Data is the new oil, something that we have been hearing in recent times all over the media. And the river of data that flows within an organisation through internal communications between various departments, teams, and hierarchies is rich in resources to manage the external communications with the multiple stakeholders of the organisation.
Data is available to the organisation through multiple touchpoints where the audience is interacting in varied manners. These can be physical interactions like meetings, personal contacts, door-to-door selling, exposure at retail outlets, sales calls, and similar incidences among people from and outside the organisation.
These days social media interactions over platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram also provide such opportunities for immensely valuable data that can be useful in developing and managing communications campaigns. Besides, many organisation-led initiatives like emailers, newsletters, e-books, etc., create opportunities for collecting relevant data provided by the audience. Similarly, subscriptions of newsletters and download options from the organisation’s website are other similar activities that generate a wealth of data.
Interestingly, almost all organisations today use both outbound marketing and inbound marketing for while dealing with their customers. While outbound marketing is primarily focused on reaching out to customers with certain content detailing the company offerings, sometimes it may not match the exact requirements of their customers.
On the contrary, in the case of inbound marketing, it is the customers, who opt and select the kind of content they want to receive willfully and with consent. This allows companies to attract customers, provide a personalised product or service offering depending upon their interests, create an engagement according to their likes, dislikes, tastes, preferences, and choices. When personalisation is undertaken with inbound marketing there are high chances of creating loyalty and customer delight.
Understanding the customers’ needs, always remains of prime importance. Once this is done what matters is developing and disseminating personalised offers through communications. And this effort is not only limited to the customers but also applies to the wider range of the organisation’s stakeholders at large. Getting the audience to have an engaging experience from receiving the traditional communications becomes important.
Of course, understanding the nitty-gritty of customer habits, stakeholders’ mindset, audience’s interests, and relevant data points become the key to delivering a structured communications campaign. It is important that the organisation internally has a system to listen to its stakeholders and manage its data well enough to articulate its communication to the audience.
An organised and insightful data management within the organisation will work well towards attracting strangers and untapped audiences, engaging, and interacting with prospective audiences, and at the same time to retaining, building upon, and delighting the existing audiences. Also, this will allow effectively targeting the relevant audiences while delivering and disseminating any communication.
Efficient use of audience data allows the companies to craft suitable communication strategies and allocate optimum resources within the organisation. Such an allocation of resources may differ from audience to audience depending upon their specific requirements. What’s most important is to understand how data is collected, analysed, and consumed to create external and internal communications.
Effective data management will ensure improved competitive positioning for the organisation, apart from reaching out clearly and effectively to its varied audiences. In current times, the organisation needs to continuously leverage new sources of data, whether internal or external, develop analytics and digital qualities for creating better insights into the diverse audience it is dealing with.
A well-organised and effective data management can help facilitate excellent strategic communication with relevant audiences delivering a competitive edge to any organisation!
The views and opinions published here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the publisher.
Praveen has been closely associated with many national and international events related to cinema for children, art and culture. He has a well-rounded experience that cuts across all key sectors of PR & Corporate Communications.
He started his career with URJA Communications, an advertising agency specialising in technology brands, where he was instrumental in developing the PR division. Post this, he had a stint with Horizons Porter Novelli, a global public relations consultancy. Thereafter, he was heading the IT & Telecom division at Clea PR, a leading Indian public relations and communications company followed by a fairly long stint with Omnicom Group agencies viz. TBWA\India and Brodeur India.
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