The Personal Side of Marketing
[A Guest Blog Post for Ripl Customers] By: Sujain Thomas | Marketing Professional and Author
Marketing effectiveness depends on your brand engaging in continuous conversation with consumers. Ideally, conversations should to be candid, so that it conveys the intention of building personal relationships. Most social media platforms are built for engaging with consumers at a personal level and those 1:1 interactions build the critical trust that leads to better business performance. Additionally, by building a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., your brand receives exposure, engagement, and excitement among consumers.
Momentum of Trust
The beauty of social media marketing is the “snowball effect” that occurs as your marketing gathers momentum and exposes the brand to new audiences through sharing. And as word about your brand spreads so does it’s trustability, because consumers trust recommendations from their friends more than from a business. By developing personal relationships with consumers and building trust, you ensure stronger overall results from your marketing efforts.
Know Your Audience
To launch an effective social media marketing campaign, you need information about who you’re talking to. In order to address your audience in the right way you should have a good grasp on the consumer psyche, expectations, and behavior. This is possible after you collect and collate data about of your customers and then analyse it to look for commonalities and trends.
Try documenting the likes, comments, and shares that different Ripls receive. Track what day and what time you posted them and to which social media platforms. Over time, you’ll gain a better understanding of who your customers are and what they want to see from you.
Develop Your Brand
Although the goal is to develop a relationship between your business and your customers, the interaction that happens is actually between you and your customers. As the business owner, you give your brand a human face for customers to relate to, which helps your brand become more easily recognizable and relatable.
You can also develop a voice for your brand by choosing your writing style, vocabulary, and tone intentionally. There are many types of brand voices, but consider one that is friendly, approachable, and fits with the rest of your brand. For example, if you sell meditation seminars, your brand voice probably shouldn’t be aggressive and loud.
Ripl recently released Business Profile Settings which are a quick and simple way to establish both brand colors and fonts while creating Ripls. To learn more about this exciting new feature, read this blog post.
Be Accountable
Consumers only give their trust to a brand when they know that someone is accountable for it. They want the space and freedom to talk about the positive and negative aspects of your brand, and by providing that space and asking for their feedback, you communicate that you are accountable for the brand. By expressing your interest in addressing their opinions or concerns, you build consumer trust in the brand even more.
Respond Quickly
By encouraging personal conversations with your customers, you can address feedback and concerns quickly and properly. Many consumers (especially online) expect prompt responses to questions and doing so can create a favourable impression as it proves your commitment to dealing with issues and keeping customers happy. Furthermore, finding quick solutions demonstrates your authority in the subject matter and fosters even more trust in you and your brand.
Embracing one, two, or all five of these principals will help improve the trust that customers feel for you. Being accountable, consistent, available, and responsive can all go a long way to building a successful online presence and brand.
Sujain Thomas is a marketing professional and author who has worked with top-notch companies in establishing new brands. She relies on the customer database greatly for creating powerful branding and marketing campaigns. Social media marketing is a special attraction for her.
