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The Secret to Becoming a Great Social Media Manager? Marketing Essentials

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Sourced from edX

Social media management isn’t just about great photos and videos or learning today’s hottest platform; it’s about translating marketing fundamentals and core skills across all platforms, to inform a data-driven approach that fits into a broader marketing strategy.

So what does that look like in practice? We asked resident edX social media expert Livia Halltari for her insights.

What Makes a Good Social Media Manager?

Whatever your age and level of personal experience, transitioning into a social media career will take some learning. Running your own social media account is very different from managing one for an employer or client. A successful social media manager stays on top of trends, platforms, and social media management tools to schedule posts, monitor analytics, and more.

In other words, you must embrace lifelong learning, whether you plan to stay in social media long-term or hope to advance to other marketing roles in the future, and whether your aspirations are full-time or freelance. Working in social media provides great insight into a wide range of marketing roles and makes an ideal launch pad into the industry.

“Social is one of the most generalist marketing roles you can get,” said Halltari. “You really gain exposure into how email does their work, how content marketing does their work, and how PR, design, and copywriters do their work because you’re working with all these different teams so closely. And you gain experience advocating for yourself, reporting, and the analytical part of marketing, as well as the creative, interactive, brand-focused part. It’s the kind of role where you gain a really foundational knowledge of marketing.”

layer “It’s the kind of role where you gain a really foundational knowledge of marketing.”

Forbes, she added, is calling today’s social media managers “the next generation of CMOs,” and with this holistic background, they are certainly on track to be.

Building A Social Media Skillset on Marketing Foundations

There are many different marketing skills and backgrounds that can usefully inform a social media career, and many of them have their basis in general marketing. Here, we picked just a few of the most important to unpack.

  • Brand marketing: To build lasting connections with customers, companies must establish a strong brand perception, and few avenues facilitate this as well as social media. Storytelling and visuals are the mechanics by which this perception and relationship are built, so these are key areas to upskill when breaking into the field.
  • Analytics: The data is out there. You, as a social media manager, must know where to retrieve it and what to do with it. You must be able to draw conclusions from metrics like followers, page views, clicks, likes, shares, comments, and impressions and form a plan of action in response.
  • Reporting: This skill isn’t just about collecting and sharing data with leadership; it’s about curating data. Halltari says you can set yourself up for success by working with leadership early on to determine goals and the metrics by which you’ll measure success. Only then can you create useful goals, forecasts, and benchmarks.
  • Communication: Not only are you the public voice of the organization—you also need to effectively work with internal stakeholders to develop and adapt strategies, as well as collaborate across the marketing department and beyond.
  • Writing: Nothing can take the place of good storytelling and content. Your copywriting should be concise, evocative, and tailored for the appropriate audience or platform. A background in creative writing, English, or literature can be invaluable.
  • Project management: Organizational and time management skills are key. You need to be able to plan ahead and post content consistently, juggle simultaneous projects, align calendars, and communicate, collaborate, and delegate to members of the marketing team.
  • Design: While it’s not necessary to be a master of graphic design, it helps to know the basics. Social is ultimately a visual channel, and a heavily saturated one—it takes unique images to stand out against the competition. Especially in smaller companies where social media marketers often wear many hats, an understanding of design practices and tools is a valuable skill to have.
  • Strategy: How does your social media strategy fit into the bigger picture? Understanding context, target audience, and analytics can help shape social media into a powerful piece of a company’s overall business strategy.
  • Customer Service: A background in sales or customer service can be valuable, as these roles overlap with some key components of marketing such as conversion, awareness, and customer acquisition. If you’ve worked in retail, then you understand the importance of addressing customer complaints promptly, and social media is no different: You must be prepared to pivot at any time to respond to customers or developing trends.

If you are just breaking into the field, start by learning the fundamentals of digital marketing, especially if you are using social media as a launchpad for greater marketing career aspirations. An entry-level job in social media can be even more powerful than a classroom for honing skills and picking up new ones, so it’s a great way to learn about a variety of marketing roles and decide which one is right for you.

How to Become a Social Media Marketing Manager: 5 Steps

Some useful backgrounds for social media specialists include business, marketing, advertising, public relations, communications, psychology, writing, public speaking, and photo or video skills. But you may be surprised that social media mavens can also come from backgrounds as diverse as political science, fashion design, or retail. In this field, you can start from anywhere, with little to no experience. Here’s how:

1. Close skill gaps

Developing a few key marketing skills will serve you well, and you don’t have to get a college degree to learn them. According to Halltari, hiring managers are more interested in examples of project management, organization, good communication, strong copywriting, adaptability, eagerness to learn, and the ability to work independently as well as with a larger marketing team. A bachelor’s degree is just icing on the cake.

2. Learn Social Media Platforms and Marketing Analytics

Get to know the strengths and weaknesses of major social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Study how your competitors are using these social networks. Familiarize yourself with tools for scheduling and publishing content, social media listening, analytics, and more. But remember that basic familiarity is just the first step. You must continue to build your skill set.

“Employers don’t want to know if you use those platforms to develop and manage your personal social media accounts,” said Ewelina Lacka, lecturer in digital marketing and analytics at the University of Edinburgh Business School and instructor for the Digital Marketing Fundamentals Professional Certificate program on edX. “They want to know if you understand how to use social media to achieve marketing goals.”

Online courses can help you learn about tools like Google Adwords, WordPress, and Facebook Ads, as well as teaching evergreen skills like graphic design and SEO, which remain relevant even when the platform of the day inevitably changes.

Pro Tip:

edX_Icon_LearningNeuroscience “I am a big believer in the fundamentals of marketing. A real grasp of what is a positioning, and the related branding strategy, along with the 4 Ps [product, price, place, and promotion] is vital. An appreciation for what motivates or is important to a given target market is critical. Being able to put yourself in the shoes of the customer is a great skill. Writing and general communication skills are extremely important. Finally, any experience that puts you in front of customers is valuable, so seeing transactions of any kind is important because ultimately everything is marketed… or at least, it should be!”

Jeffrey Frohwein, instructor for the Marketing Foundations course from DoaneX

3. Gain Relevant Work Experience

The best way to master social media management is to do it. An internship is one avenue. Another option is to connect with small businesses or non-profits that need someone to manage their social media presence. Don’t be afraid to do free work while you’re learning, but also be sure to draw a line after which you will stop working for free and start charging clients as a freelancer or start looking for that salaried role.

