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Introduction
Business communication is vital for success in all businesses. Success in this context means, being able to accomplish a particular task or to achieve a specific objective. Good business communications in relationships either with fellow staff or customers is needed to prosper. Business success can be measured in terms of the practicability of business relationships which is directly proportional to the quality of communication. There are two types of business communication: internal and external. Internal communication focuses on the attraction and retention of staff while external communication focuses on the customer. It reaches out to the customer to inform him/her of the availability of products or services and convinces him to buy. In this paper, I will look at the ways of achieving successful communication, the difference between slogans and media sound bites, and how slogans are used to draw the audiences attention.
Successful External Business Communication
This is the type of communication where brochures are used, different forms of advertising, telephone call, and the internet. All these are aimed at giving awareness to the public of what a business deals with. In external communication, the image of the business is of utmost importance. The logo should give a clear representation of the business, the business letterhead should be designed in such a way that it can market the business by itself and the telephone messages should give a reflection of the professionalism in the business.
Business communication entails pushing products and services to customers and the customers response towards these products and services. It involves many elements such as advertising, publicity, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Marketing communication appears mostly in form of promotions and advertisements. At times the process of communication may be complex but if all the models used are cooperative then it becomes an easy process. The models used in business communication are the sender, the medium, the message, receivers, and sometimes feedback (Yeshin, 1998:127).
Communication means more than just giving out messages; it involves speaking, listening, sending, and receiving messages (Guffey, Rogin, and Rhodes, 2009: 4). In communication, listening is the key to success and most of the time listening gets people into problems because they do not practice it. For business communication to be successful, listening has to be proficient. Listening simply means holding back ones judgment and allowing answers to come from outside (Krizan et al 2007:82). Good delivery of the message is important in business communication. Proper research should be carried out on the target audience to help an organization get an idea of how the audience takes in information and how they react towards it. Different messages are designed for a different audience and it takes a proper understanding of the audience at hand in order to decide which information will be best for them (Harvard Business School Press, 2003:122). The message should be short and for it to be successful evaluations have to be done on how the audience feels about it.
Getting feedback from the audience is very critical and one has to be proactive in responding to it in order to achieve success. One has to think about the benefits to be achieved and how they will affect the success of the business. A suggested solution may be to improve the businesss relationship with its customers. Strategies to achieve this includes but are not limited to answering calls in a polite manner, addressing all concerns, listening to customers, responding to complaints, providing information, and thanking customers for their support (Stone & Jacobs, 2007:179). This helps in earning customers confidence.
Sound Bites
Sound bites are brief statements that clearly state the aims, purpose, or nature of a certain product. They are taken from an interview of a person with authority such as a politician, a director, or a marketing manager of a certain company. Sound bites are considered to be the most important point from the interview by the people responsible for editing it and they are inserted into the news broadcast (Whitaker et al 2004: 289). For them to be effective they must use vivid self-motivated language, be brief and clear, outstanding and easy to repeat (Mclean, 2010:2).
Slogans
Slogans are short and memorable phrases that are used in advertising movements. They are aimed at drawing peoples attention towards particular features of a product. The main purpose of a slogan is to emphasize an aspect that a company may wish to be remembered such as marketing its corporate image, product, or its consumer foundation. Like in sound bites, slogans should give an overview of the benefits of a certain product, they should be direct and brief, give an implausible notion about the product or brand, and they should make the consumer feel the need for the product (Shimp, 2008:220).
A slogan portrays the best image of a product. It should make a product appear as the best in the market. Examples of such slogans include: Guinness is good for you, Persil - washes whiter . Some slogans used in water conservation include conserve water and conserve life, cut one tree plant two, rainwater tank, wont break the bank. The message in slogans is aimed at a specific purpose and for a specific audience. An example of a reproductive slogan is keep that school girl completion Palmolive soap. For survival obey your thirst spirit, for a specific audience choosy mother choose Jif Jif peanuts butter (Saad, 2007:156).
Comparison between Sound Bites and Slogans
Sound bites and slogans are almost the same because they are used for advertisement. They make the public aware of the products and services that a business is offering in the market. The massages in sound bites and slogans should portray the best image of the business. The only difference is that sound bites are audio while slogans are written statements. News editors are the ones who select what to include in the sound bites while in slogans, the statement is usually designed critically to attract the attention of the public. Slogans are more influential than sound bites because they contain specific messages aimed at a specific audience.
The messages in slogans or sound bites are supposed to convey what a business deals with and persuade the public to adopt the products and services offered. They are the key to success in any business establishment. In designing the messages one has to consider the audience, which can be old adults, youths, mothers, school girls among others. The first step in designing a persuasive message is to state the problem that has been identified. Then find a basis between the business goals and the interest of the audience (Pride et al 2009:169). The last step is to design the message with an ask statement at the end, for example, you may want your audience to feel, think, or be involved in something. An example of such a message is a slogan on Gillette- the best a man can get . From the message we can see that men are the specific audience for the product and they are left asking themselves where to get the product. From their slogan, Gillette has been selling like hot cake, demand for its products has increased drastically.
Ingredients that Succeed in Media Communication
The media is the commonly used mode of advertisement by many businesses. This is because a lot of people have access to media as compared to other channels. For media communication to be successful the message itself has to be simple and can range from being one word to multiple words. It should be a message that can be understood by the receiver and the language used should be one that the intended audience is fluent with. While communicating through the media the message used should reflect the businesss mission statement, business persistence, and motivation. In order to succeed in attracting the expected audience the business must have had activities related to the society through the media as a way of portraying their social responsibility. Last but not least, the people responsible for giving sound bites should be people with authority in the business as a way of showing how the business is hungry for success
Conclusion
Business communication is vital in business success. Business communication entails pushing products and services to customers and the customers response towards these products and services. It involves many elements such as advertising, publicity, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Communication means more than just giving out messages; it involves speaking, listening, sending, and receiving messages. Listening simply means holding back ones judgment and allowing answers to come from outside. Sound bites and slogan are used to give public awareness of products and services that a business is offering in the market. The messages in sound bites and slogans should portray the best image of the business.
Reference
Guffey, E.M., Rogin, P. and Rhodes, K. (2009) Business Communication: Process and Product. Third Brief Canadian Edition. Nelson Education Ltd
Harvard Business School Press, (2003) Business Communication. Harvard Business Essentials Harvard Business Press.
Krizan et al., (2007) Business Communication. Cengage Learning
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Saad, G. (2007). The evolutionary bases of consumption. Marketing and consumer psychology series. Routledge
Shimp, T. (2008) Advertising Promotion, and Other Aspects of Integrated Marketing Communications. Cengage Learning
Stone, B. & Jacobs, R. (2007) Successful direct marketing methods: interactive, database, and customer-based marketing for digital age. New York, McGraw-Hill Professional
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Yeshin, T. (1998). Integrated marketing communications: the holistic approach. The Chartered Institute of Marketing. Butterworth-Heinemann marketing series. Butterworth-Heinemann
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