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Every business is now exploring opportunities to increase their popularity online. And why wouldn’t they? Every brand’s success in today’s age is determined by their online presence and whether they have been successful in marketing themselves to their audience.
Business and marketing are two things that go hand in hand. Marketing a business is a skill that can be mastered with time and with enough knowledge about the latest trends in the marketing world. In the marketing domain, one needs to be well aware of how to engage with his or her customers. Because at the end of the day, everything a brand does is for it’s customers.
The most important thing about marketing appropriately is that one should know how to be social and engage with users online. The more you master the skill of knowing what your customers like and want, the faster you will be able to market your business or brand.
Here are some marketing essentials you must know:
Behind the scenes
All brands talk about the products or services to their audience. But something that brands have recently started doing is letting their customers know what goes on behind the scenes. Who is making these products or services? What do these people look like? Where is their office or factory located? How do they make what they make? As much as you think customers are not interested in all this information, it actually successfully engages the audience. Turns out, they like knowing what goes on with the brand when nobody is watching. So a great way to engage with your customers and involve human elements to your content is to let them know what goes on behind the scenes.
Content is everything
Everything you use to engage with your customers is your content. Whether it’s an image, video, graphic, announcement message or a live Facebook video, if your content isn’t great, you’re bound to face trouble marketing yourself.
Why? Because your audience is looking for something that catches their attention! If it’s just another boring image or just another old meme, you’re going to lose the attention of your audience. Therefore, it is imperative that you offer interesting, original and useful content to your users. To make sure you’re always giving them what they like, take a look at your previous posts to see the kind of content that has been more successful than the rest. This is what your audience likes. This is the kind of content you should aim at the offering in the future. Remember to keep it interesting, useful and original.
Listen out to your customers
The best trait of a successful marketer is that they listen. Everybody wants to be heard and so it is essential for you to listen to what your audience is saying.
Does your audience comment on your posts saying “Great stuff!” or “Love this!”? Listen to them, and give them more of what they want! If your audience tells you they don’t find your posts funny anymore, do something about it! Most brands or businesses do not give enough weightage to what their audience is saying to them! But the sooner you realize that what your users say to you is extremely valuable feedback, the sooner you’ll be able to get to the bottom of it and really understand them.
Coordinate your message
A big mistake that a lot of brands, individuals or businesses make is to drift away from the core message they are trying to communicate to their audience. A lot of times, in the quest for being creative, marketers drift away from the core message, which makes it less impactful. Another element of communicating a message is to keep the right tone. Do you often find businesses whose social media posts sound like they were written by robots? Or corporate professional who doesn't seem to be having fun at all? That’s because the message fails to be light-hearted or lacks a personal touch.
Keep your message clear and crisp, making sure you get the true essence of the message across. And while you’re doing that, make sure you add a personal touch to the message so the person receiving it can interpret it well.
Storytelling has perks
How many times have you lost interest when someone says “Let me tell you a story”. Our guess is, almost never! That’s because storytelling never fails. Brands and businesses that engage their audience with stories are more successful in marketing themselves. Telling a story does a few things for the reader. First, it lets the user know that a brand is real and has also had a journey – smooth or rough – just like any other human being. Second, users receive stories well because they think the brand genuinely wants them to know what they’re all about. Finally, stories are really interesting! So you have high chances of catching your readers’ attention when you announce its story time!
Watch out for the tone
Like we said above, how you deliver your message makes a big difference. If you’re constantly receiving messages or communication from a particular brand that is asking you to purchase their products over and over again, you are bound to get detached from the brand. Why is this? Because the brand failed to keep it personal and acted too pushy to make you buy something from them.
What works instead? When a brand keeps it personal and not too pushy. Think about it! For example, Brand A might send you an email every single day, asking you to “BUY NOW!”; Brand B might send you a friendly reminder once a week, saying “Looks like you were checking us out!”. Which brand would you be more likely to interact with?
That’s what we think too!
Build a brand
Constantly talking about just your products, services and sales are not doing anything for your brand. It may also give your audience the impression that you’re only interested in making a sale. This can actually harm your brand!
Instead, build a strong brand. This takes time, but with the right strategies and effort, building a brand can be easy and successful. Treat your customers like you would treat a close friend, let them know that you care about them and what they think. Engage with them often to check if they’re facing any trouble with your products or services. Let them know you’re here for them if they have issues. This is how you build a brand. Start by gaining their trust, and aim at retaining them as loyal customers for life.
Raise the curiosity element
If it isn’t catchy enough, it’s not tempting enough to click on. For brands trying to market themselves online, everything can be measured in the form of a click. Whether it’s a like, comment, share or report; everything stems from a click. Which is why it’s imperative for you to build curiosity amongst your readers. Your blog headlines should be catchy enough to click on, your infographics should be useful enough to encourage ‘likes’, and your graphics could be funny or serious enough to encourage ‘comments’. Bottom line is, make them want to click on whatever it is that you’re posting. If you start with that goal, you’ll see it’s pretty easy to engage your audience!
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