was in regards
to forming a communication plan and the group members participated well towards providing a
comprehensive plan. However, it took a lot of time and hard work to reach the stage where the
group was actually able to perform the various tasks related to the course. The group bonding
helped to understand the course materials from more perspectives than one.
In essence the group helped me to learn in ways that could not have been otherwise
possible. The group assignment brought forward all the essential knowledge of my group mates.
This helped to form essential connections with the course materials that were provided. In the
initial units we learnt about, business marketing, e-commerce activities and understanding of the

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target audiences. These unit concepts were effective in gathering essential resources for the
group assignment. While at the same time these also helped to apply the theoretical frameworks
to our real life experiences. The group assignments were very important as they helped out team
to coordinate well. This helped the group members to learn and grow. In essence, I believe that
the group assignment part improved our perception of the education that we received. The unit
learnings helped to systematize the group learning process. It was effective in putting forward
the most important learnings that were gathered. The process of group interactions helped in
bringing different aspects of learning together along with the most important perspectives. It was
an important factor that I believe would affect my future growth. I learnt how to reach goals
through effective interactions with my team members. I learnt more about group communication
that can help me to understand more about the corporate scenarios faced in professional life.

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References
Akers, R. L., & Jennings, W. G. (2015). Social learning theory. The Handbook of
Criminological Theory, 4, 230.
Batra, R. and Keller, K.L., 2016. Integrating marketing communications: New findings, new
lessons, and new ideas. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), pp.122-145.
Christie, M., Carey, M., Robertson, A., & Grainger, P. (2015). Putting transformative learning
theory into practice. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 55(1), 9.
McCarthy, M. (2016). Experiential learning theory: From theory to practice. Journal of Business
& Economics Research (Online), 14(3), 91.
Miller, B., & Morris, R. G. (2016). Virtual peer effects in social learning theory. Crime &
Delinquency, 62(12), 1543-1569.