In our daily life, communication is a tool that uses to maintain the relationship in between people surrounded us, and there will be no different in business environment. Business firm used communication tools or channel to start or maintain a good relationship with their shareholder and stakeholder. From the separate understanding, business is “…any goods and services that sent into the market for purpose of exchanging benefits or profits...” (Dictionary.com). Communication is “…a process that involves exchange of information, thought, idea and emotion from sender to receiver through one or two way delivering…” (Buzzle.com). So business communication can be defined as a process or tools that helps business to show, promote and present their company’s latest products/ services, current promotion, their market positioning, and situation. For example, Digi telecommunication will compare their product is better that others in their promotion catalog.
Source: DiGi Prepaid Campus Plan Rate, 2010.
By having a good communication system, it will lead the business to success. Business communication is divided in to two types that are internal and external. Internal communications is the communication system that used inside the company and it has function of building up a good relationship in between the company and their staff and it give the opportunity for employees and employer to develop strategy for improvement and setting goals together. Internal communication is also a fundamental element for maintaining an organization, improving employee’s morale value, promoting a vivid message and reducing errors in communication. In the other side, external communication is functioned form outside of the company. It involved goods and services production, advertising of the company, public relation, and the business negotiation. External communication is important because it exchanged the information or messages in between the organization with other firms, groups, which linked to profit making. Besides that, external communication main task is to make the organization cooperate smoothly with the public/stakeholder such as suppliers, investors and stockholders and also to promote a bright image on their goods or services to current and new potential customers. Business communication is an important tool for the company which will help every company to improve and also develop themselves.
There are certain channels of communication that helps business to promote them, which are Internet, Print (Publication) Radio, Television, Ambient Media, Outdoor and words of mouth.
First of all, as the technology is kept on innovating, Internet has become a common tool to communicate and information transfer. By using Internet, people can communicate easily and efficiently, thought internet people can communicate with their friend and family around the world at anytime. From this perceptive, Internet has attracted people to do business through it. When goods and services sell through online, the market is global wide means that’s the goods or services can be purchase by the people around the world. The internal business communication system in Internet is that’s the employees can communicate and deliver important notice through email to their superior or subordinate. There are many company have their own email system for prevent their important file or data spread to the outside world and also to make their employees work more easily. For example; Eastern Oxygen Industries Sdn Bhd has their own email system for their employees to keep update on the situation of the production and also let them done their works easily when they are not in the office.
Image from: http://mymail.eox.com.my/mail/index.html.
In other side, the external influences of business communication tools are usage of the internet advertising and promotion to attract the attention of potential customers. Normally, marketers/firms will choose the high hits’ website to invest in, such as YouTube, Amazon, Lelong.my, EBay, and etc. By putting their advertisement banner at the website, the firm can save time and costs. Because consumers can come across the product randomly at anytime that they are convenient as long as they surf the Internet. Another advantage of promoting through Internet is it does not require any specific product and consumer groups. All products can be promoted regardless of the type of product and the targeted consumer groups.
Resource from: Amazon.com
Besides promoting through website banner, marketer will also keep updated with their consumer by sending them the latest promotion or deals through email. Marketer will use their existed data base to create the business opportunity. This method is often used by software firms such as Megaupload, cyberlink, brothersoft and others to ensure that their customers are aware on their promotion and allowing them to purchase cheaper software product than other consumers. This will make the customers feel prioritized and appreciated by the firm.
The image: Cyberlink Promotion through e-mail.
Publications are another tool that business used to communicate with public. It’s included all the product of books or other written material that’s available in the market to anyone who interested through distribution or offer for the purpose of selling or other monetary exchange. (Thefreedictionary.com) Publications involve all information that is made to public through printing distribution such as newspaper, brochures and magazines.
Advertising in newspaper is one of the most common forms and effective way to promote products because people will read the newspaper every day. Normally newspapers have two types of advertisement. First is text advertisement, it normally used as vacancy and small retail advertisement. It is a communication tools that help the company to sending massages to the external environment of the company and help them to find new members. For example, when a company advertise a hiring advertisement in newspapers, people that had read this advertisement will know this company is lacking of employees and they will intro their friend that are qualified to have a try on that position. Another type of newspaper advertising is display advertisement, these advertisement are normally use by commercial firm. It helps the firm to promote their goods and services, and also help them to attract new customer group.
Magazines are another type of publication that’s used by marketer to promote products. There are different types of magazines such as business magazines, mobile magazines, schools magazines, and etc. The advertisement are made depends on the target market of the goods and service. For example; Ring tone supply firm will do their advertisement in Mobile phone magazines such as e-ring, Sogi and others.
