Ready to make rave results from your marketing team offensive? We hear you. Broadcast Marketing as we know can be wide reaching and dynamic but in this, the modern age of digital access, ignore the benefits of calculated social media strategy and prudent inbound marketing action at one’s peril. Anticipate the movements of your target audience, draw the business to you and turn on the marketing charms and you will find your productive work flow and cost effectiveness will increase exponentially. This is how to make inbound marketing work for you.
1) Deploying correct strategy development
Strategy, form a goal-driven and results-driven plan. Comprehensive thinking is vital to arrive at a powerful marketing strategy and execute it smoothly and successfully at a time when your resources could be limited or capped. Do not rush the initial strategy planning stage, a carefully balanced pattern of activity that is ‘self-learning’, able to check and modify itself as it progresses and grows, will ensure adaptability and competitiveness. For the purpose of plotting your course it is helpful to make clear distinction between the different levels of strategy; “Strategy as position- locating brands, products, or companies within the market based on the conceptual framework of consumers. Strategy as ploy- a specific approach intended to outwit a competitor and Strategy as perspective- executing strategy based on a proven business theory.”
Above all, choose your marketing voice wisely, authenticity and helpfulness are often a wise place to start. Unique character and personality that sells a lifestyle and harnesses a consumer’s positive feelings for your brand. It is said that People buy better versions of themselves, not the product itself. In this respect, you must also know your audience as different brand messages will mean quite different things between widely ranging demographics. Aim to strike up a powerful relationship with your selected audience.
2) Consolidating Your Market Position
The art of positioning performed correctly enables you the best shot at finding a definitive edge early on to differentiate you from the competition. Regular, mindful consolidation and emphasis of your market position is necessary as your strategic process builds momentum. What you must avoid at all costs is to mistakenly give out any messages or ‘mixed messages’ that are in fact contrary to your selected brand image and brand identity, once a brand acquires new personality trait it can be rather difficult or even impossible to reverse. The seen cannot be unseen. Thus your positioning is effectively “the place your brand occupies in the mind of your chosen target audience”. As market position stabilizes or strengthens be vigilant with studying the analytics of your prime website and social networks etc to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses and formulate an updated marketing action plan. Consistency of action and a long term outlook are key to your chances of success. Do not take your foot off the positioning pedal.
3) Expanding the use of social media
Indulge your followers at every opportunity. It is vital to enable your audience hassle-free sharing of all of your various inbound marketing content with their own follower and friend base. Tick all the boxes with the most popular social networks and even add a couple of the lesser-known options as you will be surprised how fast some of the ‘dark horse’ sites can gallop onto the scene and into the minds of the consumer. How does the saying go? “If you don’t ask you shall not receive”. Create a workable culture of feedback, review and comments etc, the more the merrier. Generally speaking, all press is good press. In the same way, that authenticity is a must-have characteristic, helpfulness is a must-have weapon in every marketer’s arsenal. Sincerely caring for and listening to your consumer base is paramount to your forward progression etc. Word of mouth is extremely powerful though famously hard to measure. Identify your customers’ likes and dislikes and react accordingly. Be available to your clientele in every way possible while educating them with an informative and entertaining voice.
4) Driving inspired content
And what about how to make inbound marketing work in terms of inspiring content? Inspired Content Marketing can be as simple as finding that middle ground between talking to the consumer in their own language and continually sourcing fundamentally interesting stories that strike a chord, entertain, educate and inform in equal measure. With your content calendar embrace every storytelling opportunity as a chance to shine. Not only does the material people find in their digital travels impact greatly on their purchasing decisions, proven research indicates that winning content builds valuable trust.
When it comes to driving great content you can never do too much research. Content is central to the well-structured social media plan. To attract meaningful traffic, comments, and positive feedback you must first place the lure. Every item of content is a Google search result waiting to happen. By optimizing all your content for your strategically selected target keywords you can significantly build traffic, generate leads and create knock-on effect critical to your revenue stream. Like the authenticity and helpfulness models, the best brand of content contains not only information and humour but also meaning. Consumers respond fast and with real spending power to a brand that demonstrates a true sense of purpose behind it. A popular saying that resonates within the industry is that “Content is not only King but the entire Royal Family.” Once your content has been posted be sure to monitor any traffic and or comments, engage and indulge your followers dutifully to build firm relationships.
5) Playing the entertainer
When considering the fifth point of how to make inbound marketing work Make a point to search for and locate the pleasure centre of your target audience. Delight them on a regular basis with tasteful, intelligent, good old fashioned (and new-fashioned) entertainment! Recite fundamentally interesting stories, even post song lyrics, whatever it takes to make your consumers dance on the inside. Connect, connect, connect!
6) Understanding crisis management
An area where many marketers fall down is being unprepared for crisis. Have your damage control hat ready to wear at a moment’s notice, some useful tips are to listen for signs of unrest with product or consumer, identify key influencers as early as possible so they can fly the flag for your brand during testing times, handle any misinformation quickly, quietly and smoothly, positive consumer feedback and reviews can go a long way to help in this instance, monitor your Google analytics results around the clock and take the necessary steps to solve any issues however big or small. Reputation management for any brand is a 24/7 project, the greater your online reach the more prepared for unexpected turbulence and challenges etc.
7) Addressing the community at large
Take steps to reach out to the online community. Be creative in your thinking and expansive in your efforts to reach the widest possible audience. Figuring out what makes your audience ‘tick’ is the million-dollar question but don’t be afraid to chase the carrot on a daily basis. The harder you push the more ground you will cover, the larger slice of the community you could convert into the next lead.
Whatever your brand displays, a personality, a unique selling point that demonstrates authenticity, helpfulness and meaning, you must now also discover and distribute, relevance. Relevance is the glue that holds all other components together. Now that you have a rough idea of how to make inbound marketing work you, your brand, product or service should be well on its way to becoming magnificent!
