How Do I Add Value for My Customers Through My Marketing Channels?

You need to give your audience a reason to follow your marketing channels, they aren’t going to follow you because you have told them to. Purchase type depending, customers might need to know they are getting something in return before they purchase your product or service. Whether that be product research prior to purchase or to build up a relationship and brand loyalty with the customer.

After all, customers do most to all of their research online prior to their purchase. It is important to let your customers know that you are the fountain of all knowledge in your field, an expert about your product, service or industry inside and out where they can come to with any queries.

We have put together a few ideas below that we feel would help add value to your marketing channels and boost engagement for your business.

Know your audience – Consider your customers perspective, what problems they face and how you can help solve them through your product or service. Ensure you set your tone of voice to one that will suit your brand and get the best response from your audience, this may differ slightly for each platform. Ensuring you are on as many platforms as your audiences are on is key, different groups of your audiences will be on different platforms, this being said, it is important that you change your content and tone of voice slightly depending on platform to fit the different demographics. For example, Facebook is informal, interactive and friendly with frequent shorter posts, whereas LinkedIn is more formal and professional with longer, content rich, less frequent posts.

Valuable content – Give your audience a reason to want to follow you on social media and look at your website – they want to gain information and advice from you. (This can be anything from downloadable PDFs of guides, tips and advice about your industry, to a calendar of important dates and events not to be missed out on, or even infographics of important stats relevant to your industry.)

User Generated content – Future customers will trust the opinions of other consumers. So, ask your audience to share content (images, tweets, videos etc.) relevant to your business, leave their reviews and testimonials, share how they use your product or service. Also case studies showing a client’s problem before finding your business, solution (YOU!) and the results by using your product or service.

Engage with your audience – This can be done by using polls, questionnaires (when you ask users their opinion – it makes great market research too!). Question and answer sessions on social media can also be a very effective way of increasing brand awareness, authority and engagement. Create a #hashtag so everyone can follow and get involved, give their opinions as well as get their questions answered. This can be a great way of finding out what your audience wants and how you can develop your business plan and strategy to better fit your audience and in return gain higher customer satisfaction.

Be personable – Humanise your brand by sharing ‘behind the scenes’ information. For example,  products and services before, during and after they have been created. Share throwbacks showing how far your business has come – this can be anything from growth in employee numbers to old office buildings compared to new. Encouraging staff and team members to share news, quotes and an insight into the business – teasing what’s to come without revealing all – is a good way of keeping things personable and relatable, making you far more than a faceless corporation. Share internal news like new employees and employee of the month, explaining why they have been awarded this title. This keeps your audience familiar with your company on a personal level making it more relatable for them.

Create demonstrations – How to videos and images are great, share with your audience how you use your products or service. Think about any questions or issues your audience might face and answer these for them.

Be inspirational – Sharing humorous and inspiring images or quotes relating to your industry. If you motivate your audience and make them laugh, they are more likely going to engage with you and listen to what you have to say. This also helps to break up your more serious, promotional posts with a more light-hearted personal approach.

Stay current – Offering your brands opinion on recent news and current affairs is an interesting way of keeping up to date with social trends. Staying current may be sharing internal, company news or external, industry articles. Both give a sense of community and position your brand as a thought leader. Give your brands’s take on these issues, help give your audience opinions and thoughts on these news articles, allowing them to shape their open opinions. Staying on top of current trend also means sharing content from your influencers within the industry, engage in conversation and discussion. Tag these people in your images, if they find of value they might share to their followers, gaining you further engagement.

If you’d like more advice and support on organic social media management or social media advertising, contact us today, or click to find out more about our social media marketing services.