If you’re pivoting to a new career and can’t currently accept unpaid work, then online certifications are another good option for upskilling. Or, simply create a social media account of your own and start building your online presence! After a few months, you should be able to demonstrate your ability to post consistently and grow your following.

4. Develop a Portfolio

Your portfolio is your key to social media success, whether you are working in-house or on a freelance basis. A portfolio demonstrates your work and its impact. Remember that experience does not have to be professional: Passion projects and side hustles can be a fun way to learn your way around platforms and discover the best strategies for each. Consider building a website to showcase your most successful social media posts.

5. Market Yourself to Potential Clients

Whether your goal is to land a salaried position working in social media or to go into business for yourself as a freelancer, you are a brand, and your ability to market yourself as such will show employers or clients that you can also successfully market their products or services.

Be aware, however, that social media is a highly competitive field. Instead of applying to jobs online, try attending conferences and small business events. Introduce yourself in person. Give people your card. Let them meet your brand face-to-face.

Pro Tip:

edX_Icon_LearningNeuroscience “The most important thing is the enthusiasm and willingness to learn and contribute.  Let’s face it, someone with all the certifications in the world is going to be a net loss if they have a poor attitude and are not willing to work with others and really see their role as a problem solver.  Technical skills are teachable, attitude is another matter,” said Frohwein, instructor for the Marketing Foundations course from DoaneX.

Start Learning Foundational Marketing Skills

Social media is constantly changing. Platforms and trends come and go. Algorithms evolve. Current events spark new conversations. Staying up to date on new channels is important, but it’s even more important to lay a good foundation. There are plenty of reputable resources online to help you upskill in marketing. Explore edX marketing courses to get started.

Sourced from edX

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How to master free Facebook marketing

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Sourced from techradar.pro

The best things in life are free

Do you want to increase online sales, build brand awareness and promote your products? From leading brands that boost TV campaigns with Facebook engagement, to growing businesses that host creative online offers to keep fans excited, any business – big or small – can use Facebook as a marketing tool.

Social media platforms such as Facebook bridge the gap between businesses and consumers, improving communication between them and leaving brands with a better understanding of their audience. Whether you’re a freelance illustrator, successful independent restaurant or a globally- recognized brand, Facebook should be at the top of your marketing strategy.

Facebook groups and pages each have their own strengths. Groups are ideal for intimate communication in communities – to discuss a topic, and to share ideas and opinions – while pages are designed to help businesses, organizations and professionals create an authentic presence online to represent their values. Therefore, creating a Facebook page for your brand or business is the first step towards getting yourself noticed on the social network.

How to promote yourself

A megaphone in front of a smart phone surrounded by heart symbols

(Image credit: shutterstock/SPF)

Suggesting your page to friends, putting up signs in your bricks-and-mortar store, adding a Like button to your website, and including links to your page wherever possible will all contribute to page growth. However, the most noticeable change in Likes will be as a result of the content you post on your page. Let’s look at ways to optimize your Facebook marketing effort by identifying your audience, creating compelling content, and analysing your strategy.

Having a clear understanding of your audience will help you tailor your Facebook posts to suit its interests. Most brands have customer profiles outlined through authorized data collection, but as a growing business or freelancer, taking time to identify your ideal customer will help you to find more of them.

Create a description of your ideal customer. Decide on age, gender, personality, occupation, hobbies, spending habits, likes and dislikes.

Locate your online audience. Which websites interest them? What are they reading? What are they likely to search for online?

Determine their end goals. What is it about your product or service that they like?

Write a more detailed outline of each identifiable customer. Give them each a name and backstory. Write a short day-in-the-life-of paragraph about each one that you can refer to. These are just a few questions to get you started. There are hundreds of customer profiling templates online that can help you build a more comprehensive portrait. Piecing together a clear picture of who you’re ‘talking’ to online will help determine the tone for each post and what customers are likely to respond to.

Create a content strategy

An illustration of a person using a giant magnet to attract social media likes

(Image credit: Shutterstock/Lepusinensis)

A Facebook content strategy is a daily outline of page updates scheduled for the week or month ahead which include things you want to promote or share. For example, you know next week you’ll publish a blog post about an offer available on your website’s shop, which will start on Saturday and end on the following Monday.

For your Facebook strategy you could schedule the following: an announcement of the upcoming offer the Thursday before, share a link to the blog post on Saturday, and post a product image on Sunday evening as a reminder to those who haven’t already taken advantage. Map out your Facebook strategy by determining your weekly or monthly goals and devising daily content around it.

Remember to look at your customer profile to find ways of working in content that would interest them. Your goals may be to drive traffic to your online store, to increase your reach and Page Likes, or to build brand awareness. They may be all of these things, so a strategy is central to creating posts that get attention and get results.

According to Posting Best Practices, rich photography and captivating videos, asking questions, and Facebook Offers (a paid-for service) – or offers of your own – receive the best response. If you think about your personal use of Facebook, are these the same things that catch your eye? Arizona-based State Bicycle Co. has been featured on Facebook’s Success Stories page.

Each week it shares a stunning image of a bike with an inspiring quote dropped over the top. This generates a  lot of shares and plenty more comments and likes. The company calls it Motivational Monday. Not only is it the perfect day for inspirational posts that banish Monday blues, but the content is also visually striking. Most importantly, it’s shareable, which extends the reach of the page and potentially leads to new fans.

With your page in place and content being published regularly, you can measure your success using Facebook  Insights. Facebook’s easy-to-use analytics service helps you evaluate different aspects of your page. Tools such as Engagement, Page Likes, and Post Reach help with tracking your best-performing content by discovering who’s engaging with you, and at what time.

Use these tools to find out what’s working well, write your own best practice, then replicate it. These steps are simple, but it takes an active page to make discoveries that lead to growth.

Case Study: Tatty Devine

The Tatty Devine Facebook page showing a happy woman holding a lollypop

(Image credit: Facebook/ Tatty Devine)

Tatty Devine is an independent British jeweller whose studios are located in London and Kent. It specializes in expressive, standout jewellery with hints of retro fashion. The brand used Facebook to bring the products from its British studios to a global audience. Its aim: to turn Facebook Likes into online purchases, shop visits and brand awareness.

A quick scan over the brand’s Facebook page makes it clear that Tatty Devine knows its audience. Its page is kept fresh by varying post types from anything between new collections, sneak peeks and discounted item announcements, all of which are accompanied by gorgeous images and enthusiastic copy. In spring/summer 2013, Tatty Devine launched the successful Wishing Tree campaign. It encouraged fans to leave comments on its Facebook page with their springtime wishes. These comments would be written out and pinned to an in-store wishing tree, photos of which were uploaded soon after.

This simple idea worked to bring a community of fans together by getting them to engage around a theme that wasn’t about a new offer or competition, but which resulted in increased online sales and improved store footfall. Tatty Devine’s sample sales have fans in screeches of sheer excitement. To promote the event, it created a public Facebook event and invited fans to visit its London store.

It soon had more than 400 guests attending. Other posts about the event included an announcement that newsletter subscribers would receive early access to buy ‘Lucky Dip’ boxes online, and an invitation to fans to submit song requests for the Sunday sample sale through comments.

Many happy customers shared images of their Lucky Dips, and those wishing they’d got something else were given the means to swap items with other Tatty Devine shoppers through a one-month-only Swap Shop event. Through both the Wishing Tree and Sample Sale campaigns, Tatty Devine created great excitement around its products using Facebook as the medium between it and its audience. It uses Facebook as the channel for driving online sales through good posting strategies and learning what its audience responds best to.

Six top tips

A woman checking her social media notifications

(Image credit: Shutterstock/Kaspars Grinvalds)

DO:

Create sharable content:
Shareable content is a post that directly benefits your audience. When a fan shares your post, it appears on their timeline and their friends’ news feeds, so creating shareable content is important for page exposure and acquiring new Likes. People respond to a business or brand with a ‘human side’, so don’t be afraid to add your own flair. Combine your (clean) humour with content that helps your fans express their own identity. Now more than ever it’s important to put yourself in their shoes.

Measure and adjust:
Once 30 people have liked your page, you’ll be able to see your Page Insights, which tell you all about how your audience is responding to your content. Page Likes, Post Reach and Engagement tools are just some of the things you can use to track your best-performing posts.

Be available:
People love an authentic presence online, so be conversational and share what you’re genuinely interested in – it’s about quality, not quantity. Respond to both good and bad feedback. Experiment with post types and times. You can schedule posts on Facebook, which is a godsend for businesses with little digital resource.

DON’T:

Forget formality:
Say goodbye to formalities and loosen up already! People on Facebook are there primarily to catch up with friends, so if you want their attention, you have to talk with them as though you’re just another pal to encourage interaction, rather than sounding like a marketer. This is not to say that you shouldn’t be professional, but have a little fun with your status – what have you been up to?

Reference:
Do not take credit for any content that does not belong to you! This is not to say that you can’t share an image you think your audience would love to see on your page, even if you didn’t take it yourself. It simply means that you should, at all times, give credit where credit is due. Adding a link to the original source builds credibility and trust with your audience.

Don’t irritate:
Facebook likes an active page but people are quick to hit the Unlike button. The aim is to be consistent and to post regularly to counter this, but don’t overdo it. Ask yourself, “Would my audience share this?”, “Would they find it interesting?”, “Would they like to see this in their news feed?” – if the answer is yes (honestly), then go ahead.

Sourced from techradar.pro

 

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5 Common Mistakes Small Businesses Make

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By Larry Alton

It doesn’t matter if you’re the new kid on the block or you’re an industry veteran, all small businesses make mistakes from time to time.

Mistakes may be a natural part of the business process. But that doesn’t mean small business owners need to personally commit every error in order to learn each lesson.

There are many ways that entrepreneurs can learn from the mistakes of others to avoid paying the price with their own companies. Here are a handful of common mistakes that many small businesses tend to make, as well as suggestions for ways to avoid them.

1. Attempting to Do Everything

A small business owner is a brave soul. They’ve charted their own course and taken control into their own hands. If you’re a small business owner, you’re well aware of the confidence that this can create.

However, just because you’ve succeeded in one area of business doesn’t mean that skill or talent will translate to other pursuits. In fact, one of the biggest shortcomings of many small business owners is falling prey to the idea that they can do everything.

The truth is, every business owner has countless things that they’re not good at. Often, they’re even severely underqualified. For instance, managing taxes or stepping in as a chef are very bad ideas if you’re not qualified to do so. Even small activities like managing customer service calls or processing payroll can be a bad idea if you’re not trained.

Instead, outsource these activities. Look into technology solutions, such as small business payroll software. If you can swing it, hire employees to address them. The gig economy is another economic way to fill in talent gaps in your workforce without breaking the bank.

2. Failing to Take Finances Seriously

Both overspending and underspending are common issues for small businesses. Often the root of the problem stems from the personality of the business owner.

Those who are bean counters tend to avoid expenses, even when they’re necessary for growth — and at times even survival. On the other end of the spectrum, reckless spenders often ignore the math and rack up expenses blindly while hiding behind things like quality or a better customer experience.

Swinging to either extreme can be detrimental to a business. Instead, take steps to gain a firm understanding of your finances. Use software like Quickbooks or Expensify to keep track of income and expenses. Hire an accountant to help you with your taxes. The more you understand your business’s finances, the more informed your financial decision-making will be.

2. Attempting to Do Everything

A small business owner is a brave soul. They’ve charted their own course and taken control into their own hands. If you’re a small business owner, you’re well aware of the confidence that this can create.

However, just because you’ve succeeded in one area of business doesn’t mean that skill or talent will translate to other pursuits. In fact, one of the biggest shortcomings of many small business owners is falling prey to the idea that they can do everything.

The truth is, every business owner has countless things that they’re not good at. Often, they’re even severely underqualified. For instance, managing taxes or stepping in as a chef are very bad ideas if you’re not qualified to do so. Even small activities like managing customer service calls or processing orders can be a bad idea if you’re not trained.

Instead, outsource these activities. If you can swing it, hire employees to address them. The gig economy is another economic way to fill in talent gaps in your workforce without breaking the bank.

3. Mistreating Your Internal Lifelines

As a small business owner, you’re likely well aware of all of the threats to your business. From financial concerns to supply chain disruptions, customer satisfaction, and more, there are countless areas that can keep you worrying at all times.

This often creates stress and anxiety that small businesses will pass along to others further down the chain of command. For instance, many small businesses work their employees to the bone. They aren’t treated well by management or shown that they’re valued.

Suppliers are another group that often get the short end of the stick. They’re often left waiting for payments until the last minute, even when they deliver shipments on time.

Make sure to treat your internal and auxiliary workforce with respect. Go out of your way to pay them on time and show them that they’re valued. You’ll find that your business will run like a well-oiled machine, and you’ll get greater loyalty and production.

4. Spreading Your Marketing Thin

Marketing used to be a big company’s game. Small businesses had to scrounge around for the local scraps that big-budget corporations left behind.

The advent of online marketing has completely rewritten this narrative. All the way back in 2019, digital ad spending was already poised to overtake traditional spending, with no end to the growth in site.

The only problem is that online marketing, while accessible for small businesses, is overwhelming. Email, social media, website, search engine, content, video, and countless other marketing strategies are available. The worst thing a small business can do is commit marketing dollars to a scattered and mismanaged marketing strategy (or even worse, no strategy at all.)

It doesn’t matter if you’re spending hundreds or millions of dollars. Always create a solid marketing plan that dictates how to spend each penny.

5. Not Managing Risk

Risk is another common issue for small businesses. With less margin for error than larger enterprises, many smaller companies either play it safe and miss opportunities or take uncalculated risks that end in disaster.

It’s important to develop a risk management philosophy for your business. As you do so, make sure you have a balanced approach to risk. For example, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. Use resources that you can afford to lose if a new business idea goes south.

At the same time, don’t sit tight on what’s working at the moment and let opportunities pass you by. It’s easy to put yourself out of business if you fail to evolve along with your industry these days. Look for things like cutting-edge tech or changing customer expectations and then create strategies that incorporate them.

The best way to do this is to set SMART goals. These are goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. By setting SMART goals, you can create reasonable objectives to work toward. This will keep you moving forward and taking risks. At the same time, it will avoid the need to threaten the existence of your entire business in the process.

There are many challenges that every small business will face. Some of these will be overcome without an issue. Others may stand out as clear mistakes and important learning opportunities.

However, there are also many mistakes that companies can learn from without first-hand experience. From proper finances to a loyal workforce, happy suppliers, meaningful marketing, and much more, it’s always worth taking the time to do your homework and safeguard your business against common — yet avoidable — mistakes as you go along.

Feature Image Credit: Depositphotos

By Larry Alton

Sourced from Small Business Trends

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Getting Brand Communities Right and How to Build One

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By Toby Britton

Every marketer knows that the holy grail of marketing is the all-important word-of-mouth recommendation. In search of this, brand advertising has, in recent years, leaned heavily on influencer marketing, to both gain reach and approximate the word-of-mouth recommendation as closely as possible. In reality, influencer marketing is no match for direct brand advocacy from the customers themselves.

With only 4% of customers trusting paid influencers (according to a UM Wave study), the importance of authentic people-centric marketing is something that brands simply can’t afford to ignore. So, while there’s a strong case for paying for reach and awareness via sponsored influencer tricks, brands who are not leveraging earned media from their most vocal existing advocates could be missing a trick.

Many brands have been tapping into the power of user-generated content for a while now. However, the savviest are going one step further, and building brand communities.

What is a brand community?

A community is a group of individuals with similar values and interests, who are bonded by their difference from outsiders, their traditions, and their sense of obligation to each other. When a community forms around a brand, it taps into people’s fundamental emotional and social needs, creating strong bonds between the people in it and the brand they love. When they express passion for a brand in a brand community, it resonates strongly and is reflected back through relationships with other community members. In a successful brand community, like-minded individuals are able to bond over not only a shared love of a brand but over the possession of particular skills and interest in similar experiences. Naturally, when this happens, a stream of authentic earned media is developed, with community members sharing content with little encouragement.

By allowing brand communities to self-support and flourish with minimal input, brands have the chance to form profound personal connections with customers for a fraction of the cost of a traditional marketing campaign. With the rise of brand community marketing, the new generation of marketers will need patience, plus a new skill set and a knowledge of specific systems and principles to develop and manage effectively. However, once mastered, community marketing will richly reward brands with dedicated and enthusiastic customers, leading to word-of-mouth growth, increased customer-made content, and outstanding return on investment.

What do members of a brand community look like?

Brand communities are as diverse as the brands that work with them. A community could be composed of regular enthusiastic customers, or brands can recruit a subset of creative customers to collaborate with. What tends to be the most important criteria and one of the biggest differences between community marketing and influencer marketing, is brand love; an authentic love for the brand that exists regardless of any community membership, where such super fans genuinely want to help that brand succeed.

One of the biggest sources of community power for brands is the Creator Economy. This is an economy created around over 50 million passionate and highly skilled individuals around the world who have built businesses and communities around their own personal brands online. They can range from musicians to hairstylists, to business experts, and more. They tend to be present on the main social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, and adept at utilizing their talents to create well-presented, top-quality content. In a brand community, individuals from the Creator Economy, regular customers, and those who fall somewhere in between have the chance to interact with a brand in a fresh way.

How to use technology to grow a brand community

Building a brand community might sound tricky and time-consuming at first, and while it’s possible to sustain brand communities using existing social media, specially built digital community management platforms will do much of the heavy lifting for you. Through social listening using hashtags and @mentions, such a platform will identify the super fans and creators that would be the best fit for your brand community.

Brands can then easily recruit these potential brand advocates to their brand community using such a platform, and provide them with an exclusive digital space in which to connect with fellow community members.

Inside this digital space, brands can brief super fans on projects and collaborate with them on campaigns. You’ll be able to provide them with the tools they need to get started, and, in exchange, they’ll bring both their creativity and customer knowledge to the table. You can also use the community space to get feedback on new products and reward super fans ethically in a number of ways, which could include providing them with a platform for their work, workshops, courses, or charitable donations. Often, being able to play a meaningful role in your business is reward enough.

UGC generated by super fans can then be carefully curated and licensed through community management platforms, and published directly to brand channels such as websites and social media, or exported for use in other marketing campaigns.

Examples of great brand communities

Lego Ideas is a community website where anyone can submit new builds using existing Lego bricks, new designs are lightly moderated, showcased, and put up to a community vote, and the winning designs have a chance of being turned into a commercially available Lego set and earning 1% of royalties. Since 2014, this open-to-all marketing model continues to successfully the growth of a thriving community of Lego fans, as well as ethically rewarding the most creative and dedicated amongst them.

Dove’s ground-breaking marketing campaign #ShowUs is a fine example of community marketing in the social justice space. Facilitated by community technology, Dove collaborated with regular consumers who had extraordinary stories to share, in the Dove community to generate a photo library that truly reflects the diversity of beauty around the world, with the aim of improving the representation of beauty in advertising.

Although it can be tricky for brands to champion social causes without seeming superficial, Dove’s existing brand authenticity and willingness to celebrate its shared values with brand fans proved to be a recipe for community marketing success. The challenge set to creators resonated incredibly well, resulting in the world’s largest photo library of women and non-binary individuals, and winning the campaign multiple awards in the process.

