It's easy to reach people through Digital Marketing as we live in a digital era where most people have at least one digital device if not more, But the difficult part is to create a trust bond between companies and customers, and create deep relationships with them. Although its a difficult thing to do but with having a guideline and steps to follow creating deep relationships with audiences/ customers becomes an achievable task. & That's what I'm here for, I did my research about 'How to engage your audience to create deeper relationships?', and I found a variety of answers to this question as its a vital aspect in the business world and its importance is rising in the Digital Marketing and specifically the Internet part of it.
The way I understand creating deep relationships with audiences/ customers is that It requires hard work and determination, it's like working through a relationship. The partners have to be opened, understanding, patient and just try to please each other in order to reach a settlement. After that, a relationship becomes great because both sides know each others very well and even if they face problems along the way, they are able to make compromises and forgive because they have a trust bond and a deep relationship which reflects the way they deal with each others.
"When you are holding a private conversation with someone there are ways of assessing how much someone trusts you but this isn’t so easy when faced with a large audience." - Sharren L Bessant.
Marketers have to know their audience before starting anything, it is important to understand the audience/customers in order to produce effective digital marketing based campaigns and businesses/companies/brands.
Knowing and addressing the audiences is the top consideration for engaging online content marketing, as mentioned in an article called 'Creating Engagement with Online Content Marketing' By Chris Sturk: "The Internet is packed with content nowadays. How can you assure your content is going to get read? Beyond paid and organic promotions, creating engaging content will interest readers and keep them coming back for more, especially if you interact with them."
Addressing your audiences:
Knowing your audience is the best way to gain their trust. Show them that you understand the negatives and positives that they experience. For instance, if you are talking about SEO strategies, be transparent about your own struggles. Share what has worked and what hasn’t. Identify with the reader and let them know that they’re not alone in their battle with SEO. If you’re a cooking publication and have always had a hard time getting the right consistency in soups, share what you’ve learned about flour and corn starch. Showing humanity creates a bond between you and the reader.
I found an article based on a book called "Get Content, Get Customers" by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett , as the writer of the article describes this book he says: "Content is at the heart of today's marketing" - Dave Chaffey. I Believe that content is the main way of hocking customers bringing them to like your business/company/brand and then it creates a space for them to learn about you in general and in specific. Also, the more clear and honest the content a Digital Marketing campaign or business provides the audiences and customer, the more there's a form of transparency which is always the key for trust.
"Get Content, Get Customers" is a great book because it provides practical, structured advice on creating a content strategy based on real/specific case studies to inspire you to develop a content strategy.
Some of the strategies the book provides are summarized by Dave Chaffey - who is an author, consultant and trainer specializing in E-commerce and E-marketing education and guidance. The strategies that the book offered are the following:
The B.E.S.T. formula
As an example of the structured practical guidance, we liked this formula for creating a content marketing roadmap. B.E.S.T stands for:
▪ -Behavioral. Everything you communicate with customers has a purpose. What do you want them to know?
▪ -Essential. Deliver information that your best prospects need if they are to succeed at work or in life.
▪ -Strategic. Your content marketing efforts must be an integral part of your overall business strategy.
▪ -Targeted. You must target your content precisely so that it’s truly relevant to your buyers.
Top 10 content marketing lessons from successful practitioners
Here’s our take on their Top 10.
1. Content must have intrinsic value. Content is a key part of your online value proposition. You must define it’s relevance to customers – help them live their lives, do their work better.
2. Understand what content customer value. You need to do the research to understand the value. Enough said.
3. Content marketing strategy may completely or partially replace traditional advertising and marketing. You need to prove the relative importance of content marketing within your budget, for your market.
4. Print magazines can be a powerful weapon. We still spend more of our time offline than on, so reaching your audience offline through third-party or offline content can still be important.
5. Great design adds value. Invest in design to help prove the value and encourage engagement and advocacy.
6. Invest in a dedicated internal or external team (maybe). The authors aren’t clear on this, but clearly many content initiatives fail because of poor quality content or not sustaining the content.
7. Drink your own Kook-Aid. Relate it back to your products through showing your products or services in action.
8. Get your customers to participate. Yes, interaction is the name of the game online – don’t just push, engage and share – comments, polls and surveys all help.
9. Make it easy to buy. Content must fit with your ultimate goal in investing in content.
10. It’s not the investment in content, it’s the content marketing mindset that counts. This helps level the playing field and arguably makes it easier for small organizations to master content marketing.
Check out the full article, the comments and related articles. Click here.
