Marketing is an art of making a product or service interesting and attractive to your audience. It’s about conveying the real value of the product to your target audience & building meaningful connections. With so many channels available its become easier to get your brand or product in front of your audience. However, to get value from marketing we need to make a dramatic change in the way we manage our communication.
Old V/s New
The old way of brand communication was pretty straightforward and dialectic in nature. Marketers would build in consensus a strategy that was good enough for everyone. However today we live in a world that is more about acceptance of multiple truths. It’s a world where we believe ideas can co-exist in the same space and have its own benefits. It’s more dialogic in nature. This is the core essence or foundation of social media platforms. To provide a place for ideologies to co-exist. Today we can’t depend on a single strategy that will work for everyone. We have to know our segments and work our plans for each of these segments.
Where earlier it was all about overcoming competition to come on top today we think about ways to collaborate and cooperate with other brands. Simplicity has been replaced by complex & fragmented funnels that demand constant vigilance. The idea is to keep fracking and experimenting always looking for newer ways to connect with your audience. Complacency is unacceptable in the age of social marketing.
Today, our most valuable asset is attention. Social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram & Google have profited by allowing brands to harvest their audience’s attention. Today social media networks have become ad networks and one can hardly ignore the overwhelming amount of ads in your social feeds. Unfortunately, many digital marketers also have the misconception that their job is all about digital advertisement. Social Agencies consider themselves as advertisement agencies responsible for buying & managing digital ads. A brands success on these channels depends on how they manage to frack the opportunities on these platforms to get maximum value for their marketing dollars.
This unabashed approach to monetize the social channels by using a dialogic conversation medium for a dialectic purpose is going to hurt us in the long run. We have to be careful that we don’t collectively damage these platforms to maximize our short-term benefits? Brands that understand this and use these mediums with the right mindset are going to excel and grow.
It’s important to build meaningful connections with your audience
- A brand’s journey interconnects with its audience. The stronger these connections are the stronger is your brand value. We can’t fake this anymore so build meaningful connections and make them an integral part of your story.
- On Social media, people are interested in your purpose i.e. Your ‘Why’. People don’t buy a product anymore just because it can solve a problem they are interested in knowing why you have built the product, how was it made, its impact on things they care about & social proof of its value. Make sure you answer these questions or they will go to someone else who does.
- People love seeing the process, so take the effort to inform your audience what you are up to. It will be even better If you can engage them to be a part of your journey.
- Keep them posted – Research shows just letting people know how long they have to wait can make them more patient with you.
- We live in a complex world, so stop consolidating your strategy. Fragment as much as you can. Reach out to as any group of people that will value your product/brand. Remember there is no single awesome spaghetti sauce so stop trying to make one. Build custom funnels that fit the need of specific groups. It may seem like a lot of work but no one said this was going to be easy.
In the end, remember digital marketing is not all about digital advertisements. It’s more about meaningful communication & connections. Digital strategy is not measured by paid visibility but by the number of people who trust you, become your fans, spread your message willingly, promote your services, act as your brand ambassador and protect it. That kinda of value can never be bought it has to be earned.
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