Business Communications Consultants Bradford

Many business owners I speak with are frustrated by the lack of return on their marketing effort – “we’ve tried advertising in the past and it was a complete waste of money” or “we sent out 500 letters to prospective clients and didn’t have a single response” are the kind of things they say to me. I’m always interested to discover more about what they were doing and to try and discover whether there marketing communications were ‘making a connection’ with prospective clients.

Are you making a connection through your marketing communications?
Do people respond by saying things like “you really are talking my language” or “that’s just what I need” or do you receive instead a resounding silence?

If you get a good response chances are you’ve either got a fantastic product in a market where there’s very little competition, you’re giving something away to people who want what you have or you’re good at ‘making a connection’.

But for those whose marketing and business communications receive no response – what are the secrets of making a connection?

Well, let’s take a moment to think about who you prefer dealing with in your day to day life and why. We all know certain people we meet - whether it’s over the counter in Tesco’s, in the pub at the weekend or a new contact at a networking event – that we just ‘click with’ and there are other people we build a relationship with over a longer period of time, and likewise there are others we avoid like the plague.

Let’s just think about what makes it easier to make that connection, here are just some of the things that can help:

• Having mutual areas of interest
• Shared humour
• Asking questions
• Listening – they are interested in hearing from you
• Being open and suspending judgement
• Sharing a common language
• A smile – or the fact they are appealing
• An engaging speaker
• They get to the point and tell you things you want or need to hear

Just think about it, how many of these attributes apply to your friends, work colleagues you get along with or long standing customers.

There’s no surprises – it’s because you’ve made a connection.

So how does all of this relate to business I hear you cry.

Well just think about your last business communication – the advert you placed in the local paper, your direct mail shot sent to that prospect list you spent all that money on, or even the main pages on your website. Are you making a connection? And if not – why not review some of the items on the list above only this time think about the business perspective:

Mutual areas of interest – are you demonstrating that you have empathy for the problems or challenges that they face or that you can help them take ...