Is your communication effort designed to interrupt people?
Think of the filters you put up around your world to manage the saturation of information and decisions you have to make. What percentage of today’s decisions do you make from a telemarketer, billboard, or yellow pages? Conversely, what decisions do you make from a friend’s recommendation, a web page, or a Google search. How can you expect others to not weed your effort through filters?
Even an effective multi-tasker is flooded with tweets, social media messages (Facebook), RSS feeds, emails, phone calls, and text messages. Your message can not be about what you think they need to know. Our challenge as communicators is to get our message delivered through the deluge of information and communication. People don’t care what you are selling. People want to know what makes their life better.
To cope with marketing communication saturation, people use filters to weed messages out. Google is a filter. RSS feed subscriptions are opt-in filters. The filter cuts out noise. People also rely on recommendations to decide what to trust. Websites that use “if you bought this you would like this”, or tools similar to Zagat’s ratings filter information. A trusted friend’s recommendation is a filter.
Your communication strategy should be based on what customers want, not what you think they need. They certainly don’t care what makes your strategy a success – whether you are a CEO or a brand manager, don’t delude yourself thinking otherwise. How do you find out what customers need? Listen and ask and provide vehicles for feedback. As you look through the below communication life cycle, think back to a leader or marketing strategy you executed, did they include all these choices:
- Listen
- Research
- Form relationships with folks
- Conduct outreach and response
- Decide on information channels
- Decide on communication channels
- Measure or collect responses
- Report
- Repeat at least once and modify without ego
Stop telling (selling/yelling) and start engaging. Think of your communication as if you were a publisher not a marketer. Moving from interruption to engagement provides a view as valued marketing communications. Start this by thinking about magazines, environments, and sources that you trust for information? You only go back to those sources as long as they provide value and keep your interest. You move on when they are no longer relevant.
Buy in is a dead concept. Write, speak, and communicate to impress potential stakeholders with creative, relevant content. Respect your stakeholder”s attention and time. Your stakeholders filter, evaluate, and decide to act on your message in their degree of commitment. Evaluate your communication strategy from interruption to anticipation or championed communication.
Better still: invite your stakeholders to advocate for you.
