Brands aim to build long standing relationships with consumers. The way in which successful brands achieve this is by making their marketing personal.
Brands aim to build long standing relationships with consumers. The way in which successful brands achieve this is by making their marketing personal. More relevant. More meaningful. More memorable. Digital marketing is no different.
A leading digital marketing agency in Melbourne recently gave a fantastic presentation at a national digital marketing networking event suggesting we need to take a more human approach to digital and content marketing if everlasting, successful relationships are to be built with prospective customers – turning them into life long brand loyalists.
Here’s an overview of their recommendations from their presentation on how you can take a more personable and human approach to your digital marketing; strengthening your client relations.
Learn As Much As You Can About Your Customer
There is not one successful marketing campaign that’s been developed and executed – without truly knowing the customer. To make your marketing appealing on a personal level, take the time to understand the following:
- Demographics: Age, gender, occupation, where current or prospective customers live, their HHI, size of family, education etc.
- Psychographics: What excites them, what are their interests, do they have regular activities and what are their opinions on important topics to them?
- To gain deeper insights into the above, you can implement methods such as: Developing a persona: A persona enables you to feel as though you’re communicating directly to a real consumer by coming up with a character typical of your target market.
- Generating surveys: Surveys provide you with personal insights into your customers which helps you structure your digital marketing accordingly. Surveys don’t always have to be about the satisfaction of the customer experience – they can also be created to learn more about customers.
- Meeting customers in person: There’s no better way to understand your customer then meeting them face to face!
The greater the depth of understanding you have about your customer, the more appealing you can make your digital marketing to intended target markets.
Take A “Word Of Mouth” Approach To Digital Marketing
There’s no better advertising than word of mouth, so wherever possible – try and instill digital marketing tactics that appear as though your marketing messages are coming from a real person (just like word of mouth would) resulting in your main messages coming across as believable. This means, the tonality of your communications must be relatable, understandable and seemingly personable.
The idea is to try and make your digital marketing connect with everyday people. Develop digital marketing strategies that makes your marketing look like it has come from a real person. Tactics to aid this cause, could be via blogs, macro or micro influencers across social media channels, even inviting some of your customers to partake in your digital marketing activations through guest posting or having their honest review included in your advertising communications. This helps the voice of your marketing messages come across as more human, just like real word of mouth!
Converse On Social Media – Don’t Just Post
Over 90% of businesses use social media as part of their marketing mix. However, how personal or relatable is the content being published? Too often, SMEs (and large organizations) use social media to publish messages because they are working to a marketing calendar versus really using the medium as a highly engaging, interactive platform.
Don’t forget the main benefits of social channels and play to their strengths. Yes – they are great for implementing targeted media strategies – but look at the content you’re posting and how you’re engaging with fans and followers too. Get in amongst your fan base and have meaningful conversations. Like, share or regram their comments and UGC (user generated content).
Bondi Sands, Australia’s number one self tanning brand have built their brand on being highly engaged with their customers and regram UGC constantly. They are having multiple conversations with numerous followers daily plus they get the benefit of being able to use the content. This lends itself to the point before about getting your customers to partake in your digital marketing strategy! It doesn’t have to cost anything!
Digital Marketing in a more human sense means having your brand act like it was a real person across your digital channels. Aim to make your brand friendly, approachable, interactive, have meaningful or fun conversations with consumers, be transparent and honest and most of all – like all human beings, be original with an authentic personality.
