Cause, the reason for doing something. We do everything for a cause like we study so that we could earn money. We earn money so that we could live a happy and prosperous life. We love someone so that we don’t feel alone. I would say in everything we do there’s a hidden cause.
Using the cause in marketing is called cause marketing. Well, I don’t think it should be enough for you to understand what the cause marketing is. So, let’s elaborate furthermore!
What is Cause Marketing?
Well, let me take you back to 1983 when the term “cause marketing” was coined. In 1983 American Express launched a marketing program, they mentioned that on each use of their credit card use a penny will go to the Statue of Liberty Renovation Program, and 1 dollar for each newly issued card.
By using these tactics they saw a 28% increase in card use, and it also helped the project come to reality. That was the same year American Express coined the phrase “cause-related marketing” or “cause marketing”. Since then many big brands have started using cause marketing.
As you’ve seen what American Express did and what happened after using this tactic. There were two effects first it increased the use of cards means sales, and second, it also helped in completing a social project, the renovation of the Statue of Liberty. So, both the company as well as society got benefitted from this.
I hope you know understand what cause marketing is, it is a collaboration between a for-profit company and a non-profit organization for the benefit of both by incorporating a social cause along with the products or services.
Why should we develop a cause marketing strategy?
Well, do you remember who the popular sibling in your family is, the monitor in the class or the leader in the project of the company? What are the qualities that differ from that person?
Hmm…You also must be thinking, keep your horses down, and let me make it clear to you, there are many qualities that a person should possess, and one of them is responsibility. And don’t let me tell you, who hates responsibility? We, being human are attracted to the entities that show and take responsibility, so as with the brands.
Users also expect that the brands they are using should be socially responsible. That’s where the cause marketing takes place.
Some research was performed and it came to know that
80 % of the users believe that brands should address and work on social or environmental issues.
46% of the users pay close attention to the action of the brands.
70% of the users want to know how brands are supporting social or environmental issues.
91% of the users want to switch to a brand that is supporting a social or environmental cause at the same price and quality.
92% said that they would buy a product from the brand that is supporting a social or environmental issue
67% of the people say that they have bought products from a brand that is supporting a social or environmental issue in the past 1 year.
Now, that you have seen the statistics & how people are fascinated with this marketing strategy, you can yourself see how much beneficial it can be for your brands. Have your mind also started to cook a cause-related marketing campaign for your business.
Cause-related marketing will not only boost the brand’s corporate social responsibility but helps in getting more sales for the brand and creating more awareness for the non-profit organization along with ethical contributions(donations). It’s a win-win strategy for both for-profit businesses and non-profit organizations.
Corporate social responsibility is the sum of all the actions a company takes to satisfy social needs. Definitely, it requires investment and yields measurable outcomes. While on the other hand, cause-related marketing is a communication tool for that brands to increase customer loyalty and brand reputation along with fulfilling corporate social responsibility (CSR).
Cause-related marketing isn’t just an opportunity to make the world a better place for future generations but it serves genuine business goals also.
What type of Brands should develop a Cause Related Marketing Strategy?
Having a cause along with your business makes your brand more lively, vibrant and meaningful.
Well, any kind of brand can develop a cause-related marketing strategy, and it’s the best way to show the world that they’re not just taking from society but also giving back by playing a role in helping social or environmental causes.
If you want to make a statement in the world then it’s the path you can walk on. It’s beyond selling just only products and services. You can always leverage this marketing strategy. Whether you’re a service-based business or a brick-and-mortar store, you can always follow a cause-related marketing strategy.
If you are a service-based company then by donating a portion of your profits, you can help social causes with money. If you are a brick-and-mortar business or product-based company then you can adopt a one-for-one strategy by donating one product for each sale to the people who need the product but can’t afford to buy. You can also donate a part of your profits by selling the products.
Along with helping the money, products, and time, we also help organizations bring awareness to social causes. The helps in getting people aware of environmental, social, educational, and health-related issues that should be dealt with. So, people also start playing their roles working with the organization for the betterment of human society and the world.
With the help of cause marketing, you just don’t sell your products and services but make a real difference in the world.
So, you can see whether it is product-based or service-based, there’s always room for you to implement a Cause Marketing strategy in your marketing strategies.
How to build a successful cause marketing campaign for your business?
You’ll find plenty of blogs, and videos all over the internet about this, but we’re providing here a step-by-step and simple approach to achieve what we all yearn for:
Choose something your company stands for and you believe in:
It’s a must to determine your corporation’s mission, vision and values. They’re the most important factor and milestone of your brand. Determine what your company stand for and what you believe in. If you believe in something, then the employees of your corporation will believe in that Cause. If the staff of your company buys it then they’ll work hard for helping society. The collective energy of all will reflect in the work and you’ll see this reflected in the growth of your business.
Identify Your Related Cause
You must know that relevancy matters the most. If the cause your brand is supporting is relevant to what your company stands for then it’ll be easier for you to scale. There are many examples of companies who got successful with the help of cause marketing assisting uncommon causes. But it doesn’t seem genuine, it looks like only a strategy for selling the product, but cause marketing isn’t just about selling the products. It is increasing sales while working for the betterment of society.
If the cause your business is addressing is relevant to your brand then it’ll look genuine. We know our audience and we’ll build a cause marketing campaign around the values of our target audience. It’ll not only help in spreading awareness but also help in increasing Loyalty to the Brand because it’ll be something that people value.
