Communication is the act of transferring information to a target audience. Effective communication ensures that the message is transferred in a manner that creates maximum impact. Whether it is client relationships, branding, team-building, productivity, or efficiency, communication is needed across all areas in business.
As the world negotiates with a global pandemic, the need for effective communication has been felt more now than ever before. Workplaces have undergone a tremendous change since the outbreak of the health scare as they were forced to adapt to a new normal and enable remote functioning. Enterprises needed to connect with employees, customers, and other stakeholders while maintaining social distancing.
The communication of today is driven by technology that has created platforms to facilitate seamless communication that transcends geographies and time zones. Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Team replaced physical meetings. The use of Email and WhatsApp com increased exponentially as preferred modes of communication. Digital communication comes with its own limitations as it becomes difficult to confirm the tone of a message or email without observing the body language.
Whether it is routine company updates or communication on important issues, the method of communication used adds to the impact and conveys a powerful message. This helps brands to communicate in an open and transparent fashion that goes down well with the target audience.
Good communication improves productivity and efficiency across the business as it is crisp and clear and conveys the message that it intends to. Effective communication is essential not only within the enterprise but also with external stakeholders like customers, suppliers and shareholders.
As businesses around the world try and navigate through the pandemic and its aftermath, effective external communication with the target audience becomes crucial. Whether you are an established business or a brand new startup you will need to figure out the tone, the language, and the line of communication to use while talking to your consumers and your target market. Communication should always sound honest, authentic, and personal. It should touch a chord with the audience and they should be able to instantly connect with it.
People have limited attention span and long rambling passages are not appreciated in today’s fast-paced world. Brand communication should be crisp and the call to action should be conveyed in the first paragraph itself. There should be no conflicting information in the communication piece as it tends to confuse the audience. Talking straight and to the point serves the purpose better.
The type of communication you use also depends on the channel you are using to communicate. Social media content on Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn Posts, website blogs, authored articles by subject matter experts and press releases are all different forms of written communication. Each one is tailored to meet the needs of the platform as well as the target audience to have the maximum impact.
Crisp, concise, clear, and consistent communication is the hallmark of any successful brand. It helps to keep teams focused on the same goals and helps customers to understand the products and services better. Clear communication helps everyone to make informed decisions.
Quality communication is one of the main requirements of marketing and more so in the case of digital marketing. In offline marketing, the salesman is at hand to explain the product or service in detail to the prospect but digital marketing is based on the concept of zero contact. This requires clear communication from the primary branding point all the way to retaining the customer
Primary branding: The primary branding exercise will include analyzing and understanding your target group, checking out your competitors to figure out what works, creating a brand strategy including vision and objectives, designing a business tagline, logo and colour scheme that is representative of your brand. At this point, you must focus on communication as well. Study your customer base to understand the best way to interact and share information with them. This will build the base for the future.
Create brand awareness: Once the brand is set up, you will need to figure out the right strategy to promote the brand and raise its awareness in the target group. You can use several methods like email, websites, social media, influencers, promotional ads and SEO marketing. You will need to create a separate strategy for each channel that you use and create relevant content that will connect with your audience. Each platform will require unique content though the essential message is the same. This is necessary to match the wavelength of the audience.
Raising customer awareness levels: The millennial generation is not a big fan of fluff. They prefer simple and to the point communication that is accurate and authentic and helps them make informed decisions. Once you understand the needs of the audience, you have to define clearly how your product/service addresses the reader’s issue. You can create authored articles and guest posts on other websites for detailed sharing of information. These should be used to communicate with prospective customers and drive traffic to your website.
Getting the customer onboard: The purpose of communication via quality content is to lead potential customers to your website. Generation of revenue will depend on whether they trust you to solve their problem and buy your product or service. The goal of top-notch digital marketing is to establish the brand as an authority in that segment which will build trust among the target audience. You will need to make smart and subtle use of communication to convert prospects into onboarded customers. If you use clear communication to make navigation easy, you will be able to guide readers to become paying customers. The aim should be to assimilate all digital marketing efforts to create an omnichannel experience by using interesting content, that will drive customers from all channels to your website
Earning customer loyalty: To build loyal customers you will need to continue with your communication efforts long after the sale is over. You can communicate via email with your existing customers to provide them with product updates and the latest launches. You can use your social media handles to provide customer service by addressing their queries. The pandemic has altered consumer behavior and pushed them online making smart digital communication imperative for businesses to stay in touch with potential and repeat customers.
To sum it up:
Effective and structured communication is a critical skill that can be applied from the moment the brand is created and converted into long-term customer relationships. Good communication helps a brand to resonate with its target audience and create a band of loyal customers. Communication is a powerful tool depending on how you use it and you can ignore it only at your own peril.
This article is authored by Shiva Bhavani- CEO & Founder of Wing Communications.