Besides advertising on the company’s goods and services in magazine, business magazines are also important to the business for seeking new investor to the company. These business magazines will interview the high potential company and analyze the company future movement for the reader. Sometimes business firm will also announce their company new project or upcoming plan to the magazine, and reader will able to know the company current and follow this information to do invest. Example of business magazines are Forbes, Times magazines, Business Week, The Edge TM and others.
Radio is another channel of business communication that helps business to communicate or deliver information to customer or stakeholder. Radio advertisements are only transmitted orally but it can reach a wide range of consumers because we normally use car or others transport to our destination and when we had stuck in the traffic jam we will turn on the radio. From this perspective, the radio advertising is targeted on the driver so the advertisement needs to be very specific and full of sense of humors.
There are some disadvantage on advertising through radio that’s are the advertisements does not have any visual or text, so it might fail attracting youngster especially students and young adults because they like visual stimulus more than oral stimulus.
Television advertisement is an effective way to promote product and attract customers to purchases the product. The factor of television advertisement is different and more success than radio advertisement is because of it contains vivid motion and picture to promote the product. Besides that, it has interesting description and creative presentation that gave the products or services the chances to gain audiences’ attention and make them got the desire to buy or own the products.
There are also some factors that firms need to consider when promoting their product through television. First, the advertisement’s fees of television are very costly; the firm needs to consider the time, way and contents to be broadcast. A research done by eHow.com, said that the estimated average cost of producing a 30-second commercial advertisement in the Super Bowl are coasted around $2.4 million, so the business need to fully utilized the costs to reach the targeted consumer group.
The second factors that need to be considered are related to the demographic of the target market. Marketer need to follow the demographic of their potential consumers to fix in the broadcast time of their advertisement. For example, toys products’ advertisements need to broadcast on the time that kids were watching cartoon. By following these ways, business firm will be able to spend more efficiently on attracting their targeted consumer groups.
The last business communication channel is word of mouth. Word-of-Mouth is the most efficient communication tools but it also a high risk utility. Word-of-Mouth is the informal communication between consumers of particular goods and services (Neal et al, 2004). If the firm used word of mouth as the tools to promote their product, they need explain the product clearly to ensure that the listener can fully understanding about the information because the listener might spread the false or blur information about the product to their friends or relatives if they didn’t understand clearly, and this will cause the business to have a bad images/reputation on their product although it is a good product.
Normally, the people who run the Word-of-Mouth tools are the opinion leader of any group. Opinion leader is defined as “…an individual who has a greater long-term involvement with a product category than the non-opinion leaders in his or her group…” (Neal et al, 2004) The characteristic of an opinion leader are they can interpersonal communicate with their follower and observe the follower’s consume behaviors, have the similar demographic characteristics with the follower and have involvement with a product category than the non-opinion leaders in his or her group. So marketer will targeted these opinion leaders when they are using Word-of-Mouth as the business communication tools to promote or attract to purchase their goods and service. Examples of opinion leader are CEO, parents, and etc. For example, when the parents are using Maxis as the telecommunication tool, then their children will follow them.
As a conclusion, business communication is the key to success as the business won’t succeed without communication. The reason of business communication is a fundamental element to business is because it helps the company to communicate with their employees and help them to motive, satisfy, and fulfill their employees’ need and wants. In another side, it also helps the employees to understand the company target goals, future achievement, the company policies and authority, and etc. Besides that, business communication tools also help the business to promote their goods and services to the public through all kind of advertising path. But advertisements are very costly for the business so the types of advertisement are the main issue that the company needs to consider. The company needs to follow their products and target market to choose their advertising tools. For example, if the company is selling toys and their target market are kids so they need to do advertisement in television on cartoons channels. Besides that, business communication tools also help the company to communicate with the public. For example, the vacancy advertisement in newspaper has sent the information to the public that’s the company is lack of employees so those who want to find job can go this company for an interview. However, business communication has also disadvantages but it depends how the business utilize it.
Consumer behavior: implication for marketing strategy, Neal, Quester and Hawkins, 2004, Australia: McGraw-hill Australia Pty Limited.
Dictionary.com, 20 march 2011 1312 hours, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/business
Buzzle.com, 21 march 2011 1520 hours, http://www.buzzle.com/articles/communications/
Ehow, Fenell, 22 March 2011 1436 hours, http://www.ehow.com/about_5448301_average-cost-tv-commercial.html
Thefreedictionary, Farlex, 30 March 2011 1444 hours, http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Print+publication
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