Today I share how to avoid three common communication strategy mistakes I see growing businesses make when communicating their business products and services to customers.
I am sharing this with you, so you don’t make the same costly mistakes and you can save precious time and effort in the process.
I also give you some tips on creating a strategic approach to your activity and sharing my FREE cheat sheet, seven simple steps to communication activity with impact which can guide you in the right direction.
Episodes referenced in this one:
Ep 3 – Are you goal digger? How to set effective goals
Ep 4 – how do you know if the Comms is working?
Ep 8 – Is there anybody out there?
Also here:https://mailchi.mp/henbe.co.uk/me4aassrqp
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Full Transcript
Title
0:04
Hello, and welcome to this episode of communication strategy that works with me, Emma Drake. Hi, everyone, how are you doing today I wanted to talk to you today about the three common mistakes I’ve seen, that people make when they are starting a communication strategy for their startup or growing business. So you can avoid these mistakes yourself.
So those of you who have listened to the podcast for a while now will know this. But in case you don’t, and you just tuned in today, I’m a communication strategy consultant. And I predominantly work with businesses that are funded to grow and have ambitious plans to be bigger companies one day. The thing is, I have seen some patterns emerge over the years working with certain types of businesses, this might be your business, or the one you want to grow.
So I thought I would share with you the three common communication strategy mistakes I see growing businesses make when setting out to communicate their business products or services to customers, and also how to avoid them. You see, I’m all about taking those big topics, and making them simpler for you.
There’s no navel-gazing here. Okay, so let’s dive in. Commonly, in my opinion, startups and growing businesses, as I described in the early days, are made up of individuals from other successful companies with a few Mavericks thrown in for good measure which you need, right, especially in those early growth stages where there are less than sort of maybe 30 to 50 people. So these individuals bring with them, their own super creative ideas, and excellent skill sets to help boost and set up all those processes and procedures. So that company can grow and can be enabled to grow. This is everything from sales functions, to manufacturing operations, to HR marketing, depending on what sort of business you are in.
This needs to a number of things. The first one is I want to be like you syndrome. This is otherwise known as brand envy, I like to call it and I see it all the time. Okay, so what happens is, this brilliant group of individuals have preconceived ideas of what’s possible, or what stage of communication and marketing or brand is at. And they also have seen ideas from their previous roles, they want to implement policies, if you can hear my puppy growling there, she’s in the background, and she’s super into chewing on a bone right now. So what you get is you get this muddly idea of the personality of the company, through all these different influences. And everyone’s working at pace, right. So everyone’s really focused on growth and business development and getting out there and getting sales really. So what you tend to get is this muddly idea of the personality of the company in those early days.
And what the communication goals are made up of is borrowed bits of what’s worked elsewhere from everyone else’s experience. And not many people will be agreeing at this point, okay, because they’ve not kind of formed properly as a board or as a group of people, potentially. This leads to number two, hiring the wrong team, or hiring too soon. So often, a lot of effort is spent hiring the wrong skills in the rush to get stuff done and stuff out the door. And everyone’s focused on sales and business development.
There’s no real evidence there it will work or insight carried out to see if it’s the right if it’s right for the business, there’s a rush to hire somebody, too soon, I think in my opinion. And there’s nothing wrong with that, you know, nothing wrong with that at all. Except, you can waste a lot of time, money and energy on this sort of strategy, the strategy where you’re trying to keep up with what’s going on, rather than thinking about what you need.
3:58
So often, the focus in this instance, will be hiring a junior marketing person. Now, again, absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course, brilliant idea. But I see a lot of burned-out Junior execs that are covering everything from ordering business cards, to writing press releases, and not actually fulfilling any strategic role or using their marketing now. So at all, there’s no strategy is what I’m saying there’s there’s no strategy to actually think about, okay, well, what do we need? Where are we going? What are our goals, and therefore, who do we need to hire and it might be that you need external support. Still, at that point, you’re not actually ready to hire someone. This leads to the mistake number three, having the wrong strategy.
By starting out smaller with simpler goals are tricky for a startup. I had no simple goals. You’re more likely to reach your audience effectively talk to them about things they want to hear about what interests them and make them think, act and engage in your product and service. And more in Fortunately, you’ll have a better chance of making them Act, which is engaging in your products and services and actually potentially buying something from you. One way of doing this is aligning your sales pipeline goals and the communication activity right from the start. This way, you’re more likely to have an impact if you align your goals, and more importantly, it helps you understand as you go along, what works for you and what doesn’t work for you.
And this means you can hire the right team with the right skill sets to support you. So whether this is an internal hire, or whether it’s external support at this stage, you’re not going to waste your effort and your money. So what can you do about it? Well, don’t worry, I’ve got four steps here you can follow and make a difference straightaway. The first one is you must have a strategic goal. There is a proven difference between having a goal and reaching your results and not having a strategic goal and reaching your results. Not only are you more likely to have those results, but in turn, it will make you feel awesome when you reach your goals.
How great is that? There’s more in Episode Three on setting effective and strategic goals to is spend some time working out who your ideal audience or customer is from your sales pipeline, and focus all your activity on this one audience. So don’t try and be all things to all people. This means only then carrying out activity which is most likely to reach and resonate with this particular customer, and turn their head your way. There’s more on this and how to work out who your audiences in episode eight. So also check that one out. Number three is monitor what you’re doing. Yes, it can be a bit of a faff, and it can seem like an onerous task. But longer-term, it will set you up to be competing in brands terms with your competition by having an effective message. And also it will help you know what’s working and what’s not.
So you can hire the right team. There’s more in that on episode four, I think it is. So make sure you check that one out too. Number four is talk to your customers not at them. So having a story that resonates is more than just telling people about your product, you need to really hit the sweet spot with your business story. And I cover one effective way to do this in episode six. So go and check that out now. So today, you have learned how not to start your communication strategy if you’re a startup or growing business, and the common mistakes to avoid. I’ve also given you some ideas of how you might go about this the right way.
And some other episodes to listen to that might help you too. If you’re interested in trying out your own simple communication approach or strategy for your next campaign, you can check the link in my show notes for a cheat sheet to help you plan that out yourself. And hopefully, help you hit your business goals. You can also drop me a message on any of my social media channels.
Or you can contact me by the show notes. So finally, thank you for listening to this episode of communication strategy that works. Don’t forget to check my show notes for those links that I mentioned. And I’d really love it if you would subscribe to my podcast and leave me a review. And also if you think there’s someone that could benefit from listening to this podcast, please share this within your networks. So I’ll just say bye for now, and see you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai