Websites, social media, smartphone applications, and word-of-mouth are just a few channels to reach your target audience, but are you implementing them all? If so, are you utilising them to their maximum ability?
New interaction channels appearing every month, if not every week, offering the ability to connect with individuals both near and far, but which are the most effective and how can you best incorporate them into your marketing strategy? Let us look at some of the most common options and understand how to implement them.
Your digital grounding is your company website, it is generally the first point of call to any potential customer, seeking information on who and what you are. Make the first impression count, be sure your website is optimised for today’s devices, with minimal loading time, and contains updated content.
Another website tool at your disposal is a blog, granted, visual graphics are more effective than text at reaching your audience, however, the inclusion of blog posts and articles reinforces your digital presence, through various algorithms directing data traffic in your favour. Blogs also allow you to connect with your audience in a more personal format, providing valuable insights based on topics relevant to your target market.
Most businesses credit social media as the largest contributor to capturing their audience, however, it is not advised to focus solely on any single channel, but to include a variety of mediums in your marketing strategy, to ensure the greatest exposure and to maximise your reach.
Social media enables you to connect remotely and without time constraints, through a combination of images, videos, audio, and text, to fully engage with your target audience and communicate effectively.
Taking video marketing one step further, if you can deliver high-quality video’s, capturing your audience’s attention within the first seconds, then this fantastically captivating media enables you to deliver targeted information, securing a bond with your audience in a fraction of the time as other channels.
Influencer marketing has been on the rise in recent years, offering businesses the opportunity to effectively reach millions with a single social media post, if the influencer aligns with your target audience. Influencer marketing has become one of the leading ways to target niche markets, who are already interested in your product or service but have not yet been exposed to your brand.
With paid social media adverts, you can improve your delivery efficiency using ‘targeting features’ on social platforms. Targeted advertising ensures your media reaches specifically targeted groups, based on factors including demographic, geographic, interests, and the search topics of your audience.
With such a convenient device, readily available at your fingertips at any moment, it is no surprise that the majority of online browsing and social media interaction is performed via smartphones. So, as mentioned earlier, mobile-friendly website optimisation is important, but the introduction of smartphone applications can be another route to improving customer acquisition, in addition to customer retention as discussed in a previous article.
Organic referrals have, and will, continue to be a valuable method of reaching your target audience. This ‘primarily’ hand-off approach simply requires a consistent and high-quality service to customers, to share and promote your company, but you can push this strategy using referral codes and promotional incentives such as credit for the referee.
Referrals are amongst the most powerful and accurate methods of capturing your target audience, originating from genuine first-hand customer recommendations, communicated to known and trusted, like-minded individuals aligned to your business.
In short, capturing people’s attention is great, but capturing your actual target audience is even better. If you can incorporate the techniques discussed, to ensure your marketing is aligned for each channel, then you will be able to prime your marketing strategy, capture your entire market more effectively, and importantly, grow your business.
If you would like any further information on any of the points discussed, or have any questions, feel free to comment below or contact me directly.
An article by Gautam Gajjar.