Filed under Business Tips
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The world of communication has become noisier and more complex than it has ever been before. There are more media channels which our consumers are exposed to and there are more interactions with the brand and customers than there was 10 years ago. The competition has become fiercer where you need to be ahead of the game of your competitors in order to grab your customers’ attention. Capturing the hearts of your Target Audience is not magic – it’s an art! It’s all about communicating effectively in order to make your TV adverts, product offerings and marketing campaigns more memorable. It’s about engaging, persuading and convincing your audience is a sure way of winning them over.
Here are top ten tips that will create that “WOW” factor to your audience and captivate their hearts entirely.
1.Identify your target audience
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In the oversaturated communication environment of today, it is easy for promotional messages to get lost in the clutter. It’s quite tempting to create a generic advert however this would not appeal to your potential customers thus your marketing efforts would be wasted. You need to identify the sort of customers that you want to attract and make sure that the message speaks to them at a personal level.
Key Factors for Establishing your Target Audience:
• Know your product/ service thoroughly.
• Find out what the current issues that your audience are facing and how you can resolve them.
• Identify the sort of media that they consume at different times of the day so that you can place your messages in these media channels accordingly.
• Tailor make your profiling and targeting based on the feedback and analysis that you receive about your target audience.
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2. Housekeeping Rules
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A little bit of housekeeping for you before you even start thinking about how you will communicate to your audience.
a) Identify what your objectives are for the campaign. Whether its frequency or reach, you need set these objectives so that you can have an effective marketing campaign to ensure that you use the right media channels to convey your message.
b) Have a set budget to ensure that you plan your campaign accordingly and place your adverts and message in appropriate places so that you do not blow your whole budget on just one media channel after which you have no money for the rest of the campaign or any contingencies that may occur.
c) Carry out a competitor analysis to see what sort of media channels they are using and what type of campaign they are running. You can also see what has worked for them and what their weaknesses are. Once you have identified these, you can then create a marketing campaign so that it is just as effective if not better.
d) Identify what your strengths are and use these as Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in your key messages to your target audience. This way you will be sure that you have the competitive edge that will add value to the decision making process of your potential consumers when considering your company’s product offerings.
e) Be omnipresent - have an integrated marketing communications plan that will have a combination of different media channels both online and offline which you know your target audience will be using throughout the day and place you messages in these channels accordingly. This way, your message will stick in the mind of your target and will recall your brand and consider your product or service when they are making their purchasing decision.
3. Have a Catchy Slogan
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This is a great way of making a message stick in the minds of your target audience and challenging in the way you view the product being advertised. A catchy slogan is one of the most essential ways to create brand recognition. They are also useful as the can be easily integrated into short commercials and banner ads on the internet as well as Social Media.
An example of a successful catchy slogan was Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. At the time when this campaign was launched, Reebok was a big player in the Sports Apparel category where they had higher sales and a great market share. Nike’s aim was to increase their market share and be the choice of the people. They wanted the slogan to motivate people to be active and that they would look cool if they were seen wearing Nike sports apparel.
Nike also ensured that their brand incorporated smart, humorous and cool advertising alongside this slogan to make people act and feel cool even though they were not being active. All this advertising made their market share sky rocket from 18% to 43% in the 90’s while a boom in sales from $800 million a year in 1988 to upwards of $9.2 billion in 1998 (Source). Want to look like Nike? Just Do It!
4.Mischievous Mascot Marketing
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Mascot marketing is an effective way to capture the attention of your target audience as it creates a lasting impression among consumers. A mascot is a personified character that represents and promotes a brand, product or organisation. This is an effective approach to take as it encourages association with a brand and top of mind during the decision making process. A mascot is a great way to increase brand visibility quickly and boldly in a noisy media environment while helps in increasing sales.
For example, the meerkat, Aleksandr Orlov, the founder of Comparethemeerkat.com was a successful mascot for the online price comparison website Comparethemarket.com. Previously, this website was a low ranking one however after the introduction of Aleksandr, the website’s traffic grew by 80% while increasing its online presence in social media where he gained 50,000 followers on Twitter and 700,000 Facebook Fans. (Source)
5. Impactful Images which are Impressive
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Creative ad campaigns which make use of images create a sense of admiration and amazement to the people that a brand is trying to target. Spectacular ad campaigns stand out from the dull forms of adverts that we see every day on the internet, TV and outdoors. Creative images not only encourage memorable impressions of a brand but also inspire customers to share these ads with their peers thus increases reach and awareness of a brand. An advantage of having impactful images is that it encourages people to spread the message thus you don’t have to spend too much on a big campaign of you have a tight budget.
