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Publications are important – here’s why

Communicating with your customers is vital for any business. Even if you have the best products and services in your industry, you won’t get very far if no one knows about them.

Publications are a great way to communicate with customers as they allow you to send a carefully constructed message that helps to build your brand by positioning your organisation as knowledgeable and progressive. Publications have authority and are seen as a trustworthy source of information. Let’s look at a few different types of publications:

E-mail newsletters

E-mail newsletters still constitute the cornerstone of online communication. According to Statista, there are currently over 3.7 billion e-mail users in the world, which means that the projected number of users by 2021 will be 4.1 billion. In addition, according to the Campaign Monitor Annual Report, e-mail offers a $42 return on investment for every $1 spent (up from $38 in 2018).

An e-newsletter isn’t just an ordinary e-mail message. It is a fully fledged publication with a range of topical articles and other important information. These articles typically link directly to your website, thereby helping to drive traffic to your site. One of the reasons that e-newsletters are so successful is that recipients have opted into hearing from you, so they’re more willing to learning about the latest products, services and how to benefit from them. E-newsletters also allows you to nurture relationships with potential customers over time. This means you can keep potential business leads in the loop instead of having them forget about you.

One of the big advantages of e-mail communication is that it allows you to segment your audience into different mailing lists. For this reason, it’s very important to consider the information you’ll need in the long-term when setting up your e-newsletter subscription form. Name and e-mail address are the traditional fields, but gathering other information will help you to divide your audience into groups based on age, gender, location or interests. Instead of sending the same e-newsletters to your entire database every time, segmentation allows you to send customised content that recipients will be more likely to engage with. The results speak for themselves – proper e-mail list segmentation has been shown to double e-mail open rates.

Of course, in an age of mass communication, personalisation is also key. If your e-newsletters start with the recipient’s name or contain other unique information, they will immediately feel more connected to your messages.

Physical publications

The lockdown period means that we have all been inundated with digital material and a plethora of online communication. Once restrictions ease, your customers are likely to welcome the tactile appeal of physical publications. In addition, physical material, such as brochures, flyers and samples are particularly well suited to promoting your business in a local area.

It’s also important to remember that while digital media is a very powerful communication tool, not all customers are equally enthusiastic about hearing from you in this manner. Traditional marketing in the form of brochures and business cards should therefore always form part of your communication toolkit.

Blogs

It’s no longer a question of to blog or not to blog … if you want your company’s website to remain relevant and fresh, a blog is essential. Business blogs are informative, topical and – as an added bonus – very effective at driving traffic to your website.

Blogs play an important role in search engine optimisation (SEO). Search engines will rank your website higher in their results if the content on your site changes regularly and blogs are an effective way to enable this. You can also insert topical keywords into your blog that you suspect potential customers might be searching for at any given time. Search engines will pick these keywords up and direct users to your website.

Blogs also enable connections with customers by giving your company a personality. A blog is a space where you can be a little more humorous or quirky than other areas of your website, which is likely to resonate with new visitors and draw them into the rest of your site.

What publications are you putting out there?

ICSC produces a variety of publications for our clients – ranging from printed material to e-newsletters and blogs. We know what works and we can ensure that you get your publications right from the word go. Contact us today for an insightful analysis of your publication needs, followed by a plan to get your message out there to future customers.