Top Tips for Communicating with Your Customers: How to Stay in Touch and Build Relationships – Part 1

Every startup founder needs to think about how they will communicate their offering from day one. In the beginning, your communication will be mainly targeting investors. Once you get going, you will need to plan for communicating your offerings, new services, marketing campaigns, and more. Today, I want to share a few tips that will help make sure you’ve got the communications basics covered. We will talk about what successful communications look like, the importance of developing simple messages, and why communication consistency is essential.

Communicating with your customers

Before you start talking to your customers, make sure you’ve worked out how to communicate with them and what you offer them. One of the most common questions I get asked is, “how can we get in touch with you and learn more about your company?” Suppose you have a memorable and unique brand name. In that case, your customers will be easily able to sign up for your emails or social media accounts, visit your website using your brand’s name. 

What makes a good message?

Let’s be honest, we’re all tired of cold callers. We’re sick of being pitched at in random places and having things thrown in our faces. Instead, you have to think about who you’re actually trying to reach when writing marketing emails. Start by thinking about what your customer needs. What are you offering that they need? What problems will they be facing? How can you help them? What products or services do you want to give them? How do you want to provide value? You should also consider that each customer will have different needs and different wants.

Be consistent across channels

To be consistent with your communications, it is important to create a policy for who is involved in all aspects of your company, including your communications. Ensure that you have an internal communicator in each department that has the task of writing emails and making follow-up calls. This person should be someone who has a bit of a business acumen and understands what communications are and how to make them valuable to all members of your organization. I’ve had so many communications that I’ve come across that were absolutely ridiculous and felt embarrassed for the person who created it. Don’t be that person. Communications need to be easy to understand. This should be no big deal for anyone.

Consistency in your messaging also requires being consistent across different communication channels in terms of your sharing frequency. You need to be able to communicate in different ways and at different times to different audiences. For example, you can email your customers from within your organization using a canned response. Alternatively, you can make the opportunity to respond to the outreach and show you care about what they say. Consistent messaging across channels also has the added risk of going out of fashion. When you send the same canned responses, your messaging becomes less valuable to your audience, whether you’ve got a new release or your audience is sending a press release. It’s much better to follow a consistent approach. 

Anil Uzun