Conclusion

As we’ve seen, the key to a thriving brand community is to tap into existing creator talent and enthusiasm, by taking the time to develop a new marketing skillset alongside taking advantage of the best in cutting edge community management technology. Get the balance right and you can nurture a sharing culture; one that can thrive and deliver endless earned media with little intervention and no financial transactions.

Feature Image Credit: John Cameron

By Toby Britton

Sourced from Brandingmag

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Merging offline and online marketing is a smarter way to drive sales

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By M Muneer

E-fulfilment, or an electronic response, blended with traditional methods is the key to optimising a company’s one-to-one marketing efforts

E-fulfilment, an electronic response to a direct marketing request, can be an important part of a company’s marketing strategy to reach customers directly. In the right situation and to the right customer, it can offer several advantages.

The three biggest advantages of e-fulfilment are:

1 Speed: You meet targets quickly.

2 Cost-effectiveness: In some instances, it makes it cheaper to reach the customer.

3 Control/customisation: It allows for adjusting your campaign in real time, test and move forward.

One to one with customers—when content is completely personalised, including the cover letter/note, types of attachments and the content of each attachment—is expensive and time-consuming using land-based methods.

But not all situations call for solely an e-fulfilment system. Careful consideration of the types of the target being reached and the company’s marketing objective will determine the appropriate combination of e-based and land-based fulfilment components to be utilised.

For example, if a credit-card provider’s database identifies a person with an outstanding credit rating and a high income, that person may get a customised email that includes an offer to upgrade their card and links to exotic vacation destinations with special offers.

Someone else with a good credit history may get an offer for a balance-transfer offer or personal loan proposal.

Tweak as you go along

Flexibility is an important benefit of a fully integrated e-fulfilment system. Such a system makes it easy to evaluate a campaign’s rollout in real time—watch the pick-up on the first cell, tweak the campaign, watch the second cell go out, make another adjustment, and so forth.

With the proper systems in place, e-fulfilment offers direct marketers a wide range of options. It permits increased analysis and customisation of future messages, allowing marketers to see when people open the emails, and track as they click through to website links.

Real-time web reports of hits are available, detailing soft bounce-backs (server is temporarily down or a mailbox is full) and hard bounce-backs (service no longer exists or e-mail address is not valid).

If an email bounces back with a bad address or full mailbox, companies may have a call centre representative double-check with the intended recipient to confirm how they want to receive information.

The following examples offer an overview of possibilities and a preview of where things are heading for SMEs.

Case 1: Fewer reminders, more completions

A liability insurance company was using mail fulfilment as a marketing tool with its professional services clients. Names and detailed information were generated daily, with policies printed and mailed twice a week–incorporating e-fulfilment. Maximising its effectiveness was simply a matter of designing a system that converted content into a PDF file at the point it would have “gone to print” in the traditional fulfilment process.

These files are created in the same pre-printed format that customers would have received in hard-copy form. Like its traditional counterpart, the body of the e-fulfilment text message is highly personalised based on a client’s insurance history, with rate and coverage information, policy type, brand and payment method received/requested but it also includes a link to the insurer’s website for more information.

The policy itself is attached to the email and incorporates client-specific information. In addition, the insurance company finds that email enables it to send fewer reminders to get policy renewals and it is receiving more payments at a faster cycle. This could be modified for individual customers today with technology.

Case 2: Talk directly to your prospect

In many instances, customers and potential customers can request information through a variety of channels, including a call centre, website or mail.

In one such instance, a pharmaceutical manufacturer generates data daily from these sources. Based on the depth of information in the marketing database—gender, age, products requested and used—the development of highly customised text messaging and rich format attachments are possible.

The system also enables custom e-mail messaging with links to specific parts of the company’s website. In this case, the company is developing a true one-to-one marketing campaign that, over time, can be refined based on this interaction loop.

Today, companies using e-fulfilment with rich content are also engaged in parallel mail campaigns. They are not looking to abandon traditional fulfilment methods but rather want new ways to get closer to their customers.

As consumers click through the company’s websites via email links, each visit adds to their profile for future e-marketing efforts. As the file on each person is enhanced, marketers can cost-effectively move into more focussed cross-selling and up-selling campaigns.

Overall, the trend is for companies to implement one-to-one marketing tools. More and more, they are looking for expertise from direct marketing service providers that enables them to reach customers and prospects within a very structured campaign but target each one with a specific package of information via their mailbox, e-mailbox, over the phone or a website.

E-fulfilment enables you to watch a campaign unfold in real time and improve it as needed, including the way individual follow-up is done. And blending e-fulfilment (with its reporting and campaign management capabilities) with the appropriate traditional fulfilment methods is the key to optimising a company’s one-to-one marketing efforts.

By M Muneer

M Muneer is the managing director of CustomerLab Solutions, a consulting firm.

Sourced from moneycontrol

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Fine-tuning the relationship between branding and marketing

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By Phil Forbes

Your business has no doubt invested a lot of time into many facets of its operations. Two of those will undoubtedly be your branding and your marketing.

One of these is how your brand looks. The other is how that image is presented to the world.

And when you look at it like this, it’s easy to see how the two are related. But in reality, brand owners, marketing managers, and other specialists rarely understand how the two work in unison.

There are many examples of small and medium enterprises that have perfected how their branding and marketing communications complement each other. In this article, we will take a look at a few of them and why they work so well.

Why marketing and branding need each other

When your brand looks good, it’s a lot easier to spread its name, message, values, and products. That being said, looking ‘good’ is a very subjective term. Knowing what your ideal customer defines as ‘looking good’ is critical – and knowing your ideal customer is a crucial part of marketing any brand.

Source: Concrete Jungle

Already we can see how branding and marketing are overlapping.

When your brand has a design system that’s echoed over several channels, you make it easier to appeal to that ideal customer. Marketing channels like social media, your website, as well as letterheads and email signatures, should have your brand’s imagery.

Consider for a moment the role of packaging in an eCommerce brand.

A small boutique selling apparel made from locally sourced and organic materials may use those values in its marketing and branding. The area that the materials are sourced from may be part of the marketing message, the same with the fact that those materials are organic and no chemicals have been used to process them.

Such a brand can implement eco friendly packaging to bolster further their commitment to using environmentally friendly materials. This move can support their marketing efforts and create another branding opportunity.

The values of these actions amalgamate to help your customer ‘feel’ what your business stands for. Your branding is a pathway to present that ‘feel’ to your customers, while your marketing helps you find more customers to ‘feel’ your brand.

