Why Do You Need to Know Your Stakeholders?

If a business does not know or understand their stakeholders, they will not be able to identify their target market and are putting themselves at risk by losing out on potential sales, new clients, and brand visibility. Find out how you can discover, identify, and segment your stakeholders.

Who are stakeholders?

All businesses have stakeholders. Stakeholders can be anyone who your business communicates with or associates with. It may be the local community around you, the government around you, your staff members, your customers, your competitors, or everyone that interacts with you and your business! Stakeholders are extremely important for businesses to optimise their marketing and communication strategies. By identifying your stakeholders, you find out who is engaged and interested in your business, what kind of financial or emotional investment they will provide for your business and what reputation your business has. This allows businesses to promote, communicate and sell their products/services to the right people who are actively in need of them. 

Why should you know who your stakeholders are?

By not knowing who your stakeholders are, you are not only wasting your time and money but also wasting the time of a person who does not need the product or service. This may end up annoying potential future customers and deteriorating your business’s brand. To identify your stakeholders, you will need to perform a stakeholder analysis that funnels and prioritises key stakeholders that are the most important for your business.

Tips to identify your stakeholders are:

• Brainstorming with your staff members and writing down each group, person or organisation that influences the business in any way. These can be:
  • People who will impact your business financially, physically or visually
  • People who will be impacted by your business
  • People who have power over your business
• Separating internal and external stakeholders
• Segmenting and determining key target markets

Stakeholders may be your customers, your staff, your suppliers, the public, government bodies, other organisations, and much more! It is crucial to identify the groups that are the most important to know your target market. The relationships you identify in the key stakeholder list will allow your business to build positive networks, develop credibility, understand where there are gaps, and tell you what has been making your business successful.

By knowing who your stakeholders are, you’ll know more about what they may need or want, giving you the advantage to create effective campaigns that will grab their attention creating leads, sales, and loyal customers. This may include demographic details such as:

• Age
• Gender
• Suburb/Postcode/Location
• Interests/Hobbies
• Socio-economic factors
• Family dynamic
• Education

How your key stakeholders impact your business

You will find out which communication channels and strategies will effectively reach your stakeholders and successfully present your key messages clearly. You will know what post on your social media platforms or website to keep your target market engaged. You will have the power to tailor your strategies to attract the people who positively impact your business. This will save your organisation time, money, and boost engagement with your audience.

Don’t wait to discover your stakeholders, start writing your stakeholder analysis today so you can create effective campaigns for your business! 

Follow Bloom Digital on social media or subscribe to our newsletter today for more free marketing tips and tools!