Keep Talking

No matter how hard times get, an efficient communications strategy should still be part of your game plan.

We’ve seen tough times, and it’s not predicted to get better any time soon, although there are some ‘green shoots’ emerging. For New Zealand’s small business community, staying ahead isn’t necessarily on the agenda. Rather, it’s about staying in business and preparing for the future.
When the going gets tough, one of the first actions the business and corporate sectors take is to become ‘lean’ and cut the communications and marketing budgets. Somehow, it seems, communications and marketing are suddenly optional extras and are dispensable in the tough times.

Yet, that is just when communications and marketing is needed because you want your customers, who’ve also retrenched to cut costs, to come back to you, not go to the competition.
It’s all about keeping your profile up and out there, reassuring your customers that you’re still there to provide what they need and you’re still interested in them. In addition, your competition, if they’re perceptive, will have made sure they have effectively maintained their profile so they’re ready to take your customers.
Before you finalise your business plan for the coming financial year, get to know your customers again. Are their needs still the same and does what you offer still provide what they want?
Good communication is about talking with your customers, suppliers, communities and other ‘stakeholders’ including your staff and potential staff.
Surveys are an excellent way to analyse your key audiences, and discovering how they perceive you will help you tailor what you’re doing in the market place.
Once you’ve analysed your audiences, then decide what messages you’re going to send them. That might sound a bit obvious, but you’d be surprised how many businesses don’t know what they really want to say to their customers.

Find out the best ways to communicate. Ask people how they like to get their information and how they like to communicate with you.
Another cardinal rule is to keep it simple. Use plain English and avoid jargon if you want to keep people’s interest.

Finally, you communicate most eloquently what you do and how you are perceived in the community, so being a ‘good citizen’ is your best communication channel of all. Many businesses have failed to grow and succeed because they didn’t look after their reputation.
And, reputation is what a brand is all about. It takes hard work to get a brand in place – brands that reflect certain qualities. An example is Coke, one of the world’s most recognisable brands. Life, vigour, enthusiasm and youth are the qualities for which Coke is known.

Try this three-step process:
1. Identify the qualities for which you want your brand/s to be known: this sounds simple, and many times is, but it’s amazing how much debate this can provoke within organisations. Is yours a company that provides a service, for instance? If so, then you will be deciding on the qualities that people provide, such as integrity of service and advice. For products, the branding will be about the quality and benefits of the product, and that will reflect on your company brand.
2. Decide how you’re going to communicate your brand: this is when you need to be sure of your customers and others who have an interest in what you are communicating. How do they like to get their information about you and your product, what sort of language are they comfortable with – for instance, are you engineers talking to engineers, or are you engineers talking to people who know nothing about engineering.
3. Decide what you want your customers and other key people to know as a result of your communication. Develop your key messages, and keep them simple.
Once you’ve developed these three steps, there’s another one that is also important:
4. Measure: find out whether your first three steps have done what you wanted. This means two-way communication – talking to the people who are important to you – not just your customers, but your staff, your suppliers and your community.
So, it becomes a full circle. And that’s the best type of communication you can have. Because then you can factor the feedback in to your business plan and your business processes to ensure you are meeting market expectations. And that’s got to be good for your bottom line.

Helen Slater
www.stratacomm.co.nz