Whether internal or external, effective communication is the foundation of a strong brand. From an operational perspective, it creates a unified team with a shared vision, and on the customer facing side, it’s your key to driving profitable brand engagement.
The key word here is effective. There’s no point relaying information without a clear understanding of it’s audience and purpose. And muddled messages can do more harm than good. But with the right approach, communication in all its forms has many benefits for your brand.
Why You Need a Strong Communication Strategy?
- To build internal relationships - good communication within a business brings people together. It ensures your brand values and objectives are understood, and that all your teams are working in sync towards a common goal.
- To build external relationships - where your customers or clients are concerned, good communication is your door to greater insight. It helps you get to know their needs, and ensure your products, services and messaging are on point.
- To increase customer retention - with effective communication, you encourage loyalty. Trust is gained, service improved, and with greater satisfaction comes more repeat custom.
- To grow your business - ultimately, it’s all about business growth. Engaging internal communication boosts productivity, whilst the messages you present to your target market create a strong brand reputation. All of this leads to more opportunities for business growth.
How to Make Communication Effective?
To make sure your communication hits the mark, follow the seven Cs:
- Clear - whatever you’re saying, and whoever you’re saying it to, make sure it’s easily understood. Use clear language and structure, and hit the right tone for your target audience.
- Complete - your message needs to be whole and contain all relevant information. Be sure to cover all the bases to limit the chances of misunderstanding.
- Concise - get to the point. Don’t waffle or beat around the bush, as you’ll send people down the wrong track, or worse still, lose their attention completely.
- Concrete - add clarity by using facts, figures or illustrations in support of your messages. This makes them easier for people to understand, and adds weight to what’s being said.
- Considerate - plan your communication carefully to avoid hurting anyone or causing offence. Make sure it’s well timed and delivered in the right way.
- Correct - whatever you say needs to be up to date and factually accurate. Never make assumptions or present misleading information. Wherever you can, back it up with evidence.
- Courteous - understand your audience and how to communicate appropriately. Considering the recipient and how they’d like to be addressed is key to getting them engaged.
How to Implement Effective Communication?
Every business has two distinct areas of communication to consider - one within their internal team structure, and one for their external target market.
Internal Communication
This is the starting point for building a strong brand. You need buy-in from your entire workforce in order to grow, and you need to maintain their enthusiasm, no matter the circumstances.
Consider that different people prefer different methods of communication. Some prefer email, while others take much more from a face to face interaction. Knowing how your team works and their individual communication style helps you keep them engaged.
Use every tool at your disposal to encourage clear communication across the board, to keep your ear to the ground on business activity, and to boost productivity.
External Communication
For your target market, you have multiple channels through which to communicate:
- Social media - this isn’t just a platform for promotion, it’s also a space to start conversations. Of course, you need frequent updates to build a strong presence, but you also need to pay attention to what people are saying about your brand, and to get involved with effective communication techniques.
- Email marketing - this is where you can really start to personalise your communication. By using insights gained from customer reviews and how consumer buying behaviour has altered, you can create messages specifically tailored to the recipient to build long lasting relationships.
- SMS marketing - you might question why your brand should use SMS marketing (written for link) when there are so many new tools to work with, but SMS helps you reach a wider audience, and is known to result in higher conversion rates. Use this method to communicate important messages in a convenient way for both you and the recipient.
Why Communication is Essential for your Business?
Communication is an integral part of everyday business - whether its circulating information to internal stakeholders, communicating throughout the purchase process, or creating messages to attract new customers - getting it right is a pretty big deal.
But when you hit the nail on the head, you’ll soon see the benefits. Employee engagement will grow, productivity rise, and as a consequence, customer service will improve. And from an audience perspective, a brand that communicates effectively is a brand they’ll interact with, grow to trust, and remain loyal to in the future.
