You want to promote your business, increase sales, or boost your brand awareness and image? External communication allows you to maintain a direct relationship with your prospects, clients, partners, and suppliers to achieve these goals. Discover its role and functioning, as well as our tips and best practices to optimize your actions and strategy in the digital age!

What is External Communication?

Definition of External Communication

External communication encompasses all the actions and messages used to communicate with audiences outside your company, from your prospects to your clients, including your partners, suppliers, investors, local authorities, or the media (press, radio, etc.).

It relies on a wide variety of channels and communication tools, such as advertising campaigns, public relations, social media posts, or email signatures, to create regular and personalized touchpoints with your target audience.

What is the Difference Between Internal and External Communication?

Unlike external communication, internal communication encompasses the actions and messages intended for your company's employees.

External communication aims to inform stakeholders about the company’s current news, such as the progress of ongoing projects, the launch of new products, or upcoming recruitment. It also seeks to mobilize and unite them around the values and objectives of your organization.

To achieve this, internal communication relies on tools and channels different from those of external communication, such as internal newsletters, posts on your intranet portal, or team meetings and events.

What Are the Goals and Benefits of External Communication?

Implementing an effective external communication strategy allows you to achieve multiple goals, such as:

Building or strengthening your brand image over time by delivering consistent and regular messages that reflect your identity and values;
Building a strong trust relationship with prospects, clients, suppliers, partners, and investors to retain them, by showing that you are attentive to their needs and capable of providing solutions;
Increasing your sales by making your brand known to new audiences, communicating new product and service launches, and promoting campaigns or special offers;
Managing crisis situations by informing and reassuring your target audiences following an incident (product defect, controversy, internal conflict, data breach...).

Whatever your goals, your external communication actions must convey a positive image of your company. To be effective, your strategy must therefore be structured, coherent, and consistent over time.

What Are the Different Types of External Communication?

External communication can take various forms depending on your goals and the target of your actions. Here are a few examples.

Commercial or advertising communication is highly useful for promoting a product, service, or more broadly your company. It relies on various media (posters, brochures, catalogs, television, radio, press, etc.).
Digital communication (or online) can serve the same goals, but it relies solely on digital channels like your social media accounts, website posts, or email campaigns. Today, it is indispensable as it also allows you to maintain a direct and more personalized connection with your target.
Public relations include your communication actions with journalists and media to enhance visibility and promote your image, products, or services. It allows you to reach a different audience than digital channels and relies on press releases and participation in press conferences or interviews that lead to publications in newspapers and magazines.
Institutional communication is not only aimed at your clients but also at your partners, suppliers, or public administrations. It aims to strengthen your company’s image by communicating about your values and commitments, for example, regarding local employment or environmental actions. It primarily relies on the publication of annual reports, press releases, and participation in events (conferences, trade shows, etc.).
Financial communication targets investors, shareholders, and financial partners. Its goal is to reassure them by highlighting your successes, such as increased sales or profitability, or your goals (growth, new launches, and projects). It relies on the publication of financial reports, press releases, or events where you can interact with these stakeholders.
Crisis communication aims to protect your company’s reputation and maintain the trust of clients, partners, and employees after an incident, by informing them of the actions taken to resolve the issue. It uses publications across various channels (website, social media, press, etc.).
Finally, event communication consists of participating in events (trade shows, conferences, etc.) to strengthen your reputation and establish direct contact with potential clients, partners, and investors.

How to Communicate Externally?

What External Communication Channels Should You Use?

As we just saw, an effective external communication strategy relies on a set of channels suited to the message you want to convey, such as:

Your social media accounts, which allow direct interaction with your prospects and clients, share your news, humanize your brand, and strengthen your reputation;
Your website, which provides complete and updated information about your company, its history, values, products, and services;
The press and traditional media, which help you reach a broader audience that may be less active online;
Email sending, which allows you to communicate information about your products/services, talk about your news, and stay in touch with prospects;
Events, which encourage closer interaction and direct exchange with your target.

If each channel serves different objectives, an effective external communication strategy relies on the complementarity between them.

Did you know?

The professional email signature is a subtle yet very effective communication tool for conveying information about your new offerings, special deals, commitments, or updates.

How to Define an Effective External Communication Plan and Actions?

Here are the four main steps to deploy an effective external communication strategy:

Define your communication goals before launching your campaign. These could include increasing brand awareness, attracting new clients, or strengthening your relationship with partners;
Choose the most suitable communication channels for your goals and your target audience’s behavior. For B2B client acquisition, you might prioritize event participation, media relations, and email signature personalization. For B2C, you might prefer commercial communication actions (print ads, social media, flyer distribution, etc.);
Develop clear, concise, impactful messages that are tailored to your target’s expectations. These messages are also an opportunity to differentiate yourself from competitors. They must reflect your identity and commitments while providing real value to their recipients;
Launch your campaign and analyze the results using reporting tools and performance indicators suited to your objectives and channels (press coverage, sales increase over a period, new social media subscriptions…). This step will allow you to continuously adjust your multichannel communication strategy.

How to Improve Your Company’s External Communication Through Email Signatures?

The email signature on Outlook or another professional messaging platform is a personalized block of text that can be automatically inserted at the bottom of your emails and those of your colleagues. It contains corporate information such as the sender’s name, job title, and contact details, as well as the company logo, colors, and slogan.

The email signature functions as a digital business card that reflects the identity of the sender and the company, while also contributing to making communications appear more professional. It is also a valuable and often underestimated external communication tool.

Easily customizable with the addition of a mail banner, email signatures allow you to efficiently convey certain messages or direct the recipient to other content, such as your website, product page, or ongoing campaign.

For example, you can add a banner in your employees’ email signatures to:

Increase visibility for the launch of a new product or event you are organizing. The banner might display a message like "Discover our new online management solution";
Strengthen your brand image by including statements highlighting your values. If you are strongly committed to environmental issues, it could feature a message like "We are committed to a more sustainable future.";
Manage a crisis and reassure your contacts with an empathetic message stating that your company is mobilized, such as: "We are here for you";
Foster customer loyalty by encouraging them to check out your special offers or discounts with a message like "-10% on our professional range".

As with any external communication action, you should follow best practices, such as ensuring visual consistency of your banner with your brand image, regularly updating the information to avoid it becoming outdated, and keeping messages simple. For this, feel free to use a ready-to-use Outlook signature template like those provided by Letsignit!

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How to implement an effective external communication strategy for your business?