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How to Strengthen Your Business’s Customer Communications

If you own a small business, you know how important it is to cultivate and maintain strong customer relationships. Your customers play many roles in your company’s success, from spreading the word about your brand to friends and family to purchasing your products or services themselves. 

At the heart of strong customer relationships is good communication. Communicating updates about your offerings, information about your rewards program, upcoming sales, and more can help you keep consumers tapped into your business and encourage them to purchase your products or services again and again. 

In this guide, we’ll go over three communication best practices so you can lay the foundation for strong customer relationships and effectively grow your business. Let’s begin! 

Use the right technology

As a small business owner, you’ve got plenty of tasks on your plate, like managing budgets and creating employee engagement strategies so you can boost retention rates. As a result, you might start to deprioritize regularly communicating with your customers, especially because this can be a time-consuming process—if you don’t have the right tools. 

Rather than letting your communications fall to the wayside, invest in a solid tech stack so you can streamline your outreach and send off personalized messages without the hassle of manually creating each individual text, email, or other form of communication. 

Consider adding the following applications to your toolkit: 

Messaging application: A messaging application can let you create group chats with different subsets of your audience and send highly tailored messages that are likely to resonate and inspire action. For example, a dance studio might use an app to create different group chats for students’ parents organized by class. This way, parents always receive the most relevant information and updates about their students’ programming right on their phones. 

Email platform: Email is another powerful form of communication that many of your audience members might prefer. With an email marketing platform, you can segment your contact list based on relevant factors, such as demographics and interests, to create more personalized messaging streams. Then, schedule these emails ahead of time with automation tools. 

Social media management tool: A social media management tool empowers businesses to easily manage content creation across multiple platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, X, and wherever else your audience might spend time. This way, you can meet your audience members where they already are with engaging, branded posts that show off your business’s offerings. 

Consider your business’s budget and how much funding you can allocate towards investing in new solutions to support your communication and marketing strategy. Keep in mind that your tech stack can help boost ROI over time and increase customer retention, so it’s never a bad idea to use some of your hard-earned funds towards getting the right solutions that will meet your needs. 

Understand your audience

When thinking about your communication strategy, you need to carefully consider not only the quantity of your communications, but also the quality. Just sending off any communication without thinking of your audience’s interests can annoy your customer base and even lead them to disengage from your business altogether. 

To keep your consumers happy, ask about the following communication preferences so you can foster mutual respect and trust: 

Suggested Alt Text: A graphic depicting three things to ask your customers about when it comes to finding out their communication preferences, including mode of communication, frequency, and the types of content and updates they want to receive. 

Mode of communication: Do your customers prefer hearing from your business by email, text, a messaging application, or direct mail? 

Frequency of communication: How often do your customers want to receive notifications from your business? For instance, on a weekly, twice-monthly, or monthly basis? 

Types of content and updates: What kind of information does your audience want to receive about your company? For example, are they only interested in learning about updates on a specific product or offering, or do they want to hear everything your business might have to share? 

Send out a survey form to new customers as soon as they make a purchase or sign up for a class or program so you can note their preferences. This will help develop positive relationships and increase the likelihood of consumers engaging with your communications. 

Adhere to your brand

Your brand defines your business’s identity and connects customers to your purpose. DanceStudio-Pro’s marketing guide therefore recommends ensuring that your messaging closely aligns with your brand to reinforce who you are and keep your communications consistent. 

Make sure to include the following verbal and visual branding elements across your communications: 

Tone and messaging: This refers to the language you use to describe your business and its offerings. 

Color scheme: Use the same color scheme to unify your visual identity and evoke different emotions in your customers. For example, Kwala explains that many organizations use the color blue because of its association with trustworthiness and professionalism. 

Fonts: Incorporate the same header and body fonts throughout content such as your website and emails so audiences recognize that your organization is sending out this information. 

Photos and videos: Share visuals that show off your business and inspire consumers to convert. For example, a dance studio might share photos of dance students practicing for their recital to encourage parents and community members to buy tickets. 

Create a style guide that outlines your brand guidelines so your whole staff is on the same page and can easily refer back to this document when sending out communications. 

Wrapping Up

A strong communication strategy makes it easier to connect with your customer base and fuel revenue for your business. As you send out communications, track relevant metrics to assess the effectiveness of your messaging and determine whether it’s resonating with audiences. This will help you improve your communication strategy and address any gaps in engagement.