Brands can decide to shape conversations to achieve advantages from customers. To do so effectively, it is important brands understand the benefits and decide on the role strategic communications can play for them.
Many brands are already planning for a post-pandemic recovery. The focus is on understanding how the customer has changed (and rightly so) in their consumption habits and patterns. Some brands have begun to consider the specifics around how they intend to shape new and existing brand and customer conversations.
Given the uncertainty around offsite and physical activities, such as events and conferences, there is an understanding that some tools might become less effective in the short-term. Some other tools such as digital tools and formats have increased in popularity and usage. However, the flip side of the coin is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to cut through the clutter as the digital medium becomes more crowded.
Shaping conversations should not be regarded as a by-product of effective sales or product operations. There is always a positive case for delivering value and keeping to commitments when selling to a customer. Shaping a customer’s opinion to co-opt their understanding and support in sharing a brand message (or story!) should not be confused with sales strategy and instead resides in the realm of influence.
In times of uncertainty and change, customers will have questions. Their perspective, understanding, trust and action will differ depending on a self-compilation of the messages they hear about a brand across multiple sources. To a brand trying to get recognised or share information, this scenario should be viewed akin to gambling. There is no control over the sources, and no direct influence on the customer. Any purchase decision made is pretty much a flip of the coin.
When it comes to handling such a scenario, it is mission critical to communicate. There has to an overall plan that determines the positioning, and messaging to be used including the frequency, a commitment to consistency as well as a decision on the channels, formats and situations they are to be used in.
Move on without a proper strategy or plan and run the risk of wasting resources, missing opportunities, and seeing the initiative or programme fail. Unfortunately, with this model of “failing fast” there are many variables but often too little data to build a better model upon.
We share 3 benefits of using strategic communications in shaping and gathering influence with your customers.
Value-add to the customer
A brand can proactively use strategic communications as part of business strategy to demonstrate understanding of their customers’ environment and needs. Despite solid product-market fit, a brand also has to demonstrate that they know their customers’ challenges, problems being solved for, and explain how they can provide a solution. This requires goal setting, audience/customer planning, messaging and activating relevant channels.
Creating perceived barriers for the competition
To dominate a niche, brands have to sell-in to more and more customers. They also have to convince competitors that the investment of resources and the operations of offering a competitive product is not worth the effort. To do so, they has to be messages shared that explain specifically how overcoming certain challenges required the commitment of long-term resources that will take an unattractive window of time to break-even. These messages have to be balanced against sharing of achievements to customers as a means of demonstrating leadership and quality. If either message is dominant in the wrong channels, it can impact both sales and facilitate the entry of more players into the brand’s marketplace.
Strategic communications as a cost saving tool for the business
A strategic communications plan can help to increase productivity and efficacy by reducing false starts, and wasted resources spent on wrong channels.
By spending initial time upfront to understand the target customer and their challenges, needs and preferences, programmes can be made more aligned and relevant for them. This increases the value-add to the customer. Through increased interaction, decision on how and where to allocate and focus resources also takes place, thereby reducing wastage.
With a cohesive set of messages to be shared with customers, activities and programmes can be structured to share these through different touch-points, frequencies to achieve specific outcomes. This approach saves on duplication and encourages more utilisation of the activity or programme. By working across multiple channels, data can determine the better tool suited for the channel, increasing the effectiveness of the channel or reducing the cost per outcome achieved.
By using strategic communications to reach out in a structured manner to customers, the brand also benefits from various ways on saving costs.
We are Brand Utility is a business consultancy. We work with brands in the corporate, professional services, retail, travel and technology spaces.
Our principal consultant is a registered management consultant, certified and recognised by the Institute of Management Consultants Singapore.
We offer strategy and tactics to support growth outcomes - revenue, scale, regional expansion and market entry – for our clients.
Areas of support include:
· Strategic communications: Approach to market, brand concept and map, positioning, messaging, story and narrative, thought leadership
· Marketing: Campaign/programme planning, story-based marketing execution, digital marketing, community amplification, content planning and production, go-to-market execution
· Lead generation: Digital advertising, social media advertising, social commerce, e-commerce
· Integration of marketing with business operations: We plan and execute as a seconded marketing and/or PR lead for your brand
Discover more about our services at our website or book an exploratory consultation through this link.
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