When effective branding is implementing by a stable business build around a good product, your customer is in a prime position to remember your product and why it’s different from your competitors.

Quality branding helps your User Generated Content, too.

Simply put, User-Generated Content is pictures, reviews, videos, and such featuring your product, created by your customers. Without going into too much detail, it’s a fantastic way for trusted content creators to spread your brand’s name around their engaged audience. It is also excellent at proving that your business is real and it creates a good product.

Take, for example, unboxing videos.

Unboxing videos are:

Pretty impressive numbers for a video that’s little more than your product being taken out of a box.

Video source

Video marketing, in the form of unboxing videos a perfect example of marketing (user-generated content) overlapping with branding (customised small business supplies).

This is a perfect example of how good branding (quality packaging) enhances your marketing efforts (user-generated content).

The rewards are simply more significant and more long-term when marketing and branding work together.

Consider the following word: Nike.

What first comes to mind?

  • the goddess of victory
  • The US anti-air defence missile system from the 60s
  • ‘Just do it’

It’s the tick, Air Jordan’s, and sport that comes to your mind.

The fact that ‘just do it (Nike’s marketing) and the tick (branding) is the first thing that enters your mind is proof that both elements are working in unison.

Subway.

  • A form of mass transport, often used underground in urban populations
  • ‘Eat Fresh’

Just another example of how your brand can use these two creatures side by side.

Using your branding for marketing purposes

Hemp Juice is a manufacturer of CBD oils. This market has exploded since society has been made more aware of the therapeutic benefits of cannabis. Regulations have also been changed to allow the product to be taxed and sold.

The brand has gone in a unique direction with its branding. When many competitors have taken the cold and sterile medical/clinical approach to branding, Hemp Juice uses warm colours, round shapes, and informal copywriting.

They take this approach as they know that their target audience doesn’t necessarily need the ‘medical’ image to be convinced of the product’s effectiveness. This is because Hemp Juice’s audience is more than likely already familiar with such a product.

Hemp Juice’s branding strategy complements its marketing when we take a look at its use of colour.

The company sells several types of oils in the same tincture bottles, yet each formula has a different strength and is designed to have a different effect on the user.

On retail store shelves, the array of colours pop and stand out, drawing in the potential customer’s eye – a great retail marketing tactic.

For their eCommerce store, it’s a quick and easy way for users to understand that ‘this colour has this effect’ – a great way to speed up the buying process.

Here we see how good branding complements both online and offline marketing.

Social media marketing and branding

Nearly 4 billion (yes, with a ‘B’) have access to and use social media. With consumers in the US and Europe now wanting to keep their money in local communities and move away from large corporations, the power of social media marketing has never had the potential it does today.

In other words, social media is a marketing channel that’s ripe for your business’ branding. 

However, you’ll only garner notoriety and brand recognition on social media if you create the right content, speak to the right people and present your brand with the right imagery.

This is a great moment to remind you, whether you’re a marketing manager, brand owner, or budding entrepreneur, that ‘branding’ consists of much more than a fancy logo and sleek colour palette.

Your branding is your word choice, the vocabulary used in your messaging, and it’s the tone you use when writing blog content. It’s the faces and body language of the presenters in your video content and all the greetings your customer service staff use.

Tailoring your ‘branding’ to the right marketing channel, whether a social media platform or not, is crucial.

LinkedIn, a social media channel more tuned for a B2B brand, is obviously a lot more professional than, for example, Instagram. This, therefore, dictates the way that you use your tone of voice to communicate a message. Similarly, a flash sale of 15% off probably won’t get much traction on LinkedIn. Instead, it’s a channel ripe for your brand to talk about challenges your industry faces, present your businesses’ values, and attract a different type of customer.

Mr Fothergills is a British retailer of seeds, bulbs, and other plant varieties.

They use Instagram, a very visual social media channel, to present the quality of their products and explain how to get the most out of their products and general gardening tips, and sharing the content of their other customers.

The tone of voice is consistent on all posts, as are the responses to any comments left. The content shows off the high quality of their products, and overall, it’s very appealing to look at as you scroll through your Instagram feed. The content is tailored to that medium, while the marketing presents the brand’s values.

Mr Fothergills’ LinkedIn tells a different story.

Here, they discuss content involving the export of goods to Europe post-Brexit. This is something that has an effect on the company’s B2B or enterprise clients. They still communicate with a friendly and open tone of voice, creating that consistent marketing message. Their values are still focused on a quality product, again showing that the company uses its branding effectively in their marketing efforts.

Fine-tuning your word use and the messages you push in all marketing channels, not just social media, is core to making your branding help your marketing.

Branding, your image, customer loyalty, and marketing

It’s much cheaper, easier, and faster to get a customer to buy from you again, rather than convince a customer to buy from you for the first time. This is where the power of customer loyalty really starts to make an impact on your bottom line.

Good branding and marketing, accompanied by a great product, naturally create and foster customer retention. As a result of the above, your brand’s name stays in the customer’s mind, and they’re more satisfied with your brand.

This retention rests heavily on the trust that your branding and marketing initially built between you and that customer. Consumers often remember how they first heard about your brand!

When marketing to reactivate past buyers, consider a different message to build that relationship. If your product competes on price and tries to be the lowest, add more value to the sale to increase average cart spend and live time value. You can do this in the form of buy one get one free or an extended warranty.

Remember, though; it’s hard to change your brand’s image at this point. Suppose your brand is seen as one of high quality and rugged durability. In that case, it’s going to be challenging to make a customer start to see you as affordable, accessible to everyone, and produced en masse.

The way that you promote incentives to reactivate past customers can also affect your image. If your brand prides itself on elegance, luxury, exclusivity, and opulence, a flash sale with 20% off everything will more than likely undermine that image.

Branding and marketing symbiosis

Every customer-facing channel of your business is prime for your branding and marketing efforts to spread your products, name, values, and morals. Making your branding complement your marketing efforts and vice versa isn’t particularly hard, but not many brands consider the symbiotic relationship between the two.

At the end of the day, your marketing efforts are never really done, and your branding can continuously evolve and change should your buyers’ sentiment also shift.

By Phil Forbes

Phil is a bearded Australian living and working in Poland. When he’s not taking Packhelp’s custom packaging to the world, he can be found trying not to kill his plants, pretending to be a stormtrooper, or hanging out with his dog.

