3 critical factors for effective communication

Communication is an art

Communication is certainly an art form. As with most arts, it may be based on a natural talent or gift, or it may be developed with science and expertise (yes, communication can be taught and learned). However, it is only improved and perfected through continuous practice.

Just as you cannot become a skilled musician simply by studying music theory, you cannot become excellent at communication simply by studying its rules. You must also practice constantly.

Natural talent is not enough, although it is certainly a good base to start with. Study, education and guidance are necessary pillars to found a serious growth perspective on. Yet, reaching the highest level only comes through friction and practical practice.

Effective communication is not easy

In the business world, communication is a subject that is often left to professionals. That is, specialists in various types of communication are recruited for their ability to create and practice effective communication. However, communication often fails.

And it can fail badly.

It is one thing for your effort to not have enough resonance and another thing for it to have a result opposite to what you expected. Ouch!

How can this happen? Aren't communication professionals supposed to know how to avoid such failures?

That is why communication is an art. Because it is always confronted with the unpredictable human factor that exists on both sides of the dipole of the transmitter-receiver. A master of communication must have intuition, alertness and empathy. After all, there is no communication that everyone likes, and nobody in their mind should expect that.

Yet, how can we define effective communication and how can we improve our chances of nailing it?

Effective commercial communication is defined by three elements:

Audience, connection, and desired response.

In other words, it assumes that a specific audience receives and pays attention to a clear message and then behaves in the desired way. It is on these elements that we must work on to be effective in communication.

AUDIENCE

Decide who you want your audience to be, get to know them well, and learn where they "hang out".

The issue of the target audience is a big one and is more complex than it initially seems. When we talk about the creation and implementation of commercial communication, the concept of the audience can vary significantly.

What we need to start with is current and potential customers. They are, after all, the source of the company's income in the present and near future. They are the people who are willing to buy our products or services and pay their price. The obvious thing is that any communication should be addressed to them, in order for them to become, or continue to be, our customers and contribute to strengthening the reputation and recognition of our brand (brand equity and brand awareness).

An avatar for our audience

But who are these people?

We need to describe our ideal customer and create a persona (or avatar) for them. The more specific this persona is, the better. The temptation to generalize is always strong. It is good to resist, especially if we are a new entrant aiming to acquire a piece of an existing market.

So what are the attitudes, beliefs, values ​​of your ideal customers? What is their lifestyle, who do they hang out with, what do they think about fashion, work-life balance, nature, religion, veganism? What kind of “tribe” would they fit into?

So this is the audience of your business, your customers. Get to know them well, because you are supposed to serve them better than your competitors.

The trap of wanting them all to be your customers

Then, when you know who your customers are, it’s time to talk to them, to communicate with them. You start creating your communication materials and think about tone of voice, colors, music, mood, materials, etc.

The catch is that during the creative phase of communication, many of the professionals involved (marketing executives, advertisers, designers, creative directors, copywriters, art directors, producers, etc.) lose focus on the audience-message combination and are tempted to create communication materials that “speak to many”, or worse, “to everyone”.

This is not an opportunity, but a risk.

CONNECTION

Where does the audience "hang out"?

Let’s assume, however, that we did everything correctly and that we carefully created the right communication materials for the right audience. Now comes the time when the media manager of the company, or the media agency, will start this conversation about the target audience again.

What, again?

Yes, again.

Because now the message needs to reach the eyes and ears of the selected audience, which means you need to know which Media are consumed by these people, how and when.

However, the targeting options for Media buying are usually less detailed than those you used to create the communication materials.

Digital advertising media (e.g. Facebook, Google Search, publisher sites, programmatic marketplaces, etc.) provide in some cases much more detailed targeting, compared to traditional media (television, broadcast radio, press, outdoor advertising), which helps.

The point is that there will always be an “overflow” to neighboring audiences and/or multiple coverages, which means a waste of resources (a problem that is significantly limited in digital ppc (pay-per-click).

That is why some conscious choices must be made.

If you have to choose, prefer a sharp, unambiguous message that speaks to the heart of the hard core of your audience, rather than a vague message that is addressed to a larger part of the wider audience that the medium can reach.

Prefer to make a strong impression on the few who really care about your brand and are interested in it, even if your message is indifferent to the many. This is how a brand with a strong identity is built.

RESPONSE

Decide in advance how you want your audience to respond to your communication campaign - and ask them to do so!

ALways remember, communication is effective when it brings about a change in behavior. The audience you are targeting should ultimately respond to the communication campaign in a desired way. I don’t necessarily mean sales, although, ultimately, that is always the goal.

The desired response can be any of a wide variety of behaviors, including:

To visit a store,

To engage on social media,

To lift loyalty or awareness,

To sign up for a rewards program, and of course,

To make a purchase, of course.

Whatever it is, make sure the desired response is well-defined in advance, for two reasons:

First, because it goes hand in hand with targeting and crafting your message.

Second, it will ultimately be the measure of the success of your communication campaign.

Tip: The metrics you measure should be directly linked to the desired outcome. So, for example, don't set a goal of boosting brand image and then measure sales growth as an indicator of success.

Get in empathy mode

What does empathy have to do with our topic, you might ask. It does have a lot to do with it.

The goal of communication, remember, is to change the behavior of the target audience in a desired direction.

Once we have defined our audience and decided on our core message, and we know where to find that audience, we might think that the job is almost done. Except that it is not.

To help, I will use a real personal story as an example.

Say you are the loving father or mother of a 13-year-old kid and you want to talk him or her into something – it doesn’t matter what.

You know your child very well and you know exactly what your message is and what you would like the conversation to have as an impact on the child’s behavior, i.e. what you would like them to do next.

You are convinced that the idea is for the good of your child.

Finally, you know where and when you can find the kid to talk to them. It seems like everything is planned to go well.

And yet, you fail miserably! It’s luck if the child doesn’t do the exact opposite of what you wanted! What happened?

You’re probably thinking, “In this example, the loving parent really cares about their child, so what seems to be the problem?”

The problem is that changing someone else’s behavior is a very difficult thing to do, and the change must be voluntary.

The message must be formulated and delivered in a way that resonates with the audience. The opinion and feelings of the one who is sending it are infinitely less important than the opinion and feelings of the audience. Even communication professionals fall into the trap of forgetting this.

Empathy must be present from the beginning and continue throughout all subsequent stages of creating any piece of communication.

Don't just try to imagine yourself in your audience's shoes. Experience their shoes.

That is, feel what they feel, see what they see, understand what they perceive, desire what they want, hear what they have to say, believe what they believe.

And then, they will listen.

Communication is a skill that is inherent in humans by nature. The entire human culture is proof of this.

Effective communication requires knowledge, art (that is, practice and cultivation) and empathy.