Every business with an online presence, whether through a store or by building a community on social media, needs to carry out online communication strategies if it wants to reach its goals.
At Mailrelay we know there are so many strategies and actions you can carry out across the different channels the Internet offers that deciding how to communicate online with your audience can be complicated.
After all, “without a strategy, there is no paradise.” Without guidelines organized over time, it would be really hard to communicate consistently with your audience across different channels (we would end up losing focus).
That’s why, in this article, I invite you to discover:
- Why you should personalize your brand’s communication and which criteria to follow.
- Which foolproof actions no online communication strategy should be without.
What Is a Communication Action Plan?
To start off and make sure we’re on the same page, an online communication action plan is a series of marketing strategies that we carry out on the different channels where we interact with our target audience and through which we aim to win them over.
So, to carry out good communication actions, we need prior, well-organized work so that these actions don’t just work at the moment we launch them, but over time, building lasting relationships with our audience and keeping our business going.
We’ll show you why you should personalize these communication strategies for each channel.
Communication Actions: Why Personalize Them?
The first thing I want to make clear is that copying what others do is pointless, however similar their businesses may be. What is good for someone else isn’t necessarily good for you, or at least it won’t work as well.
Every business is very different, even within the same industry. That’s why I always like to give personalized recommendations to each of my clients:
For example, I have worked for similar business models (solving the same need) whose way of doing marketing and communicating was, nevertheless, completely different. For one of them the product is the star, while for the other the strong point is a personal brand.
The thing is, carrying out online communication strategies identical to those of our competitors keeps us from standing out.
So the best option is always to follow a communication style of your own. Also, keep in mind that:
- Following your own communication strategy, set in advance, lets you organize your work around a consistent goal and style.
- Personalizing your online communication actions also boosts productivity, since delegating and defining roles is always easier.
- All of this, together with setting more realistic goals, means you can measure results and apply improvements more precisely.
Now that it’s clear why you should personalize, let’s look at the criteria that will help you work out which communication strategy is ideal for your business.
► What Communication Strategies Are There and Which Should Your Business Follow?
When analyzing possible online communication strategies and actions to find what best suits your needs, it’s important to keep certain criteria in mind to make a good decision.
The key here is to take a critical look at your business and its possibilities, so you understand which actions you’ll be able to sustain over time.
There are different communication strategies you can go for:
Communication Channels
You need to decide which ones you’ll be present on, and to do that you have to understand that you don’t create the same type of content for every channel, nor do you find the same audience on each of them.
For example, sharing professional opinion tweets with your community of industry leaders on X (formerly Twitter) is not the same as making an educational video for beginner followers on TikTok or Instagram Stories.
Available Time
You really need to know how much time you’ll be able to devote to communicating your brand messages online, since some strategies, despite working well (video marketing, for example), take a big investment of time to get off the ground.
Team
Related to the previous point, you need to be aware of the team you have available.
There’s no point launching a blog or offering webinars if you don’t have the time or the professionals to create this kind of content.
Target Audience
As I mentioned about the differences between online channels, you probably know that each generation uses different social networks or media, so your social media marketing communication actions need to change accordingly. That’s why it’s worth tailoring your communication mix to each audience.
For example, while Facebook is becoming the favorite among older users, TikTok and Instagram appeal to a much younger audience.
Message
Another criterion to keep in mind is the type of message you want your business to send.
Knowing what your goal is, where you’ll share it and who it’s aimed at will help you define a consistent online communication style.
Relationship with Customers
The way your business relates to people also influences which type of communication strategy you should follow, since some encourage closeness and others favor a formal tone.
🥇7 Online Communication Actions for Your Business Strategy
As I mentioned above, my advice is always to personalize your communication actions to optimize the performance of each specific strategy.
However, if you ask me:
What are the most important communication actions?
Well, I’d have no choice but to reveal my secret and give you examples of how to build a communication strategy:
1) Keep Your Web Design Up to Date
Many businesses have a website with good content and think the job is done, but in reality our website needs maintenance as well as constant updates:
● On the one hand, you need to adapt your website to the requirements of search engines, since Google’s algorithm changes fairly often.
