Understanding Communications Strategies

Why communicate with my existing customers, clients, or members?

Internal Communications is key to maintaining customer loyalty and market share. It is much more labour intensive, and expensive, to attract a new market than it is to maintain the one you already have!

By maintaining ongoing, interesting, communication with your clients (or members if you are an association)you build loyalty, increase repeat business, shorten your sales cycle, and leave more time free to get out there and get the new business that is critical to growth.

Communication with past customers, regular clients, or members can take place in the form of newsletters (print or electronic), loyalty/reward programs, special offers, postcards containing product announcements, and personalised correspondence (anniversary reminders, etc.)

Remember, the key to successful internal communications is to respect the time of your customer/member. The information you send should be useful, relevent, and of benefit to your customer (not to you!!). Ongoing communication that is strategically planned to be timely and informative will effectively build customer loyalty.

What are the benefits of Public Relations versus advertising?

Public Relations offers several advantages over advertising:

1. An ongoing Public Relations campaign tends to be more cost-effective than an ongoing advertising campaign - your investment will be in the cost of services and the creation of newsworthy activities or events rather than the cost of purchasing advertising.



2. The result of a Public Relations campaign is editorial coverage, which is believed to be three times more effective than the equivalent advertising space.



3. Public Relations focuses on activities that are of genuine public interest and offer real benefits to the public - not just to the company behind the activities. As a result they tend to attract more interest from the general public.



4. Public Relations builds community goodwill because of its connection to activities of public benefit.

What are the reasons for communicating with my existing clients?

Communications campaigns targeted to existing clients can encourage repeat business, build client loyalty, and improve brand recognition. All of these are designed to increase revenue while keeping your sales costs to a minimum - and improving your bottom line.

What are the advantages of investing my promotional dollars in to special events?

Special event campaigns are designed to make your business an active, and ever-present, part of your community. By creating events that have an impact on the community - either through education, fundraising, or the support of other local activities - you help increase the profile of your business. In addition, by creating activities of genuine public interest, special events provide an opportunity to conduct a public relations campaign.

My business has a very specific market. Can communications benefit me?

Yes. The key to a successful communications or promotional campaign is to determine your short term and long term marketing goals and then to select the strategies that will help you reach those goals. There is no set campaign that will work for everyone, but working closely with an expert can help you find the approach that is best for you.

What makes for a good Public Relations campaign?

The creation and promotion of activities that have a public benefit - education, fundraising, etc. - will result in the most successful public relations campaign. In order to be deemed "newsworthy" by journalists your activities must benefit the journalists' readers or viewers more than they benefit your company. A new business service, for example, is rarely of interest to a journalist unless readers have an opportunity to learn something that will be of benefit to them without having to purchase anything.

What is the difference between the results of an advertising campaign and a Public Relations campaign?

Advertising is space that you purchase on a specific day in a specific publication or on a specific station. Public relations generates editorial coverage in one or more publications or on one or more stations on dates and in locations that suit the readers or viewers. With advertising you have control over the size and content of the ad but many readers will not pay a great deal of attention to advertising. With editorial, generated by public relations, you have less control over when or where your information appears but when it does appear it attracts more reader attention.