How many miles would you go to get your brand noticed by people? Zeroing down the gap with your target audience is a formidable challenge and brands that are walking along a single touchpoint are actually not getting close enough. Talking purely from the perspective of marketing strategy making, having a strategy in place allows a brand the flexibility to navigate through multiple touchpoints and thus encircle the user for greater brand memory, learning and eventually pushing the envelope. On the other hand, brands that rely on a single touchpoint of either onsite or online run the risk of putting all their eggs in the same basket.
First, given that a user is surrounded by a vast plethora of brands hailing from diverse industry verticals, attracting the attention, interest, desire and action of users is a serious challenge. Call it the clutter effect that adds to a complex web of imagery in the mind of the user. Second, the modern-day free market with less entry barriers invites applications from new market entrants. The unregulated or less regulated market has enough space to accommodate more competition. Third, speaking from a standpoint of symbolic systems, the rise of digital media has enabled brands to expand their outreach by transcending time, space and scale like never before. Even as the user gets more mobile and hops from a personal device to the web and then to traditional media like print and television, it becomes harder for the brand marketer to answer a simple question: “Which touchpoint do I choose to demonstrate my brand value proposition?”
May the truth be told that for a brand to get noticed it needs to be virtually everywhere. Call it the paradox of marketing strategy that if a brand relies solely on one touchpoint to expand its outreach, it actually does not have a strategy in place. For a brand to get noticed, it needs a combinatorial portfolio of these five onsite and online marketing platforms:
1. Share Ideas Through Blogging
The standard rule to get people to notice your brand is to offer a value proposition that resolves their challenges. It certainly helps if you decide to share your business ideas with people, seek their inputs to understand what they need and refine the core idea and as you keep building your business, look to extend the core to new offerings. What is a better way to build authority and share your business ideas with venture capitalists, prospects, partners and vendors than through blogging? Put down your business ideas into crisp and meaningful content that adds value for the user. Post regularly and study the feedback of users. Engage in discussions; learn from the comments that users post and you are likely to get a fresh perspective of your brand that may not have struck you in the first place.
2. Upload Video Content
One of the smartest ways to connect with your target audience is to post video content on platforms like YouTube. The question that begs to be answered though is, “How can you add value through video content?” The answer is simple. Identify challenges facing the industry vertical that you are targeting. This needs some meaningful investment of time and effort in research. Identify the challenges; sort the ones that you think can be dealt with effectively through videos. Look to choose challenges that are conversational and leave ample scope for users to participate, ask questions and clarify their doubts. This way people get to know the brand while recognizing your business expertise and domain knowledge.
3. Leverage Social Media
Explore the power of collaboration through social media. Your brand is not a brand if it does not invoke the interest of people. Traverse the distance to reach out to people on social media. The business gains for your brand are manifold. People get to know your brand, speak up and participate in spreading word of mouth for your brand. The power of social media lies in sharing, expressing preferences and opinions. It is this collaborative experience of social media that is instrumental in building your brand. Lean on Facebook if you look to post content specifically targeted at consumers. Twitter is a great platform for making announcements and leveraging it as the official news dissemination platform of your brand. LinkedIn offers great access to an audience of professionals.
4. Get Onsite Among the People
There is nothing like being onsite among the people. It could be your brick-and-mortar store, a trade show or an exhibition or forum of business experts. Being there among the people offers obvious benefits that the online media can never offer. You get to observe the behaviour of people, the interest that they take in brands and the way they pose questions. Get access to a great trade show rental booth design to attract people at an industry event. Choose a great colour code for your glow boards and hoardings to lend expression to your brand’s message. Embellish the storefront with a great banner that is lively, energetic and above all synchronizes with your brand value proposition. For example, the digital banner creater Bannersnack offers a wide range of templates, colours and animation options to choose from. You may also opt to explore conventional posters for your local business in order to build traffic to your brick-and-mortar store.
5. Implement Search Engine Optimization
While search engine optimization is easier said than done, it is worth the investment of time, efforts and financial resources. Ranking your website on the top of search engine result pages allows your brand to steer clear of competition, figure on top of users’ research on the concerned product group and catch the attention of users with the least effort. However, scaling success with SEO requires adherence to some important parameters.
First, ensure that the design of your website is mobile-friendly. Having a responsive design made for your website allows your brand to become accessible to users on their smartphones that have small screens. Second, develop content for users. In doing so, consider the guidelines for Google SEO but make sure that your content is simple, crisp and user-friendly. Third, do not stuff keywords with the sole purpose of ranking high on search engine result pages. It defeats the very purpose of having a website for your brand.
Prima facie, expanding the outreach of your brand requires an all-encompassing system of multiple touchpoints rather than a focused attention to any single platform. Doing so allows your brand to be prepared to target the dynamic user that is device and platform agnostic. Moreover, using the right combination of online and offline models of marketing allow users to interact with your brand, put forward their requirements and thus ease your mission to deliver value and build scale.