● On the other hand, updating your web design based on user experience is very important to meet users’ needs and the way they browse.
2) Encourage Conversation and Discussion
Another basic communication action in any online strategy is creating spaces for discussion.
Building an online community means making conversation possible between users, as well as between users and brands.
To share experiences and solve your audience’s problems, I recommend betting on any of these channels:
- Private Facebook groups for loyal customers.
- Professional interest groups on LinkedIn.
- Special-interest forums.
- Polls on social media.
- Collecting testimonials through email marketing.
- Comments on products or services on your website.
3) Create Video Content
You probably know that video content is more and more popular on the Internet, as it’s very easy to consume thanks to streaming, reels and TikTok videos.
In fact, thanks to these social networks, the possibilities for brands are growing enormously. However, there are some drawbacks:
● To create this format, you need to have good command of spoken communication and expression in front of a camera.
● Video marketing requires the same planning as other types of content, but it also requires specific knowledge of filming and editing.
4) Segment Your Databases
If there is one thing that’s especially important in any online communication strategy, it’s segmentation. It lets you organize users by different characteristics, which makes it easier to personalize your brand messages.
I’m sure you know what I mean, right? For example, you can segment your customer database by:
- Sociodemographic data.
- The user’s relationship with the company (customer, referrer, etc.).
- The stage of the sales funnel the user is at.
- Types of products or services they buy.
- Etc.
Working with platforms like Mailrelay, Google Ads and even the social networks themselves has allowed us to go into great depth in this area.
5) Launch Sales Pages with Outstanding Copy
When carrying out your communication actions, you may think a nice photo and a buy button are enough, but nothing could be further from the truth…
To make your online business profitable, it’s very important to use convincing, trustworthy sales copy.
Applying copywriting with a very clearly defined focus or goal on your sales pages or landing pages, whether it’s closing a sale or capturing a lead, will help you present the benefits of what you offer clearly and correctly.
One of my tricks is to get users to reflect on the needs they have and why your solution is the best one. This landing page, an example of a communication action that takes lifestyle to the next level, is perfect for the occasion:
6) Invest in SEO and Online Advertising
Within online communication strategies, SEO and advertising are the online marketing actions that take up the most budget, but that doesn’t make them any less essential (quite the opposite).
Investing in search engine optimization and in paid ads on Google or social media is an excellent source of:
- Quality web traffic.
- Leads and potential customers.
- Visibility in searches for terms related to your business.
To follow a consistent online communication strategy with any of the actions mentioned above, take note of these practices:
- Combining SEO optimization practices with persuasive writing adapted to the business’s situation and philosophy (SEO copywriting).
- Passing web authority between different domains through a natural link strategy (link building).
- Passing authority between URLs on the same domain through links placed in related content (link juice).
To put any of these actions into practice and boost your online communication strategy, I recommend getting in touch with platforms or professionals specializing in press releases and media placements, as well as working hand in hand with experts in SEO-optimized content writing.
7) Collaborate and Encourage Networking
The last action I’m going to recommend is organizing a communication plan built on generating trust around your brand and building a network of professional contacts.
Often, out of fear of the competition and of being copied, we flatly refuse to share our knowledge.
Remember the motto “Share more, compete less”, because, just like in life, on the Internet you also get back what you give.
Collaborating, telling your business’s story and, in general, sharing for free are very smart practices that pay off in the long run and, above all, open up opportunities to collaborate with and learn from other great professionals in the industry.
Networking is a way of finding opportunities, and you never know how far they can take you. Opportunities that will help you grow your business and get where you never thought you would (seriously…).
Recap…
By putting into practice all or most of the 7 digital communication actions we’ve covered in this article, you make sure you can follow a consistent online communication strategy across all the channels where your brand is present.
We’ve seen that aspects such as the type of audience or the goal of your message are criteria that will largely shape that strategy, so there is no universal rule that works for every type of business.
What other communication actions do you consider essential in online communication strategies?
Finally, if you’re looking for an email marketing service for your business, Mailrelay offers a completely free account to send up to 80,000 messages a month to up to 20,000 subscribers, so you can sell to your lists and scale your business.
Seize the opportunity and… let the game begin!
