How Effective Communication in Marketing Drives Results

Communication in marketing is the backbone of your strategy, discover how effective communication will improve your marketing efforts, keep reading.

George Bernard Shaw once said,

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

This communication fallacy applies to the workplace more than anywhere else, where there is near-constant potential for miscommunication between leaders, employees, departments, vendors, clients, and customers alike.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the marketing department, where communication isn’t just important, it’s part of the very root of the departmental activity itself.

Here is a breakdown of why communication in marketing is so vital as well as how you can improve communication across the board in your marketing efforts.

The Importance of Communication in Marketing

It’s easy to look at marketing as a communicative business department. After all, the focus of marketers is to communicate with customers in order to facilitate the sales process. 

While this is absolutely true, it’s a bit reductive to consider this to be, in any way, a comprehensive breakdown of communication in the marketing field. It would be akin to saying that football is simply a game about getting the ball in the endzone. It’s obviously true, but if a team doesn’t make detailed preparations about how they’re going to accomplish this, they will faceplant when they head out onto the turf.

In the same way, a marketing team can acknowledge the end goal of communicating with customers, but they should also be well aware of the myriad other ways communication impacts the journey towards customer acquisition. For instance, there are countless forms that communication can take in marketing.

These can consist of, but are not limited to:

• Direct and indirect messages.
• Internal and external communication.
• One-way and two-way conversations.
• Vertical and horizontal transmissions within a company.
• Cross-cultural connections.

All of these methods of communication are utilized at different times in the marketing process. Sales reps engage in two-way communication with clients, product placement sends indirect messages, and vertical communication allows managers to stay in close contact with team members.

In addition to a variety of different communication forms and mediums, the motivation for communicating within the marketing field may once again vary dramatically depending on the time and place of each message.

For instance, marketers can use communication to:

• Build and maintain relationships with customers and clients.
• Develop a recognizable brand voice.
• Provide transparency for both employees and customers.
• Pinpoint shifting market and customer needs.
• Accept and respond to customer feedback.
• Fuel innovation.
• Maintain teamwork and solidarity during challenging times.

By establishing effective and clear lines of communication, you can have a widespread and powerful impact on your marketing efforts. From customer relationship management to major future-focused innovation, communication in marketing has an instrumental role in both a company’s ongoing success and its longevity.

Ways to Improve Your Marketing Communication

Of course, understanding the importance of marketing hardly does any good if concepts cannot be turned into solid, actionable advice. Here are a few of the best ways for leaders to address and improve communication within their existing marketing activities.

Consider Communication Basics

It’s important to start by establishing communication as an emphasis within your marketing team. You can do this in two different ways:

• By making communication one of your team’s focal points. Integrate it into your company culture, set up clear communication parameters and expectations, and make communication skills a priority in your recruitment process.
• By developing a deep and comprehensive knowledge of communication with your existing staff. Improving communication skills, especially on an interpersonal level, is a life-long process, and it should be an important part of your team’s ongoing professional development.

By addressing these communication basics, you can ensure that your creative agency and the rest of your team is on the same page as you address communication throughout your marketing efforts.

Consider Communication During Planning

Communication is often seen as an integral part of marketing in action. However, if you want your communication to be as effective as possible, it’s essential that you consider it right from the inception and planning phases of your marketing strategy. 

For instance, as you develop each marketing campaign, address how your team will properly collaborate with one another throughout the preparation and execution of a campaign. Communication is a key ingredient of effective collaboration. As such, collaboration and its accompanying communication concerns within your team should be addressed right from the planning phase of each project.

Consider Communication With Everyone Involved

Addressing the transmission and dissemination of information immediately within your marketing team is an important first step. Once that’s done, it’s also wise to step back and get a big picture view of what communication is required from a company-wide perspective. 

Many marketing plans, especially in larger organizations, overlap with other departments. Do you need to communicate with customer service, sales, IT? What inter-departmental messages and lines of communication are essential to streamline the effectiveness of your marketing efforts?

Consider Communication With Your Customers

Finally, there are the customers themselves. While communication is always present between companies and customers, this is where effective communication can make all of the difference. As you approach your customer communication, make sure to ask yourself the following questions:

• What communication channels are you utilizing? Have you connected with customers using the appropriate tools, such as social media and mobile-friendly communication? Are these channels unified into a single, omnichannel customer experience?
• Have you taken the time to study your customers in order to better meet their needs?
• Are you using each communiqué as an opportunity to bond emotionally by listening to, respecting, and showing concern for your customers’ needs?

By taking the time to consider your customer communication, you can dramatically increase the efficiency and productivity of each interaction.

Using Effective Communication in Marketing

Marketing is all about communication. As such, it’s easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. The sheer quantity of natural communication that takes place with most marketing activities can make it easy to take communication for granted.

However, the essential nature of communication in your marketing efforts makes it an instrumental factor that should be carefully considered with each and every campaign that you launch. From planning and internal communication channels to external interactions with customers, every single communication-based activity should be carefully considered and perfected. 

When this is done, you can count on getting the most of every ounce of your marketing activity.