How to Build a Communication Strategy for a Marine Research Project
Marine research projects face a communication challenge that most generic advice doesn't address. You're not selling a product. You're not running a campaign. You're trying to make complex, nuanced science accessible and useful to people who may not have asked for it, across multiple audiences, with limited time and budget. All while, you know, doing the research.
A generic communication strategy won't cut it. Neither will a content calendar dressed up as a strategy. What marine research projects need is something more grounded. A clear-eyed plan that starts with what the research is actually trying to achieve and works backwards to figure out what communication needs to do to support that.
Here's how to build one.
Start with what you're trying to change, not what you want to say
This is where most research communication strategies go wrong. They start with outputs — "we'll write blog posts, send newsletters, post on social media" — rather than outcomes. The result is a lot of activity that doesn't add up to much.
Before you think about content or channels, ask three questions:
What is the research trying to achieve? Not just academically. What real-world problem is it addressing? What would be different if the research succeeds? This might be a policy change, a shift in practice, increased public understanding, better-informed decisions, or something else entirely. Be specific.
What role does communication play in that? This is the question most projects skip, and it matters enormously. Communication is rarely the whole solution, but it's often what makes the difference between research that influences and research that doesn't. Your research might be providing evidence that policymakers need, but communication alone won't change policy. Understanding what communication can and can't do keeps your strategy realistic and focused.
Who needs to know what, and when? Different audiences need different things at different points in the research process. Funders need progress updates and evidence of impact. Policymakers need findings framed around decisions they're actually making. Practitioners need actionable insights. The public needs context and relevance. Mapping this out early means you're not producing content and then wondering who it's actually for. Or worse, never asking that question at all
These three questions won't give you a strategy on their own, but they give you a foundation that everything else can be built on. Without them, you're just producing content and hoping something lands.
The five elements of a research communication strategy
Once you're clear on what you're trying to achieve and who needs to be involved, you can build the strategy itself. A good research communication strategy covers five things.
1. Audiences: Who specifically needs to hear from you? "Policymakers" is not an audience. "Marine spatial planning advisors in EU member state governments ahead of the 2026 review" is an audience. The more specific you can be, the more useful your strategy becomes. For most marine research projects, you'll have three to five distinct audiences with different needs, different levels of existing knowledge, and different preferred channels for reaching them.
2. Messages: What does each audience need to understand, believe, or do differently as a result of your communication? Key messages aren't talking points. They're the one or two things you most need each audience to take away. For a project on ocean acidification impacts on shellfish aquaculture, your message to industry practitioners might be different from your message to coastal policy teams, even if the underlying science is the same.
3. Channels: Where do your audiences actually get information? This sounds obvious, but it's routinely ignored. If your target audience is fisheries managers in small island states, they're probably not reading your LinkedIn feed. If you're trying to reach early-career ocean researchers, a formal report isn't the place to start. Match your channels to your audiences, not to your comfort zone or your existing presence.
4. Timeline: Communication should map to the research lifecycle, not run parallel to it. There are natural moments when different types of communication make sense. Those could be the project launch, interim findings, policy windows, major events in your field, researchers being out in the field, and final results. Planning these in advance means you're not scrambling to produce content at the last minute or missing the moments when your findings would have the most impact.
5. Responsibilities: Who is actually going to do this? In multi-partner projects, this is especially important. Unclear responsibilities lead to duplicated effort, inconsistent messaging, and things falling through the gaps. Even a simple RACI – who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each communication activity – saves significant pain later.
Common mistakes marine research projects make
Even well-intentioned projects make the same communication mistakes. Here are the ones worth actively avoiding.
Starting with outputs, not outcomes. "We will produce six blog posts and a policy brief" is not a communication strategy. It's a to-do list. The question is not what you will produce but what those outputs are supposed to achieve. If you can't answer that, you're producing content for its own sake.
Treating "the public" as an audience. The public is not a monolithic group with shared interests, knowledge levels, or preferred channels. When projects say they want to communicate with 'the public,' they usually mean something much more specific — coastal communities affected by their research, school students in a particular region, people who visit a certain habitat. Sometimes a broad audience is genuinely the goal, but even then, “the public” isn't a useful planning concept. Identify who you actually mean and build your communication around them.
Leaving communication to the end of the project. This is perhaps the most common mistake and the most damaging. Communication that starts at the point of publication is communication that has missed most of its opportunities. Those include building relationships with key audiences, shaping how findings are received, and contributing to policy processes that have already moved on. Communication is most effective when it's planned from the start of a research project and embedded throughout.
Not allocating a budget. Communication takes time and money. Yet many projects treat it as something that will happen organically, without a dedicated resource. The result is communication that relies on whoever happens to have capacity at any given moment. Which usually means it doesn't happen at all, or happens badly. Even a modest dedicated budget, clearly allocated, makes a significant difference to what's possible.
Confusing dissemination with communication. Sharing your findings with other scientists through journal articles and conference presentations is important. But it's dissemination, not communication. If your goal is to influence policy, change practice, or increase public understanding, dissemination alone won't get you there. The two activities require different skills, different formats, and different channels.
Where to start
If you're at the beginning of a project, the best time to build your communication strategy is now. Yes, before the research design is finalised, while there's still time to embed communication into the project structure and budget.
If you're mid-project and realising communication has been an afterthought, it's not too late. A strategy built now is still better than no strategy. Start with the three questions above – what are you trying to change, what role does communication play, and who needs to know what – and build from there.
And if you're not sure where to start or don't have the capacity to do it yourself, that's exactly the kind of work Ocean Oculus supports. Find out more about our communication strategy services.
