by Nigel Hilton
The online world is incredibly competitive these days. It’s doesn’t matter who you’re trying to sell to. There will always be at least a hundred other companies marketing to the same customers while offering similar products or services to you. So, already you have an issue trying to get the attention of an online audience. But that’s actually just the tip of the iceberg because unfortunately, customers these days are quite fickle.
To see this, you only need to explore how they interact with a search engine. 97% of interactions online still begin with a search engine. But what happens after they reach the search engine results pages? Studies suggest that most users won’t go past page one and hardly any will bother to look further than the first three or four organic results. This should tell you why it’s crucial to immediately get the attention of customers and connect with them through your brand.
So, how do you do this? Below, you’ll find a variety of possibilities you can consider that could help you hit this target and ensure that your brand isn’t forgotten in a sea of unfathomable competition.
Go, Guerilla
Have you heard of guerilla marketing? Guerilla marketing is best described as taking your marketing campaign to the next level. This form of marketing tends to capture the imagination and interest of an audience while also ensuring that the media take note too. Basically, you can be sure that if you invest in guerilla marketing and do it the right way, your business is going to gain a lot of traction.
Guerilla marketing is commonly viewed as an offline tactic and while it is quite common to use it in this form, it can work online too. An example of this can be seen countless times in the movie and entertainment industry. Our favourite example is perhaps the marketing for Jurassic World, several years ago. The tagline for the film was ‘the park is open’ and boy did Universal deliver on that promise. They created an entire, live, constantly updating website that provided ‘real’ information on the park including weather reports and dinosaur sightings. Was this the reason why the film soared to 1.5 billion at the box office? We certainly doubt it hurt the movie's chances.
There are other examples of online marketing too that use this strategy. For instance, you might want to consider giving away your product for free. This is another brilliant example of guerilla marketing and it’s not hard to do at all. If you can afford it in your bottom line, you’ll find that this builds a massive buzz around your business brand. It will help ensure that customers connect with your company and are keen to find out what else you might have on offer for them. You can see it as providing a taster and this will pay off for your business in the long term, we guarantee it.
Engage On Social Media
You do need to make sure that you are engaging with customers and clients on social media. The best advice we can offer here is to follow the eighty, twenty rule with social media content. This simply means that around eighty per cent of the content you release across social networks should not be the direct promotion of your brand or business. Instead, you should make sure that you are providing content and information that helps, entertains or informs your target audience. For instance, how to guides are a great example of this or how about just posts that provide brilliant updates on the industry as a whole. What you’re aiming for here is to be seen as a trusted resource rather than simply someone who is pushing a product.
Once you start producing and publishing the right type of content, you can then start engaging with your audience directly. You’ll find that customers and users comment in your feeds and on your posts. This is great because it provides you with the opportunity to reply. You can even respond to negative comments and help reduce the level of damage that they might be responsible for. You should also think about using UGC or user-generated content. This type of content is great because it gives you a line with a specific user and also provides you with free promotional possibilities.
Do make sure that you are investing in tools and solutions that allow you to track and measure mentions of your brand online. By doing this, you will be able to get ahead of a situation before it is allowed to fully develop. You will also be able to make sure that you can immediately respond to any and all queries about your business. Showing you are constantly listening to customers and clients is a great way to win their support and ensure that they are on your side.
Go Live
You should definitely think about going to live on social media. This provides an option for you to show customers a live feed related to your business or your brand. It provides you with an option to immediately gain their interest and demonstrate that they are getting a secret behind the scenes to look at your company. This type of marketing can trigger a response somewhat similar to FOMO where customers don’t want to miss out on what you are offering.
You can use Facebook, Instagram and various other social networks to do this. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses but all provide this type of opportunity and as such should be considered. Remember, through a live feed, you can once again, interact with customers and clients directly. You can answer their questions, alleviate their concerns and ensure that they feel connected to your company. By doing this, you can guarantee that they won't forget your business brand. Instead, they will be eager to keep track and check whether you are holding any more live shows in the future.
Make Sure They Can Find You
You need to make sure that customers can find your business online. It’s all very well building a dazzling marketing strategy but if they never find your brand it’s also completely pointless. As you might have guessed this is all about your SEO strategy. More than ever before, SEO is an umbrella strategy that covers a massive range of possibilities online. There are so many different options that you can consider when thinking about how to attract people to your business online. From social media to keywords and link building, it can actually be quite difficult to know which direction you should head in here.
Our recommendation is that you think about hiring the best SEO agency. SEO isn’t really supposed to be understood by the layperson and it’s constantly evolving. You're basic understanding of SEO probably only scratches the surface of what you need to know. If you don’t believe that, you may want to check out this skill for agency folks, for Amazon Alexa. It provides up to date information on the SEO world and can fill you in on everything that you need to know.
An SEO agency is always going to be your best chance at attracting customers because that’s what the competition is using. Don’t mess around with the DIY SEO campaign because, in the long run, this is going to hinder your chances far more than it helps them.
Invest In Omnichannel Solutions
Do make sure that you are considering omnichannel solutions. If you don’t known omnichannel marketing is where you essentially make sure that you are seeing the bigger picture. This means that you don’t focus on one channel for marketing but several and then you join them together. This allows you to create a united marketing campaign that really taps into what customers want and what they essentially need from your brand.
There are a variety of examples of omnichannel marketing that you can use as inspiration. For instance, you could be running a clothing store online. One clothing store company completed research and found that a jacket was selling well but customers were constantly losing the belt. So, they introduced a marketing campaign based around ways to dress up the outfit without the belt and they connected this to an in-store campaign. Similar to guerilla marketing, this can gain media traction as well as the attention of customers online.
Build A Story
Finally, you need to make sure that you are building a story that customers can connect with and follow. Pure marketing just isn’t going to cut it. Instead, you need to get to know your customers and find out what their problems are. Once you recognize the issues you face, you can then figure out how your product or service can be a solution to that issue. You’ll be able to build a campaign or at the very least a piece of content around this train of thought. Customers will see you want to help them and better yet, they’ll reward you for making this effort.
Using this advice, you can gain the attention you need from your customer base online.
