5 essential elements of an effective communication strategy

Communication is one of the pillars of a company's success. We know it's doing its job when it builds a safe, appealing bridge between what the company offers and what the market is looking for.

When that happens, the market is eager to cross that bridge. And you get there with a good product, backed by a strategic marketing and communication plan.

Strategy as the thread that runs through communication

To reach the bridge, we need roads that take us there. Applied to our world, we need a digital strategy to take us to our audience.

But before that, we need to know the ground on which we want to build our road and, consequently, our bridge. We need an aerial view of the site to understand the best way to start building, the lie of the land and what kind of materials to use.

Whenever I start a new communication strategy, I try to work like an architect who has just been handed a new project to bring to life: you have to dive deep into that world.

Just as an architect has to study the client and the project, my job is to study the company in depth to work out the best way to convey everything it does to the “ground”, which in our case is the internet.

Beyond that immersion, I also need to study the audience and how they behave online. Which sites do they visit? Which social network do they prefer? What kind of pages do they follow? For the type of conversion the company wants, what's the best way to reach these people?

Some businesses are, by their very nature, considered boring, uninteresting or with nothing relevant to say. Whatever the core business, there's always something to talk about and an audience interested in it.

At Jellycode we work with everything from big brands that are easy to communicate because of their broad appeal, to small companies in a very specific, closed niche. We know from experience that even in these cases it's possible to find content and a line of communication that earns the audience's attention. Often an audience they didn't even know existed.

A real case: theory and practice.

Here's a real example I'm very proud of: the agency had a client who firmly believed his business had absolutely nothing to say on social media. I asked him why he was so sure, and the answer gave me the clue I needed: “I don't like Facebook, so I don't think anyone else does either.” How wrong he was.

You have to separate personal taste from what the company needs. I personally may not like a particular social network, but if it turns out my content as a company works better there, then being on that network has to be part of my communication routine.

That finding is based on strategy. And the research I did into this particular client's market, along with the analysis of the competition, the audience and what kind of content would make sense for these people, convinced the client to set up a company page on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Today we have weekly content, engagement from an audience that fits the business, and over a thousand likes from real people who are genuinely interested in what this company has to say. There's no better way to prove a theory than by putting it into practice.

Some companies sell services. Others sell products. For some companies, the conversion metric is a completed form. For others, it's a purchase in the online shop. In other cases, conversion is measured by the number of calls or appointment requests. Every business has its own metric of success, and working out exactly how to achieve it takes research and strategy.

That's why the bridge analogy makes so much sense: strategy is what connects point A to point B. To build a bridge that doesn't collapse you have to work like an architect and an engineer: study the ground, choose where to build, set deadlines and oversee the works, and only then open the bridge so the traffic can flow. People have to believe there's something good on the other side before they'll cross over to our side.

5 fundamental elements of an effective communication strategy

1. Know your product or service

It sounds obvious, but knowing your product or service is the first step. What advantages, benefits and points of difference will the customer get by buying your product? How does your product stand apart from the competition?

2. Know your target audience

As I said earlier, part of the strategy process is understanding the audience. Which sites do they visit? Which social network do they prefer? What is this person's digital behaviour? What content are they interested in?

3. Know and define your communication channels

To get the most out of our content, what is the profile of the customer we want to reach, and on which social network can our product best be communicated? Which days and times are best for capturing the most user attention?

4. Be clear about your communication challenges and the goals you want to achieve

Whatever the product or service, every business works towards commercial objectives. When we talk about digital strategy, what kind of audience action counts as a successful conversion? A completed form? A purchase in the online shop? A booked appointment? It's essential to know what we want when we communicate in digital channels.

5. Tracking results

That's why it's so important to keep a close eye on results: if we see that a given strategy isn't working as expected, we can make small changes that deliver far more. I've seen cases where the posting times were wrong for the audience, the images didn't match the message and the copy wasn't explanatory enough. The good thing about marketing is that there's no set recipe: it can be shaped around what the audience is looking for. And if we know exactly what we want to communicate, those changes are far more effective.

If we know how to build the road — in other words, if our strategy is well built around the parameters that make sense for the business and for the audience — we'll certainly reap the rewards in the future.