Sourced from noupe

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A 5-Step Guide to Writing Content That Achieves Your Marketing Goals

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By Peter Roesler,

If you want to write content that makes an impact, start with these steps.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Peter Roesler,

Sourced from Inc.

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Quiet is the new loud: Why stealth marketing is trending

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Balmain, Gucci and Louis Vuitton are experimenting with low-key marketing strategies to engage with key opinion customers. Unexpected ad platforms are also coming into favour.

Louis Vuitton and Gucci quietly hosted pop-ups in lower-profile locations of Somerset and Brooklyn respectively, in the past 10 months. While traditionally, a new launch is followed with media interviews and influencer previews, both of these pop-ups were left to be discovered by their local communities. In turn, this prompted user-generated social media responses, says Todd Sachse, founder of Sachse Construction, who built the stores for both brands. For Gucci, it was part of its continual “test and learn” approach to engage with its community. Louis Vuitton declined to comment.

Similarly, Balmain halted print campaigns in fashion magazines including Vogue this year, in favour of spending some of its marketing budget on full-look styling. Clothes are presented on a model as directed by the brand for a fee instead of being chosen by the magazine’s stylist, sources close to the company told Vogue Business. It’s not the only luxury brand to have invested in full-look styling in recent years, industry professionals say.

As consumers seek out newness and authenticity and designers look to stand out from crowded advertising channels, luxury brands are using more subtle marketing tactics to get their message across. Low-key marketing strategies that are less interruptive and, ideally, more organic are being tested. No longer should a brand’s main focus be the key opinion leaders (KOLs) or influencers, instead it should be on connecting with the key opinion customer (KOCs) – highly engaged, everyday customers of a brand – experts say. For luxury companies it marks a continual shift away from a top-down approach of selling the luxury ideal, towards so-called “stealth marketing” where consumers are made aware of a brand without realising it.

Fashion week attendees holding magazines. Some brands have pulled ads in publications and are paying for styled...
Fashion week attendees holding magazines. Some brands have pulled ads in publications and are paying for styled editorial looks instead. Edward Berthelot/Getty Images

“We’re all getting a bit jaded and tired of the hard sell. Marketing that is in our faces is just not clever, so customers end up blocking it out,” says Nicole Armstrong, executive strategy director at R/GA, the ad agency for luxury brands including Givenchy, Nike and Moncler. “[Stealth marketing] is basically a relationship-building tactic that can also be shared and talked about. You do that by creating moments.”

Stealth marketing is making more of an impact because people are overloaded with paid media, adds Armstrong. Screen fatigue is also growing: 75 per cent of respondents surveyed in January 2021 by the OAAA and The Harris Poll said they were paying less attention to online ads. R/GA’s brands are prioritising building long-term relationships with their customers to incentivise them to shop over longer periods of time, as opposed to a specific moment.

Retention vs recruitment

Unlike flashy billboards and sponsored social media posts, the primary objective of stealth marketing isn’t recruitment but retention, a challenge for brands of all sizes as customer loyalty becomes a priority. Nike has gradually shied away from big-budget print and television ads over the past decade and is instead investing in smaller neighbourhood stores and events, and value-added services that lets it engage with more localised audiences. “There is a new desire from brands to get closer to local communities, and to make it feel like an authentic connection,” Armstrong says.

True loyalty is the end goal; the feeling is emotional and leads to customers believing they’re part of an exclusive group, Armstrong says. It’s why the key opinion consumers are becoming increasingly important in luxury, she explains. Not only do they appear more trustworthy and relatable than KOLs, they require less spending from brands.

KOCs, whose potential was first recognised in China and are in their infancy in terms of awareness among Western marketers, are long overdue in fashion, Institut Français de la Mode professor Benjamin Simmenauer believes. Many fashion influencers found fame because of their glamorous lifestyle or inspirational style, rather than through any “recognisable expertise,” he argues. This is unlike other industries such as photography, gaming or cars, where key opinion leaders tend to be experts in the subject. KOCs fill this gap, he says.

Unexpected platforms

Some brands are diversifying their media buy and are experimenting with advertising on unexpected platforms such as WeTransfer. Kering, parent company to Gucci, Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, as well as Stella McCartney have recently hosted ads on the file transfer service’s site. The spike in the platform’s revenue from luxury fashion clients began in 2018, when “brands were looking for alternative platforms [to advertise] in the digital space,” says WeTransfer’s chief advertising officer Natascha Chamuleau.

Over 70 per cent of WeTransfer’s users work in the creative industries, according to the company, which means being able to offer partners a gateway into a premium creative community, explains Chamuleau. Brand safety is another perk. “We offer full screen exclusivity where you’re not advertised alongside other content that could potentially damage your reputation,” she says. An ad space for a few days on Wetransfer ranges between five and six figures, according to the company. Kering and Stella McCartney declined to comment.

Stealth marketing is simply another tactic in a brand’s toolbox to engage and grow their communities, but how much a brand wants to invest in a quieter marketing approach depends on how much control they are willing to relinquish, explains R/GA’s Armstrong: “If you’re not in the ether and being talked about, you will naturally be forgotten, so there is a need to have some form of messaging shared. But as a brand, how much do you want to own that message?”

Not looking to be trying too hard is another key benefit of stealth marketing. “When an advertisement is too obvious, it’s not credible anymore and can be harmful to a brand’s image,” says Simmenauer. This isn’t to say lifestyle influencers and product placements are over, but shifting consumer preferences mean that brands will need more subtle strategies in the mix, he says. Luxury is no longer about exclusivity, but identity and belonging, and people take pleasure in the intimacy of consuming and interacting with a like-minded community, he adds.

Some brands may struggle, because the approach only engages with specific individuals who have like-minded interests, rather than multiple segments of a brand’s customer base. The key is to find the right balance between retention and recruitment marketing.

“The biggest benefit of stealth marketing is that there is often a high level of involvement, so consumers will walk away with an innate understanding of what a brand is about and what their universe entails.” She references a Confucious proverb: “Tell me and I’ll forget, show me and I might remember, but involve me and I will understand.” In that sense, stealth marketing can be incredibly powerful, she says.

Feature Image Credit: Edward Berthelot/Getty Images

By Kati Chitrakorn

Sourced from Vogue Business

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7 Marketing Tricks Every Business Should be Using

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By Sierra Powell

With the traditional way of passing news from one client to another, you get clients, yes? But not as many as it should be.

It is a challenge to achieve the number of clients you need for growth through word of mouth. For that reason, stronger, better, and more contemporary strategies are needed to attract new customers. Below we talk about 7 marketing tricks every business should be using in growing its market.

