The 3 Main Types Of Communication Strategies

Having a deep understanding of the intended purpose of an application or discipline, vastly alters its practical execution.

In more simple terms, knowing why you do something, plays a massive role in how you end up doing it.

This is especially relevant for those of us who take responsibility for the marketing and communications of our businesses. Whether you take a seat at the C-Suite table of your multi-national publically listed company, or you’re the founder of a promising start-up, grasping the intricate complexities of how we communicate what we do is not one of our business departments, it permeates every aspect of our business.

Therefore, we need to understand not only the process of designing, developing and deploying an efficient strategy, but also the purpose of our communication, if it is going to be effective as well. Knowing why we communicate, will enable us to be more intentional about the when, where and how of our marketing.

Traditionally, marketers and advertising agencies have designed campaigns around one of three main outcomes. Although each displays a unique advantage, only one feeds straight into the overarching goals of your business. More and more we see marketing professionale being expected to take responsibility for the overall growth of the company. Business communication has become less of an add-on in the corporate sphere, and as a result needs to increasingly demonstrate how it is adding momentum to the core business objectives, if at all.

As we’re becoming less and less siloed in our communication strategies, marketing professionals need to seriously re-consider the point of our efforts, if we are to evolve our actions for increased value, and hopefully grow our businesses.

Communicating For Awareness

This approach aims to let as many people as possible know, in the shortest possible time, that the business exists. This strategy implies no understanding for the needs or pains of its target audience. Its single purpose is to flood the broader market’s information feed with its own brand, using tactics that spread the entire range from [seemingly] side-splitting humour to horrifying shock.

Marketers that design commucation strategies for awareness are infatuated by data and numbers, using traffic-based statisticsto prove the success of their strategies. They constantly pour over hits, page views, drive-by’s and distributions. Their go-to arsenal consists of targeted ads, billboards, handed flyers, paid for placings and various other advertising-based media, that are purposefully designed to interrupt any unsuspecting audience with the message of their brand.

What is it good for: If used with massive amounts of restraint, sporadic awareness campaigns may contribute to business success. It is best deployed when the brand is still unknown and in its infancy phase, yet even then it should be campaign-based only, and not as an ongoing communication strategy.

How to do it: Combine any brand awareness strategy with a real value offering to your audience. Reward time and attention with useful and accessible resources that directly address their felt needs.

When not to use: Brands that rely on awareness marketing as an ongoing communication strategy withdraw more from their audience’s goodwill account than they deposit. Soon enough the well runs dry, the audience becoming acutely adapt at ignoring the message, while promptly shifting their attention elsewhere.

Ultimately, communicating for awareness is not sustainable, and definitely not the point.

Communicating For Comprehension

A comprehension strategy aims to educate the audience as much as possible about the product or service. It is based on the assumption that if your target market can only understand how the product works, and the ways in which it is obviously better than your competition’s offering, your marketing will be a success.

Comprehension marketers spend their time creating information-based campaigns that are filled to the brim with long-form thought pieces and insightful webinars. Their metrics include downloads, polls and surveys, and their core messaging focuses on product functionality, specifications and performance.

What is it good for: This approach can be useful not as a long-term strategy, but once again, as a campaign-based plan exclusively during the launch of a new product or service range.

How to do it: When temporarily making the attributes of our own product the main focus of our message, we must make sure that we create a logical connection for our audience between what we want them to buy, and how it will solve their problem.

When not to use: Continuously boasting about how your offering is the best, can quickly cause a loss of perceived authenticity and credibility. Don’t deploy a comprehension strategy as an indefinite means to either attract new customers, or grow your business.

Communicating For Response

Here is where it gets interesting.

The moment a business communicator understands that the most noble purpose of any communication is to actually grow the business, their whole perspective on marketing changes. In a moment you realise that merely marketing for awareness or comprehension, although useful at times, can never be the main motivation behind any communication strategy.

If a marketing team desires to align itself with the main purposes of the business, which is hopefully based on growth, it needs to communicate for one reason only: so that the target audience will respond to both the intermediate and main call-to-action of the business. Leaders who communicate for response focus on engagement-based metrics like conversations and conversions. They understand that their most important tactic is to establish a personal connection with their audience through honest empathy, mutual respect and real-world value.

What is it good for: Focusing all your communication efforts towards eliciting a specific response from your audience, is not only the most effective strategy you can deploy, but also the most sustainable.

How to do it: Although the best communication strategy for your business may be simple, its not always the easiest. The best communicators immerse themselves in their audience’s felt needs, find authentic ways to articulate those wants, and humbly offer their product or service as a guide and resource — enabling their customers to solve their problems and realise their dreams. Response-based strategies put the audience at the center, as opposed to either the business or its product. It prioritises the issue the customer needs resolved, and makes the solution to that issue as easy as possible to both understand, and access.

When not to use: Don’t use this strategy if you feel uncomfortable with being co-responsible for the growth of your business. However, if you want to join our community in elevating the status, but also the responsibility, of the marketing department, then communicating for response is the only strategy that will not only expand your company, but also delight your audience.

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The KRAFT Amplify™ Process is specifically designed to help leaders grow their businesses through effective communication.

If you’re becoming increasingly frustrated by losing money down a dark marketing hole, without any usefull metrics and measurements to gauge your return on investment, consider contacting our team today.

Our approach is hands-on, and will instantly position you to not only revolutionise the way you communicate the identity and purpose of your business to your audience, but will also create effective funnels for your market, through which they can easily respond to your main call-to-action.

Start communicating for response today, by clicking here and allowing us to be your guide.