When we design our online marketing campaigns we must grab the attention of our viewer in a matter of seconds. If we are fortunate to have them visit our Web site, Google+, or Facebook page, we are again challenged to capture their attention in the first few seconds – or they may be gone forever.
The audience for your strategic planning diagrams, graphs, and charts are the same species as our aforementioned audience. Human beings are inundated with data from dawn to well past dusk. If we wish to grab their attention, our message must be immediately engaging, clear, concise, relevant, and interesting.
So, why are strategic planning documents cluttered with complex diagrams and flowcharts that rival a North American Petroleum Exploration project or the redesign of the International Space Station? They look expensive, but are they engaging?
Our strategic business plans certainly need graphics to clearly illustrate our methodologies, paths to a vision, and business alignment. The goal is to treat the illustrations in your strategic plan the same way we approach many of our marketing efforts. After all, we are seeking buy-in, a shared vision, and stakeholder understanding.
Regardless of how sophisticated or simple your tools, here are some tips:
- Remember your goal: You want to engage the stakeholder.
- Don’t stray from your brand. Incorporating logo colors and design elements throughout your strategic plan strengthens your company’s brand image.
- Unless this is a NASA project, keep it simple. We want a plan everyone understands and supports. With simple and elegant design principles you can still have a professional looking plan without the neural network of flowcharts.
- Don’t get corny. Some infographic designs may be cute, but are not appropriate for your business.
- Test the message. Just like a marketing promotion, we need to test our internal message before production.
Infographics are a great way to incorporate interesting and eye-catching graphics into your message. There are a variety of online services available to help you quickly build a free or low-cost infographic for your business plan. If your budget allows, there are companies waiting to create your infographic on your behalf. And, of course, for those with design resources, you can design infographics easily and inexpensively in-house.
Remember: Be clear and be concise when you develop your strategic plan’s graphics.