Communication consulting in Chambéry, to decide before you produce

Consultant or agency: what exactly are you paying for?

With consulting, you pay for written decisions and help in carrying them out, not for materials. You stay free to give the production work to whoever you like.

The main deliverable is a document your team can reread on its own: it says what comes first, what waits, what stops, and why. It then doubles as a brief for your suppliers, whether that is the printer, the photographer or the developer of the website.

This format suits a company that already has someone in charge of communication, full or part time, and wants to move beyond “we post whatever turns up”. It also suits a managing director who has to pick suppliers and wants to know what to ask of them before comparing quotes.

How does the audit work?

Through an inventory of what already exists, interviews with you and your staff, and a close reading of your figures. It describes a situation and passes no judgement on people.

One question comes back in every audit: by what route did your latest customers reach you? When nobody can say, the first recommendation is to start measuring it. And when the problem lies in the offer itself, we say so plainly: it is better to reframe it with our offer strategy support before communicating more, following the reasoning of our article on how to sell your offer.

• Inventory: website, Google profile, social media, brochures, trade fairs, adverts, partnerships
• Interviews: management, sales staff, front desk, sometimes a few customers
• Figures: where enquiries come from, what becomes of them, what each channel costs
• Competitors: what the companies your customers compare you with are putting forward

What goes into the written communication plan?

Objectives tied to your sales, a few messages, the channels kept and those dropped, the budget split, a calendar and the name of whoever does what. It runs to only a few pages, so that people actually reread it.

The budget is not expressed as a share of turnover carried over from habit. We separate what keeps working over time (website, Google profile, identity, sales documents) from what gets switched on and off (advertising, trade fairs, campaigns), and then hold back a small margin for experiments. The plan sets no standard amount: it starts from your margin and from what one customer brings in. The full method is explained in our journal, in an article on splitting a small business’s communication budget.

Every action has an owner, internal or external, and a review date. That is what allows a small team to keep a plan going all year without wearing itself out.

Which Chambéry highlights belong in the calendar?

The ones when your customers are out in the streets, at a fair or getting ready to buy: the September return, summer in town, the end of the year. The calendar places them several weeks in advance, to leave time to prepare the materials.

The City of Chambéry lists its major events: the Forum des associations, its yearly fair of local clubs and groups, every September on the Place des Éléphants; the Festival international de la bande dessinée, an international comics festival, in October; Noël à Chambéry in December; and a summer of outings run under the name “Cet été on sort à Chambé”. The Savoie Département holds the Estivales en Savoie there, free concerts in the main courtyard of the Château des ducs de Savoie. In September, the Foire de Savoie takes place at the exhibition centre, which Savoiexpo presents as an economic and festive fixture of the return to work.

Not every event concerns every business. A town-centre shop prepares the festive season from the autumn, a home improvement company keeps an eye on the fair, a restaurant on summer evenings. Grand Chambéry brings together 38 municipalities near the Bauges and Chartreuse regional nature parks: some of your customers live a long way from the centre, and the plan allows for that. For businesses that live off two seasons, our journal also covers how to plan communication across the Savoie Mont Blanc summer and winter.

How do you support the people who run communication in-house?

With short workshops, ready-made templates and regular check-ins, so that whoever is in charge of communication can apply the plan without relying on us. We review, advise and adjust.

In practice, that means a writing guide with the words to use and the ones to avoid, a shared calendar, post templates, and a list of questions to go through before each photo or video shoot. For social media, the starting point is an editorial calendar built to last; for short formats, our article on vertical videos for reels and stories is a useful companion.

We also go over the shared rules. According to the CNIL, the French data protection authority, email prospecting aimed at private individuals needs their prior consent; aimed at professionals, it is allowed when the message relates to their line of work and lets them opt out easily. Workshops are held on your own site; in between, we work by video call, with the remote project routine we describe in our journal.

How do you tell whether the plan is working?

With a handful of indicators chosen before you begin: enquiries received, meetings, sales, and where each one came from. Regular reviews decide what carries on and what stops.

A contact form that records the source, tagged links for every campaign, a question asked at the front desk about how the customer heard of you: these simple tools are often enough. Measuring website traffic follows the CNIL’s rules on trackers, which require consent, except for certain audience measurement tools that meet precise conditions.

At each review, we set what was planned against what was done, then move the effort where it pays. If the production has to be entrusted to someone, the plan becomes the basis for choosing: our comparison of a web agency or a freelancer helps you decide, and our Studio can bid like anyone else, on the same brief. To move towards more enquiries you can measure, see also our growth and acquisition service.