So, now we know that content is the core of engaging audiences/customers, but content has to be supported by various things that can promote it and make it stand out. It can't succeed by itself.
Seth Godin recently posted about the need to hire an architect for your organization. He writes "Architects don't manufacture nails, assemble windows or chop down trees. Instead, they take existing components and assemble them in interesting and important ways." We'd like to take that concept and apply it to the content world. - Content Marketing: Who's your content architect?
I personally believe that Design is a major factor of engaging the customers and getting their attention, it makes content look pretty for the eyes and more digestible - Its a treat for the eyes. Also, the way that the content is distributed and put in the website is important, thus marketers have to be aware of the eye movement of the audience and customers on websites in general where are the spots that they mainly focus on and according to the place the information in the proper places/positions.
According to '10 Tips from Tim Frick for Increasing Online engagement':
Design Tip: Reading gravity is the natural pattern our eye takes when viewing or reading a page, typically top left to bottom right (a concept also known as The Gutenberg Rule).
Design your pages with this in mind, putting items with strong brand identity such as logos and important content headers at top left and calls-to-action at bottom right.
Furthermore, it is important to be Interactive with your audiences and show them that you are available and reachable for them to talk, comment, complain, praise and just express anything they want to. Knowing that there's someone real on the other end of the Web and Digital world creates comfort and trust. Always pay attention to what the audience says and suggests, and also pay attention to what they complain about and work to improve it. It is important to satisfy the audience because without them the business isn't worth anything.
In addition to your own personal website it is always helpful to have a presence on Social Networks as they provide an easier way to communicate and interact with audiences, which is vital. As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts 'Top 10 considerations for an Effective Online Marketing Strategy': Create a Social Media strategy, Not just a presence. As many companies/businesses tend to create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, etc. just to be a part of the social networks trend but they are not paying so much attention to the importance and the benefit they can get from these accounts. Therefore, I think Social Networks should be given more attention and strategic planning from Digital Marketers as it will work for their own good and to create bonds with their audiences/customers. According to 'Social Media Marketing in 10 Easy Steps' By Susan Gunelius: "The key to developing a social media marketing strategy and plan that will position you for success from the start is to focus on the fundamental principles of marketing and branding that should drive your social media initiatives."
One of the points the author mentions and which I think is very important is the following:
Diversify your social media presence to broaden your audience and network
The ultimate goal of social media marketing is to surround consumers with branded online experiences, so they can self-select how they want to interact with your brand. There are some people who like to read blogs, and there are other people who prefer to use Twitter or watch videos on YouTube. By diversifying your social media presence and creating varied branded online destinations, you’ll be able to connect with a wider audience.
This article is very useful as it takes you through the steps you need to undergo in order to reach an effective Social Network Marketing Strategy. For the full article, Click here.
For extra information, I have gathered a few links to articles and websites which I thought were brilliant and worth a visit:
- 'Using Content Marketing to Build Credibility and Engage with Your Target Audience' By Ardath Albee. In this article Albee provides a Content Digital Marketing framework and steps to guide you through creating Content Marketing Success.
- 'The Engagement Era: How Content Marketing Will Save Your Brand' By Carin Galletta. The author focuses on the importance, effectiveness, advancement and benefit that new digital and interactive marketing have brought to companies.
- '10 Tips from Tim Frick for Increasing Online Engagement' By Garin. This article is based on a book called 'Return On Engagement' By Tim Frick. It's like a summary about Content, Strategy and Design Techniques for Digital Marketing to help you build credibility and ultimately foster engagement with customers, connections, community members, and so on.
- 'Amy Ganderson: Engage Your Audience Through Social Media', this is a video about a real experience/ Case Study of 'The Nature Conservancy'.
- 'Six Rules for Successfully Engaging in Social Media For Marketing Communication' By Kim Harrison. This article provides a guideline on how to use Social Media the right way to reach customers and stakeholders.
- 'How to Measure Engagement' By Michele Linn. This article provides different opinions of different professionals on engaging audiences and how to measure the success of engaging strategies.
Create and Provide your Customers a good Web experience so they repeat it and share it.
Good luck! :) x
Innas A.
As you say in your post, creating a relationship with your already existing customers it's two way process, on which both parties should work. It is indeed, really like a relationship between a man and a woman, or just between friends. In any given relationship there should be constant communication, patience, tolerance, giving, appreciation and so on. In marketing is very similar, you should give your attention and time to your valuable customers if you want them to return. You should give in order to receive.
ReplyDelete:))
Thanks for including Ink Foundry's article in your line up. We are honored to be in your post.
ReplyDeletecheers,
Carin