Thanks to all who attended our first webinar of the year – Marketing Channels 101
Welcome to our 2015 blog and webinar series: Back 2 Basics. Every day there is more and more clutter out in the world and it is very easy to get distracted and lose focus, so we are having a back to basics conversation about how to connect with your audience.
Just in case you weren’t able to join us for our first webinar we have the short video as well as a short run-down for you to reference anytime you need it.
Know Thy Customer.
Truly knowing who you’re targeting is where your approach to all marketing channels should start. Knowing where your customer is and what connects with them is a critical factor in determining how you’re going to reach them. If you didn’t catch our full blog post on this, you can still catch up on the importance of demographics and psychographics of your ideal customer.
Marketing Channels.
The days of Yellow Pages driving traffic to your business are gone. Not even ten years ago, all you needed was a trifold brochure and Yellow Pages ad and you were in business. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that simple, but looking back, it seems like it was. Today we have information overload. There is messaging everywhere you look so you have to figure out where your customers are. You can put your brand anywhere from the grocery store cart to the Facebook to Pandora to a race car, but how do you connect and cut through the clutter? If you know who your customer is and what they do, then you put your message where they are and when it is convenient for them. This can be anything from email, social media, print advertisements, and radio all represent really strong marketing channels to reach audiences. The key focus is knowing which channel is the right channel for your business and target audience. We always encourage you to refine and perfect reaching your target audience via one channel before thinking about adding another.
It is important to remember the rule of seven still applies: on average, a person must come in contact with your brand seven different times before they connect with you. We call this Brand Recognition. Because seven can seem like a lofty number to achieve and can get expensive, we recommend sticking to the channel that most directly and efficiently reaches your target audience to ensure that they are seeing your brand regularly.
Call to Action.
To ensure you have the impact you want, think about your call to action before you tweet, post, mail, etc. Create quality opportunities for engagement that add value for your customer. This can be as simple as “Sign up here”, “Buy our Book”, “Call for Service”, and other statements that require an action on the customers part, but make sure it is for your customer to follow through.
Track, Measure & Refine.
All the planning in the world has very little value if you can’t track the impact of your efforts. Know what you are doing is making an impact on both your customers and your business. With that in mind, invest wisely.
We hope this gave you a good insight into Marketing Channels and how to approach using them to reach your target audience. Do you have any questions? Contact us!
Rock Paper Scissors
