Marketing has undergone some dramatic changes in recent decades. It’s no longer enough to build your marketing campaigns on the core values of quality and affordability.
Today’s consumers want more than just a terrific product at a great price. They also want meaning and relationship.
They want to support businesses whose values they feel align with their own. They want to make connections with proprietors, employees, and fellow consumers.
In other words, for today’s consumers, commerce is less about products, services, and products. It’s more about community.
This is why marketers need to approach outreach in new ways, focusing on strategies that forge meaningful connections with consumers.
This post provides tips to help you make a true impact on your target audience.
Prioritize User Analytics and Market Research
You can’t expect to connect with your target audience in meaningful ways unless you understand who they are and what they care about.
This is why user analytics and market research should be the first priorities when you define your marketing outreach strategy.
Consumer behavior analytics, for example, can provide invaluable insight into what your target market does, where to find them, and how to approach them.
For instance, you may find that your target audience is more active on video-based social media platforms, such as Instagram and YouTube.
And maybe they are more likely to click on and share content that focuses on influencer reviews, rather than on typical product promotions.
By collecting this kind of user behavioral data, you’ll be far better positioned for targeting your campaigns successfully, crafting content that your target audience will actually respond to, and posting content where it is likely to garner the best results.
Harness Social Listening
The concept of social listening may be new to you. Regardless, A concept that every savvy marketer should know.
Social listening refers to hearing what your target audience has to say, in order to determine what they value, what they want, and what they need.
This links in important ways to market research and consumer behavioral analysis. However, social listening is often a much broader practice.
It involves listening not only to what customers are saying about your company, brand, or products, but also to what they’re saying about competitors.
Above all, social listening requires you to pay attention to topics that may have nothing to do with buying or selling, with products or services on the market, or with companies already in existence.
It involves paying attention to conversations that express some unmet need or desire, or to social values that may not be sufficiently addressed in your industry.
By paying attention to conversations on social media and in the broader community, you can discover new opportunities for product and service innovations.
You can also generate ideas for marketing campaigns that truly and deeply reflect the wants and values of your ideal consumer.
Create a Strong Mission and Value Statement
As we mentioned previously, today’s consumers are looking for far more than a great product at a bargain price. They want meaning and substance. They want to know that the companies they support actually stand for something.
This is where your mission statement and publicly stated brand values come in.
When your company has a clearly-defined mission, employees and business leaders alike will have the benefit of being guided by a clear set of principles.
For marketers, the mission and values statement provides a coherent, cohesive, and concrete company identity, which can be a key component of building an appealing, ethical brand.
Consumers will know what they’re getting, both in terms of product value and ethical values, when they do business with you.
This fundamental ethical identity is the cornerstone of your company’s story, the web of narratives through which your marketing platforms work and to which your promotional campaigns connect.
Have an Impact and Break Stigmas
There are many reasons to prioritize “meaning” in your marketing efforts. But one you may not have considered is how this quality can extend far beyond your niche / industry, possibly even on a global level.
For instance, marketing can impact even high-stakes industries, such as healthcare. As we saw during the recent Covid-19 pandemic, critical public health information needed to be disseminated globally in an attempt to save as many lives as possible.
As another example, healthcare marketing could address the vital importance of mental healthcare for teens, first responders, or minority communities.
This marketing campaign can be aimed at helping audiences connect with qualified therapists serving a range of specialized needs and patient demographics.
This is a profoundly important way to use your market reach to help break the stigma of mental illness and support the well-being of the customers you seek to serve.
Conclusion
Marketing is no longer limited to advertising products and prices. It’s about making meaningful connections with consumers and their communities.
Fortunately, marketing professionals have a host of powerful tools available to help them to robust relationships with their target audiences.
These tools don’t just serve to boost the business’s bottom line. They also serve a key role in advancing the greater good for humanity as a whole.
Feature Image Credit: Pixabay.com for Commercial Use License, with no attribution required.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Noah Rue
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