1. Having Incentives for Referral Clients

For a business to grow it needs clients, and for you as a business person to think of marketing it, it means you have an existing target audience. You can use your current clients to help in spreading the word and trust me with an added incentive in your sentences the word will spread even faster.

When we talk of incentives, I mean rewarding the existing customers with gifts or discounts to any referral that turns to a client.

2. Business Cards

Having business cards that can be handed over to any potential customer is essential. it is one of the pillars in marketing for any business. Through networking and the internet you can work better and faster, it does not discard business cards but it strengthens the need for the card. It is easier to get a bigger audience through the network. As much as it is in giving cards.

3. Networking

With the rise and growth of the internet, networking is becoming one of the most used and effective means of marketing. With social media accounts for your business, it becomes easier to communicate with your clients. You can take advantage of social media handles to advertise and promote your business. This can be done by posting regularly to remind your clients or even give updates on existing products, and services.

4. Marketing Through Emails

With being active on the internet; that is, promoting your website if you have one, and integrating social media accounts, it’s easy to get responses through emails. Email marketing campaigns give you the opportunity to stay in touch with your potential customers, leads, and customers.

It also helps in nurturing, as well as strengthening the relationship between you and your audience. The emails can be set to go out automatically probably once or twice a month. These emails may include;

  • An appreciation mail that thanks to new users who sign up
  • Emails that are auto-responders for unfinished or abandoned carts or follow-up emails based on viewed pages
  • This is very important, confirmation mails. This may include receipts, invoices, or purchase orders.

5. Advertising Campaigns using Banners, Flyers, or the Internet

For quick traffic to your business, this is by far the best trick to use. It is best for targeting new clients and should be done regularly to keep generating the traffic of new clients. Banners such as feather flags can be strategically placed in a location where the target audience can see. Just remember to make them attractive.

6. Offering Discounts, Give-away, and Even Trials

These can be listed on the homepage of your website or sent with the information emails sent out. The banners and flyers can be strategically placed where there is people traffic and can be seen easily be seen with the offers available.

However, in order not to run the risk of running your business down it is always wise to state that these are one-time offers for new clients.

7. Doing Follow-Ups

Marketing is a necessary measure for every business that is in operation, be it new or old, however, it is not enough to just do marketing and sit and wait for the results. The best strategy after any marketing campaign is to do a follow-up. For people who turned out as clients, or even the ones who responded to you in any way positive or negative follow-up is very vital.

With a follow-up, you get the chance to know what your clients want and probably make changes where necessary. This is of course on the negative responses.

Bottom-line is, marketing is essential to any business old or new. However, the methods and strategies used will determine the traffic generated to your business after the campaign. With the best being a repeat process occasionally to attract new clients.

By Sierra Powell

Sourced from Digital Doughnut

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How to Harness the Power of Thought-Leadership Marketing

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Positioning yourself as an expert is an effective way to level up your marketing strategy.

If you were to ask any seasoned thought leader who has an established track record, he or she will more than likely tell you that marketing is not easy. For the most part, it’s a gamble, as you never know exactly how your content will be received. It’s not a simple matter of filming a piece of content, plastering it with flashy jingles and edits and posting it on social media in hopes it will land with the majority and convert into sales. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it.

Marketing can be challenging because there are no clear-cut rules about what works best anymore. Thought-leadership marketing, however, remains one of the most effective methods personal brands can utilize to establish their authority and position themselves as experts in their fields — when done correctly. The marketing challenge is then to devise a scalable thought-leadership strategy to productize this knowledge, then monetize it with customers and prospects.

What is thought-leadership marketing?

Thought leadership is a complex, multifaceted position that requires a precise mix of both relating skills and marketing skills. A thought leader is well versed in expressing ideas and opinions that demonstrate expertise and authority, ultimately positioning himself or herself as a leader in his or her industry. Thought leaders have the ability to influence other people, especially in business, and have immense power in changing a single narrative — because their audience trusts them.

There have been many notable thought leaders throughout history such as Elon Musk, Martin Luther King Jr., Dalai Lama and Steve Jobs. Tony Robbins is a public figure who modernized thought leadership and made it popular among today’s entrepreneurs, many of whom run coaching programs, offer educational courses and teach others how to create a life of purpose, fulfilment and freedom.

Why is thought-leadership marketing essential?

In this digital age where competition is fierce, especially among those who are the face of their brands, if you want to improve sales effectiveness and differentiate your brand, a thought-leadership strategy is critical. People want to know, like and trust you before they want to buy from you.

Thought leadership also inspires authenticity, which buyers crave in the modern world where everything seems like a sales gimmick or ad. Thought-leadership marketing is essential because your audience will be paying more attention, take you more seriously, see more value in your offers, and ultimately, it will allow you to become a catalyst for growth.

How to effectively utilize thought-leadership marketing

Establishing your brand as a subject-matter expert gives you exposure and authority, and it shows where you are knowledgeable. My own media platform, Ohwabisabi, features the stories and messages of conscious thought leaders in long-form content format, most of which is written by those who wish to establish credibility as thought leaders through writing and sharing their own unique perspectives. With ever-changing narratives in any field, this is why I also choose to use a range of platforms to share and express my views and messages in areas I am passionate in — and it’s why I started Ohwabisabi this time a year ago.

Having your message or story shared on any kind of media platform establishes expertise because it is written by a third party, endorsing you and what you stand for. When you’ve been featured, you’ll gain your audience’s trust.

Create engaging content

As content continues to reign as king, clever leaders develop thought-leadership strategies to position themselves as valuable to their target audiences. This content can come from research papers, blog posts, books and ebooks, videos and webinars.

Some thought leaders write blog posts regularly that provide value to their readers. Some create visual content on social media around trending topics relevant to their industries. Video and webinars that answer the questions most important to your audience with credible information are also an essential part of thought-leadership marketing.

In basic marketing, we learn that “everyone” is not a target audience. If your messaging to your audience is too broad, your message won’t land effectively. So, rather than defining your audience as “everyone” and spending substantial time and money getting your content in front of “everyone,” focus on those who love what you do, who you are and what you have to say. They’re the ones who will become strong, loyal advocates for your brand.

Related: Connecting With Your Target Audience Through Video

Establishing your organization as an industry thought leader is about building trust, credibility and authority, boosting the public perception of your brand in a positive way. These days, consumers use digital and social media for a large majority of the purchasing process, so how you position yourself in the digital space remains crucial.

By

Founder at Ohwabisabi Media

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

 

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