The idea is clear and obvious. For any business to succeed you need to market and advertise your products and/or services you provide to warm bodies with cash in their wallets. In the twenty-first century, small businesses have a wide range of marketing and advertising options, especially using online tools and applications. In order to be successful and competitive with your new business, you need to build and maintain your audience of customers. This task may seem a little bit overwhelming at first for many…
But what if it doesn’t have to be?
What if successfully engaging with your audience of customers is even easier than you might have originally thought?
Here are seven simple things that you (and any business professional, new or seasoned) can do to successfully engage with your audience of customers and clients to maximize the success and profitability (which means money!) of your company’s marketing projects.
Know your audience of potential or existing customers and clients
Knowing your audience is by far the most crucial part of marketing any business or service. Who is your key consumer? Who are you trying to reach? What are their interests and/or pain points? How do your products and/or services meet those interests or needs? Knowing the answer to these questions and continuing to discover who your audience is goes a long way. If you own a start-up business and you are marketing to customers in an area that has a heavy cultural preference for contemporary pop and hip-hop music, creating marketing materials with a country western theme and background music will probably fall pretty flat. A dating website for farmers doesn’t try to market themselves to young professionals living in the New York urban jungle of Manhattan (and for good reason).
Be unique, be bold, and don’t be afraid to show it
You created your business because you have a unique service or product to offer. Your communication with your audience of customers and clients should be equally unique. It’s important that your marketing materials highlight the components of your company that set you apart from others. Imagine that you received a flyer in the mail advertising a new restaurant around the corner. If the front of the flyer has colorful images and a phrase emphasizing that the chef is from Paris and has won awards for his delicious culinary creations, you would be much more likely to check out the restaurant than if you’d just gotten a run-of-the-mill advertisement that does nothing to distinguish the new restaurant from the local dining locations already in existence. The way you present yourself to your audience should be the same. Tell them what makes the products and/or services that you and your business have to offer unique and special, and why they should choose you above the rest.
Focus on one or two communication channels to start with
Sometimes when wanting to get the word out about new products or services, it’s easy to want to put the pedal to the medal and go all in. It is tempting to throw as much advertising as possible to the proverbial wall just to see what sticks. In reality, when using this method almost nothing sticks ever. What’s even better than that is focusing on only one or two communication channels that have proven success and that yield strong results to begin with. Once those channels have gained traction, then begin to branch out, growing your audience and client base even more. If you have a strong following on Facebook and get great results with email marketing, for instance, focus on those two components while slowly building your Twitter and Instagram following. If you have a dynamic podcast, work to make it the best podcast ever, rather than branching out prematurely to video creation (especially if you or your team are still up-and-coming in your video production skillset). Don’t try to build all your platforms at once with limited content. You will undoubtedly overwhelm yourself and underwhelm your audience. Spreading yourself too thin can take away from the places where your consumer base lives and breathes. It is far better to have quality marketing content that breaks through the clutter on one or two platforms than to have mediocre content on five or six platforms that barely gets any notice whatsoever.
Talk WITH your audience of customers and clients, not AT them
This point is one of the most important aspects for any kind of audience engagement, especially via interactive platforms like social media. Envision your audience as someone that you want to have a conversation with. Nobody likes that guy at a party who drones on and on about a topic that is only of interest to him and who is completely oblivious to the fact that his victim is anxiously glancing around the room for an excuse to escape. It is vital to make sure that your marketing and advertising doesn’t become “that guy.” In other words, don’t just talk at your audience. Instead, talk with them. Show them why what you have to offer is the best product and/or service available to fill their needs, and then actively listen to and engage with their feedback. Consumers love feeling as if they are somehow involved in that process of product and service development, and that what they say does make a difference. Looking for opportunities to have an ongoing dialogue with your audience will help them to feel engaged and invested in your company and products. Bonus tip: besides marketing and sales, this approach is hugely valuable for free “R&D” (research and development). People are usually more than happy to tell you exactly what’s right (or wrong) with your business products and/or services as they are developing. It’s wise to listen, since it is their satisfaction and willingness to open their wallets that ensures that your business will succeed.
Consistency is key when communicating with your audience
One of the biggest mistakes a business of any size or tenure can make is not being consistent in communication with their audience. If you sat down to watch your favorite evening news program everyday at five p.m. and then suddenly the production company changed schedules and started airing the show at midnight every other day, you’d throw your remote at the television set and then retrieve it only to change the channel. The same is true with your audience engagement. Putting out information about your company and brand on a regular basis keeps you at the top of their minds and lets them know when and how they can count on you for engaging content and notification of products and services.
Follow through and further interact with your audience of customers
Related to consistency is the follow-up of your audience engagement. It is common knowledge in the sales world that potential customers must often be engaged several times before they make a purchase. Marketing and advertising is no different, which makes following up with your audience of customers and clients so crucial. If you send out an email to your audience and several people respond with questions or comments, it’s important to answer them clearly, professionally, and promptly. Think of it in terms of setting up your sales pitch and then following through rather than “bailing” on your leads. This factor is especially true on social media platforms where comments often come in almost immediately after your content posts. Replying to or even just acknowledging your audience’s comments or questions helps them to know that you and your business are committed to their needs and interests. It also keeps your products and/or services at the forefront of their mind, and with a little bit of effort, it might even establish you as the “local expert” in your industry or sector.
Push yourself to your professional limits, but know those limits.
Finally, know what you do best and use that to your advantage. Not everyone has every talent; know your talents and pursue them. And find a balance between quantity versus quality. On the one hand, quality should generally be favored over quantity. Many start-up entrepreneurs make the mistake of rushing their marketing materials, which leaves the potential customer or client with a negative impression that the business itself is sloppy or unprofessional. However, don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good. If you take so much time to polish and perfect your marketing content that you rarely (or never) actually release those advertising materials, well, then that just defeats the purpose entirely. So it’s usually best to find that “sweet spot” of knowing exactly how much time, effort, and money it will take to create your reasonably polished marketing content, and then achieve a balance that promotes a satisfactory level of both quality and quantity of marketing and advertising presentation.
That may seem like a lot of material to digest, but ultimately the important thing to remember is that your audience of customers and clients are people just like you. They want you to interact with them in a manner that reflects that understanding. They have a need or an interest, and you have a way to “scratch that itch.” That’s the core of any business. Successful marketing through audience engagement with your customers merely focuses on the best way to communicate with them that you are more than happy to meet those needs and satisfy those interests. And by using these seven tips, you are in a great position to do exactly that and watch your customer and client engagement flourish and your business grow. Are you ready to take your business or organization to new heights? Twin Peaks Communications can help. Reach out to us for a free consultation!
