“My posts get little engagement on social media. I have tried different platforms but I am just not getting enough output from digital marketing.” Digital marketing is not just posting items for sale on Facebook or Instagram, neither is it simply using trending hashtags on Twitter or hiring ‘influencers’ to promote your content to their audience. It requires a thoroughly thought out process and intentional efforts to ensure your online presence is the right message and that it reaches the right audience. After all, the goal is not only to market the business’ offerings but also to build a brand that is highly positioned among the 13 million active internet user’s minds in Kenya.
Design your Digital Marketing Campaign
A digital marketing campaign is an online marketing effort, designed to build brand awareness, increase engagements or audience size on various social media platforms and websites. These campaigns are designed with the company goals in mind. The success of the campaigns is then determined through critical analysis of customer engagement and conversion. To plan and develop successful campaigns, one ought to really understand the defined target audience. This helps with crafting more personalized messages and using motivations that your customers will relate to.
Different techniques can be employed to capture your audience’s attention. You could tell a story with emotional triggers; storytelling inspires emotional responses and can easily go viral. Sell ‘feeling’ rather than products. Think of NCBA — ‘The bank that says, Go for it’, Coca Cola — ‘Taste the feeling’, Safaricom — ‘Simple, Transparent, Honest’. Most entrepreneurs simply sell the product and ignore the fact that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.
Define your Target Audience
As buyers are too numerous with varied preferences, locations, needs and wants, companies cannot appeal to all of them using the same solution. A business ought to segment its markets so as to generate targeted messages for such groups. This eventually leads to more effective and productive digital marketing. Our past article; Marketing 102: The Marketing Process explains the concept further. Your digital marketing campaign is entirely dependent on your target audience.
Develop Content your Ideal Customer Enjoys
Content that your ideal customer will enjoy is one that resonates with them. For example if your business is using Facebook to connect with clients, you can create short marketing videos or draft interesting articles for your audience.
Use of pictures is highly recommended as photos are the most engaging type of content available. Often, the highest form of engagement arises from photo posts and as a business, you need to capitalize on that.
Additionally, responding to frequent questions from your customers that your customers improve your brand visibility online. This way you will be hitting two birds with one stone; customers feel like you hear them while you can also provide links to articles you have drafted on possible solutions.
It is important to experiment with different content in assessing what your client-base responds to most. The higher the customer engagement, the clearer the indication that the customers enjoy that kind of content. Work on creating content that is shareable, easy to navigate and understand.
Create Engaging Stories
Often times a lot of captions on Instagram posts include a Call to Action(CTA). These are sentence like: ‘Click the link in the bio to shop our new winter collection’. It is important to include a CTA as it offers an avenue for those interested to engage further with you and take the next step. Engaging stories will increase the chances of your audience taking up the CTA. Create these stories by keeping them short, sweet and simple. Post fun and spontaneous content on your stories. Including locations, texts, stickers and motions such as boomerangs make posts more appealing.
Understanding the customer journey
As a business, understanding the process a customer goes through before purchasing your product/service is crucial in your marketing process. Customers go through three stages: Awareness, consideration and conversion. When a customer is aware of your product, they become curious and may want more information. At consideration, they question their need for your product; is it something they want/need? Customers that reach conversion stage become prospects and buy the product.
A common misconception is that using social media platforms equates to digital marketing and because a platform is popular, communication is automatic. Businesses can overcome this bias and navigate the digital media scene smoothly with these four guidelines. This will allow their businesses to rip the rewards of embracing digital marketing.
