I had a meeting with a client at 7:30 a.m. I had traveled nearly three hours to get there. I left when it was still dark and I was sharing the highway with no one but long-haul truckers. I showed up 20 minutes early, obviously the first to arrive. I waited until the scheduled meeting time. No one else showed up. I thought there might be some traffic delays, so I patiently waited longer. After another 20 minutes had gone by, I called my client. "Oh we had a change of plans yesterday,” he said to me. "I thought I sent you an email.” Uh, no! I was gracious because he was a client, but in my mind, not so much. Have you ever been in my shoes? What I wanted to ask, but did not: was it that difficult for you to communicate the change of plans to me and to confirm that I received the message?

Good communication is essential to good business. On the flip side, bad communication is the bane of business. It is irritating, but much more. It breeds frustration, misunderstandings, mistrust, and lost customers. If you communicate well, so you can be clearly understood, you will be successful in business. That seems like a pretty simple axiom. But human communication is just not that simple, is it? You may think you are communicating clearly, but the person hearing you may think differently. Remember the old Abbot and Costello "Who’s On First!” routine?

How can you make sure you are communicating clearly and being clearly understood? I believe this is the first and second function of marketing. Let’s delve into each of these components of effective marketing communications.

What are you saying?

In marketing communications, we are trying to find the most effective way to tell the story of your brand in a way that potential customers are drawn to it. Here are some tips to make that happen.

· Use few words, but make them impactful. Effective marketing communication is looking to make a point in a limited amount of words, so make sure you are communicating your finest attributes.

· Communicate using a method that works with your audience. No one will take the time to read the fine print in an owners manual, they will look it up online. Take note of what devices your customers use and you have found the platform to use to carry your marketing message.

· Understand what your customer wants from you. People are listening for what they want to hear. If you know that in advance, it is much easier to communicate that with them. Take a lesson from the field of counseling on this one. Counselors who get paid to listen to their clients’ problems use a form of communication known as Reflective Listening whereby they simply repeat what their client has just said to them. (Ex. Client: "I think I may quit my job, it makes me feel like a loser.” Counselor: "So you feel like a loser when you are at work and are thinking of changing jobs.”) By repeating what the client just said, the counselor has made the client feel like they are truly being heard and validated. This kind of psychology can be used in your marketing communications as well. Listen to what your customer is saying about the experience they want from you and then repeat it back to them in the form of marketing language. Take a look at these commonly used marketing words and phrases: Luxury, pampered, low mileage, connected, freshly picked, locally sourced, energy efficient. All of these are the words customers have used to explain what they want simply reflected back to them in a marketing campaign.

What are you hearing?

Of course to be a good reflective communicator, you first have to be a good listener. That is why when we are building a marketing strategy with our clients, I want to talk to the people who have the closest relationship with their customers. They are the ones who hear the customer express their satisfaction and, probably more often, their dissatisfaction. We have built more marketing campaigns around what salespeople or customer service representatives have heard from their clients than we have around what a CEO’s ideas are. Good marketing communication is a two-way street: you have to sell yourself in what you say, but what you say has to be based on what you are hearing from your customers.

There is no bigger fail in marketing than when you ineffectively communicate your brand message. The quickest way to fail is to ignore what your customers are saying back to you. If you listen to them, they will guide the direction of effective marketing communication.

What do you think happened to that guy who failed to communicate the canceled appointment to me? Let’s say he is no longer employed with my client. It seems that he failed to communicate with his superiors once too often. Make sure your communication is effective. Your business depends upon it.