Images can also come as spectacular outdoor advertising such as the Imodium billboard campaign below:
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6. Enticing Incentives
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Everyone loves a good deal when making a purchase whether it’s a money off coupon, discount voucher, free gifts or other benefits offered as part of a loyalty scheme will encourage customer retention as well as win new business.
These incentives can be done through social media channels such as Facebook. For example, The Book Binding Workshop offered a free hardcover book to anyone who spent $300 of book binding supplies. This campaign was successful because they managed to increase their fans on Facebook for 50 to 650 in just a month furthermore saw an increase in sales of $15,000. (Source)
7. Viral Online Videos
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Online videos are one of the most captivating ways to make your brand memorable. Why? This is because they provide entertainment while conveying the message that you want to send out to your target audience. They can be cheap to create, humorous, free to transmit on online channels such as YouTube, they can be shared if effective and you can make them as informative as you want without boring the viewer.
To make them successful, make sure that your message is clear, let the customers how to use the product and where you can buy the product from. You can engage as many of the senses as possible in order to transmit the message.
The Dollar Shave Club’s Youtube video was one of the most successful online video campaigns in 2012. In its first four days of the launch, it drew more than 4,000,000 page views! This was a popular campaign as the CEO made the video on a very simple fact of creating a powerful sales pitch that made people laugh while at the same time made it memorable to the viewers. Not only did the brand manage to engage with its audience but also showed that they were affordable and at the same time raised their awareness that the product is indeed used by almost everyone.(Source)
8. Sassy Social Media
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Social Media is an essential way of engaging your customers and building a relationship with them. Social media is a great platform for reaching out to your customers where you can offer instant feedback, promote your products and services and at the same time monitor conversations about the brand’s industry, competitors and researching on the type of potential products a company can come up with. Some of the social media channels include Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Flickr, MySpace amongst others.
For example, Benitos Hat’s, a Mexican Restaurant in London, created a Twitter campaign ‘Tweets For Eats’ where the company asked offices in London’s Zone 1 throughout lunch times between 31st October and 2nd November 2011 to ‘Tweet for Eats’ that was sent to @benitoschat with their company name and the hashtag '#dayofthedead'. The more tweets a company made, the higher the chance they were to win a free feast for their workmates. In addition to this, anyone who saw and tweeted a picture of the Day of The Dead car received a discount on food in the store.
This Twitter campaign not only increased the restaurant’s sales by 25% but also gained a Twitter reach of 800,000 – enough to get @benitoschat on Twitter. The brand also managed to achieve 13 pieces of media coverage as well as mentions on national radio breakfast shows.
9. CSR will raise the profile of your company
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Here is a great opportunity for positioning your company in a positive way in your community. By doing something “good” often helps in increasing customer engagement; making it easier to build relationships with your customers. Some of the ways which you can do this is through sponsoring charity events, participating in activities created by the local community or changing you attitudes in a positive way towards issues that would affect the community.
For example Walmart is well known for its leadership in environmental issues. They established this title in 2008 when they ran an ad campaign that was aimed at raising awareness about the environment and decisions that consumers made when deciding on the type of products that they would buy. This enabled them to gain customers as well as retain customers thus building a big consumer database. (Source)
10. Outstanding Customer Services
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Providing excellent customer service will not only win you repeat customers but will also make you stand out from the rest of the competition. Satisfied customers will recommend your business to others thus winning new customers therefore increasing your customer database. Great customer services mean that you are proactive with how you deal with customer complaints as well as acknowledging and acting on customer feedback to make a difference to your company. This is one sure way that will “wow” your customers.
For example, Sainsbury’s, a grocery store in the UK, responded to the query sent by a little girl, “Why is tiger bread called tiger bread? It should be called giraffe bread.” The manager responded to this query and renamed the bread early in 2011. The girl was acknowledged with a gift card and a personal response from the Customer Services Manager himself saying “I think renaming tiger bread giraffe bread is a brilliant idea – it looks much more like the blotches on a giraffe than the stripes on a tiger, doesn’t it? It is called tiger bread because the first baker who made it a looong time ago thought it looked stripey like a tiger. Maybe they were a bit silly.” (Source) This story made the headlines and got people talking about the brand and its bread. This therefore proves that acting on customer feedback can help you “wow” your customers and encourage other customers to consider you when making their purchasing decisions.
There is a wide range of ways of engaging your customers. It all comes down to how effectively you can convey your message to your target audience. When a piece of communication is relevant to your brand, informative, captivating, emotionally connects with your target audience and has a call to action, you are certainly going to capture the hearts of your target audience that will certainly consider you when making their purchase decisions. Be adventurous to try something new and be creative – these are some of the ingredients that will help you create a marketing campaigns that will “WOW” your audience.