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community action

Marketing Communication Tools strategy

Ever wondered how to… create commitment?
NOW go and get a better response!

Marketing not getting the response you expect?

Here’s a simple way to plan your communications activities to get what you need (and kill the rest)…

Time to mix it up

When it comes to communications, I’m constantly amazed at how often senior executives will come and tell me what they think their organisation needs. This is really just their shopping list for what they want to see: we need a brochure; we need a newsletter; we need an event. Sound familiar?

A lot of the time, this is perhaps the more exciting and tangible evidence that a hard working business is successful or at least planning to be, and so, for the most part, I’m inclined to help them get what they want. But this simply isn’t enough on its own because I know that they will be unhappy with the results in the end, however good the production quality.

And, how do I know that? Because I know that whilst their wants will be met, quite often their needs won’t be. What I mean is, quite literally, the “solution” they’re giving me, as the answer to the question they should really have been asking, is the wrong one. It’s just not going to create the customer response they need – and I know it instinctively. They probably do too but for whatever reason, they’re not listening to their own instincts enough.

Not being one to want to continue along a path that I know will lead to dis-satisfaction, I came up with a way to tackle it head on – a way to plan the “Communications Mix”. This technique is one of the simplest and most powerful ways I know to get your communications priorities right from the start

In these days of “customer-centric” design we hear a lot about experience but how often does that principle make its way into the design of our business communications? Perhaps the following words are the simplest way of explaining this most common of principles that we all instinctively understand but which is sometimes lost in the heat of our frantic business lives.


 I hear and I forget.

I see and I remember.

I do and I understand.

I experience and I become.


So, what does all this mean? Well, to me, as I borrowed these powerful words from the wall of my son’s nursery, I was reminded that truly excellent communications should be about giving our customers an experience that will create in them a new reality – a memory which has a clear link to its source – in this case, a person or a company.

The four categories of response

I use this principle to prioritise the four categories of response to communications that these days I feel compelled to base my planning around: Awareness; Understanding; Acceptance; and, Commitment.

I’m convinced that as you increase the frequency and level of participation involved in your communications you get a much better quality of response. So choosing a mix of communications to graduate through this sequence of responses is perhaps a better way to go about planning a series of communications before you start. That way, it is far more likely that you will achieve the kind of committed response you seek, and fulfil the primary need that your organisation is, rightly or wrongly, expecting your communications to deliver.

This is certainly true in sales, where the ultimate commitment will probably be financial and contractual. And, communicating to get that commitment will involve a series of activities to build awareness, understanding and acceptance along the way and create a platform where commitment is both possible and appropriate. Clearly then, a balanced and well-timed communications mix is the right answer through the lifecycle of most sales campaigns but is often a missing vital element.

This is also true in communicating change, and especially for internal communications, where a range of activities need to be planned to gain commitment from employees who may not at first know why a change is happening or agree with it.
About the Author

BIO


Jeremy Locke, Executive Action Founder & creator of the wonderBrain™ Entrepreneur’s Toolkit

A father of three super-charged boys and a computer science graduate of Durham University in 1994, Jeremy’s inability to program computers but absolute ability to talk about them, and just about anything else, naturally led him into marketing. In 2009, after 15 years’ leading marketing initiatives for everyone else (FTSE100s, 250s, small businesses and start-ups in a heap of mainstream and inexplicably obscure markets) and equipped with the latest thinking and techniques learned from inspirational marketers in the US and UK, Jeremy founded Executive Action. Executive Action is an action-publishing channel for executives and entrepreneur’s whose mission is to bring fantastic information to individuals with drive and ambition – and help them turn it into action.

To learn how to get to market faster and get expert guidance without hiring an expert

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