This marketing operational plan supports public affairs’ strategic goals by leading the way in being a change leader. This plan is designed to address needs across all our partners and move us in a direction that communicates more effectively and efficiently across all channels.

It also supports the desire to be an engagement leader by deepening existing relationships with individuals and organizations, as well as working towards identifying and streamlining means of creating new relationships. This plan touches multiple public affairs partners and looks to support their desire to put their work in front of individuals and organization that will find it meaningful and impactful. We’re
also working to identify what content can be more broadly communicated and presenting that content in a way that’s understandable to our community constituencies. Through DASH, our clients will have more transparent data about our external communication efforts and through communication with marketing have more understanding behind strategy development and implementation.

The scope of the marketing operational plan does not include requests specific to creative service or the website. Creation of specific goals, tactics, and key performance indicators are pending completion of the external communications study underway.

Development Area for 2018
Public affairs should limit external marketing efforts in 2018 to three functional areas: email marketing and lead generation, topic/industry- and audience-specific targeting, and social media. Public affairs created a social media content marketing strategy that is currently being implemented. That strategy will evolve as we continue to receive data via DASH. We also write a content strategy for
email marketing, with the goal of implementing by year’s end.

A critical piece to effectively executing the marketing strategy is using DASH to create a more streamlined and effective social media content strategy. Other important components are the external analysis currently being done, as well as social listening and feedback from external entities. We will make decisions about what works, what doesn’t work, and what works better according to information from all these sources.

Part of the topic/industry- and audience-specific targeting – the “influencer model” – includes identifying traditional and nontraditional media members who consistently write about the subject areas of our clients and reaching out to them to facilitate an introduction, re-introduction, or follow-up.

Government outreach and media relations are two areas not included in our current marketing strategy that would benefit from such strategy. We will address these areas with a coordinated strategy in the coming months. Every area of the organization, as well as every platform we’re active on, needs a social media engagement strategy. This strategy evolves as our social media content strategy changes.

Specific Ideas to Consider (Resource Pending)

Public Affairs

• Give careful thought to ECONversations. We need to consider either revamping this product or eliminating it altogether. There is a strong disconnect between the intended audience and actual audience. It’s evident no audience analysis has been done to support this product.
• The public affairs forum also needs to be reconsidered. A name change is necessary for this to continue in a new format. The name should reflect the desired outcome and objective of the event.
• Economics education would benefit from paid social media to create awareness around museums, Money Smart Week, economics education resources, and certain website content meant for hyper-specific audiences.
• Public affairs needs to reconsider promoting events after-the-fact. There is a significant disconnect between the time the invitation-only event is held and when the event is acknowledged. Communication of something done is ineffective and not necessarily transparent.
• One way to reach out to the community is to hold a “Coffee & Conversations series with Raphael and our regional executives. These conversations are informal, light structured meetings, and open to the public with key community influencers invited.
• Certain Fed functions such as the museums and social media should be standard information presented during Fed 101/102 speeches. Speakers have an array of collateral, including shredded cash, to take to these events.

Human Resources

• Human resources should expand its relationship-building efforts to include visiting external sites like university campuses. HR can reach out to graduate programs, alumni groups, and college professors. These efforts broaden the pool of potential job candidates and external advocates that can refer candidates. To augment these efforts, we can encourage employees to speak to classes at their alma maters about they work they do.
• We suggest HR and Supervision, Regulation, and Credit have a non-PA mediated conversation regarding attracting candidate openings in SRC.

Research

• PA is already working to identify an external publishing platform like Medium or Vox for Notes from the Vault. We recommend A/B testing two of these platforms to gather data.
• Research needs a strategy to reach academics who focus on policy work, ex. Professors who could use our data tools in the classroom or blogging academics who might write a post about policy issues based on data from one of these tools. We suggest research drive this effort for relationship-building, but PA can provide support. In addition, KIM can help identify potential influencers through access to databases since some may not be media-facing.
• So that PA can better promote Atlanta Fed research, PA requests notification of speeches, especially when at non-Fed academic conferences. We will include these speeches in our monthly outreach calendar.
• We recommend research rename the Labor Market Sliders.
• We should work to identify Americas Center content, especially within Economy Matters and CED publications, for translating into Spanish and Portuguese. PA should be proactive in identifying this content early so translations can be posted without a long lag.