Unit 2.1, Communication

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MODULE 2: Digital Communication Tools

Communication Strategy

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INTRODUCTION

Today, it is not enough to have a great idea or a great product to achieve success. For projects to mature and end up providing a return, it is necessary to make them grow, and connect with the people who will buy your ideas or products.It is necessary to look for different ways to let buyers know who you are, what you sell, how you do it, what are your values are and obviously the price. In short, you must tell them why the product you offer cover their needs, get them to choose you and, if possible, recommend you and repeat.When starting a new project, every entrepreneur or businessperson has as its fundamental objective to achieve the greatest number of sales, right? Then, you will surely ask yourself, how am I going to sell my product or service? This is were communication strategies come in.The importance of carrying out these strategies lies in the fact that if they are carried out correctly, you will achieve the numbers you dream of in terms of sales.Carrying out a communication strategy will have as a goal that your target audience not only understands what your brand sells, but also understands what it means and represents.This knowledge will have a positive consequence on people's perception of your company, and they will end up becoming customers, so it is important that your communication strategy is based on who you are and what you want to show.

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In general, the success of a strategy will depend on its planning, and you will have to consider several necessary aspects:1) Analyze your situation, your starting point.2) Be clear about your goal, how far you want to go.3) Define the public / people you are going to address.4) Be clear about what you want to explain about yourself.5) Select by which methods you want to reach your public. Do you want to have a website, social networks, send emails? Also called mediums or channels.6) Plan your actions to reach your goals. Draw and plan what you will do each day to communicate with the people who can buy the product from you.

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With a little bit of strategy your results can change significantly in a better way. It is not the same to carry out scattered actions without a focus, than planned actions with a meaning and an objective. We call this entire process of introspection prior to carrying out any action as defining or preparing a strategy. In this section we will show you the different points to define a strategy for your business.2.1.1 Analyze your situation, your starting pointAnalyzing your initial situation means evaluating your business internally and externally. That is, things that depend on you and things that depend on the environment around you. If you analyze yourself and your environment, you will be able to think much better about your communication strategies to achieve your goals.In the communication and business environment, a very simple tool is used to create a map in which this external and internal analysis is carried out. This tool is the SWOT diagram. Each SWOT letter refers to one of the points to be analyzed. On an internal level, you must analyze your strengths and your weaknesses. Externally, you need to analyze the opportunities and the risks or threats.

Unit 2.1. Prepare a strategy

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Macro-environmental factors such as changes in government policy, deregulation of markets, and the availability of new tech may be either an opportunity or threat, depending on how well your capabilities stack up against your competitors.And how to start to create a SWOT? Here you can find a recommendation. Start with the internal definition and finish with the external. SWOT analysis is not static, you can review every year or every moment you think your business is changing.

Weaknesses

Strengths

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Opportunities

Threats

If you want to do this exercise in a digital way you can use the tool Miro. We will explain it in detail in section three.

Lets try it! Here you can find an example of items that you can analyze to create your SWOT:

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Here you can find a list of the main communication objectives:

Try not tu chose more than 2 or maximum 3 objectives. You will succeed only if you are focused on the most relevant for your business. One you have defined your communication objectives, try to find other microobjectives that you can measure. For example, if you want to increase your brand positioning you can think about being a referent in X during Y time through bi-monthly conferences or workshops in your village.

Communication objectives +

Business objectives +

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It is important to know how far you want to go to be able to put all your efforts to achieve it. The SWOT analysis has allowed you to know what situation you are in, which will help you define realistic and at the same time ambitious and challenging objectives.Although in this section we want to explain what the objectives are within a communication strategy, you may also know other types of objectives, which must be clear before starting with the communication objectives. We are talking about business goals. In a simple way we explain the difference between one and the other:

2.1.2 Be clear about your goal

Your audience is not the same if you want to sell milk from your farm, if you want to sell ties or if you want to offer to teach painting classes. Clearly defining who your audience is, is essential to think about how to offer your product or service: what to tell them, how to tell them, which what medium you are going to reach them or what they expect from you once they have bought from you. We purpose this exercise! Try to fulfil this template to analyse your public.

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2.1.3 Define the public

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Do you know what you really want to show your audience and how you want to show yourself? Having this point defined will help you maintain a consistent message in all the mediums you need to reach your audience. We recommend you to think about: - An attractive definition of your product. Explain the product and its main characteristics and benefits. - A definition of the values of your company. Why do you do what you do? What is your company? - With what tone do you want to address the public? Nice and close? Or maybe professional and serious? Here you can find an example where you can note the difference between a milk seller and a ties seller.

2.1.4 Be clear about what you want to explain about yourself.

In the next section we will show you different tools that will allow you to use some of these channels successfully. Decide which of the channels we propose could be more suitable to reach your target audience. It is possible that some of the proposals are not commonly used by your target or it may also be that you can think of one that we have not proposed.

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It is time to select the channels through which to approach your audience. We suggest you start by differentiating between the channels that are online / on the Internet and those that are physical / face-to-face.- Physical channels - Digital channels

2.1.5 Select by which methods you want to reach your public.

You can use the chart to highlight that you are planning an action or to write down the text that you are going to use. If you want, you can add more rows to write down also the budget.

Now you have learned what you need to plan the actions you are going to carry out. You have thought about what your goals are, what the person you want to address is like and how you are going to reach them (message and channels).With all this, you can create a calendar of actions that allows you to be organized and later measure the results. All this will allow you to identify which actions work best for you and which ones worse. You can continue working with the ones that work best for you and eliminate or modify the ones that have not worked for you. Here you can download a calendar example:

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2.1.6 Plan your actions to reach your goals:

MODULE 2: Digital Communication Tools

¡You have successfully completed Unit 2.1!