Determine what you want to contribute: Not just money
You need to determine what you want to contribute to society through the Cause Marketing Campaign: money, time, product, or services.
One thing I would suggest is not to contribute only money. Donating money isn’t the only way you can help with societal or environmental issues.
We’ve already discussed that people want to see the company’s responsibility toward social causes, and donating money isn’t the right way to show the responsibility. It was found in a survey that 64% of the users think that donating money alone isn’t enough.
Integrate social welfare directly into your business working on social causes along with non-profit organizations. It will establish a company as a socially responsible brand.
Determine how you want to contribute & set your goal
It’s your decision how you want to contribute to society, but always remember it’s not all about donating money, but spreading awareness too. Set up a goal, it is the key to achieving your goals. You can also choose your way of contribution from the following:
Marketing Services for the Organization
Donations for the products
Donating equipment
Making volunteer groups from the company
Collaborate and co-promote with a Non-profit
Collaborate with a non-profit organization having somewhat similar values your company stands for, and co-promote each other. You can use the following methods of promoting each other:
Announcing affiliation on social media, newsletter, website, and newspapers
Sending Joint press releases to the news outlets
Tagging each other on social media platforms
Having each other’s logos in the marketing material
Telling about the experiences on different platforms
Get involved with your audience
Involving your audience is an excellent idea for spreading awareness while building brand loyalty along with brand advocates. When you involve your audience it’ll make them feel responsible also for what you believe. Once they start feeling responsible they’ll start promoting and advocating your products, services, and brand.
Focus on Social and Earned Media & Keep Call to Action Clear and Easy to Follow
This is the last step you should implement in 7 step framework of building a cause marketing campaign. We all know that people engage on social media so much, and they spend quite a long time on these platforms. You can post all about everything from announcing your involvement with the non-profit organization to achieving the goal you become a partner.
With the earned media you can mention each other in the advertising copies, videos, and creatives. It’s the best way you can do it in earned media. Earned media or paid promotions are the best way in reaching to millions of people in no time. Go for it and use it wisely as you need to spend money on paid promotions.
You should not confuse your audience by giving different calls to action, keep a single call to action in one type of marketing material and easy to follow.
Establishes Your Brand Socially Responsible with fulfilling the demand for Corporate Social Responsibility
Improves Corporate Image
Increases Brand Loyalty and Create Brand Advocate
Boost Staff’s Will and Morale
Building Trustworthy Relationships with the Businesses and Audience (Community)
Standing Your Business Out from the Competition
We’ve discussed the benefits of having cause marketing a place in your marketing tactics, now let’s discuss some examples of the company having Cause Marketing in their Marketing Eco-system.
Examples of Cause Marketing of Indian Companies
We’re going to brief some famous Indian companies who’re using Cause Marketing for promoting their products and services. Some of them are the following:
Nihar Naturals’ “Small Steps towards Progress” Campaign: – I think every Indian has seen this campaign on television. It was launched in 2012 by Nihar Naturals in association with Child Rights and You (CRY) foundation working on child rights for over 3 decades. In this, it was committed to donate 2% of all sale proceeds from “Nihar Shanti Amla” to CRY. Marico the owner of Nihar Naturals launched this campaign having Vidhya Balan as brand ambassador. Vidhya Balan is an Indian film actor, and this campaign was run as a television commercial featuring her. Nihar Shanti Amla has changed the lives of more than 3 lakh children with its program “Chhote Kadam Pragati Ki Aur.”
Mahindra’s #SeedTheRise Campaign: – It is a digitally driven crowdfunding campaign run by Mahindra and Mahindra to improve the lives of the farmers of India. This initiative was co-powered by a digital agency named Flying Cursor Interactive. In this initiative total risen donation was 1 crore which was matched by Mahindra with another 1 crore. These 2 crores were donated for the welfare of the farmer of India.
Clinic Plus’ “M for Mother, Mother for Strength” Campaign: – Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) launched this television commercial on the occasion of Mother’s Day. Clinic Plus is a shampoo and this campaign was launched under the title ‘M se Maa, Maa se Ma Mazbooti’ (‘M for Mother, Mother for Strength). It was launched to support the girls of India in Education. It is basically focused on reducing girl dropouts from schools. This tells a story of a mother playing the important role in a girl’s life by helping her in pursuing her education every time when the family thinks of the dropout. If you’re an Indian you also must’ve seen this commercial on television.
Lenovo and Yuwa’s #PitchToHer Campaign: – I was run by Lenovo in association with Yuwa, a non-profit organization that teaches girls to play football for the betterment of their lives. In this social campaign, the brightest minds were invited to pitch smart ideas to impact the life of the girls from the organization through technology. The winning heart ideas were provided with a month-long sponsored internship.
Nivea India’s “Mom’s Touch” Campaign: – It was a cause marketing campaign run by Nivea India for the better of the children from marginalized communities by providing them quality education. It was run by Nivea and partnered with Aseema Charitable Trust which also brought forth stories of extraordinary mothers.
You’ve seen that in this world of competition, somewhat every company in every industry is using cause marketing to promote their products incorporating Storytelling in their Marketing Materials.
Again take a deep breath, I know it’s been a lot but sit tight for some time more and read carefully because half knowledge is always dangerous. It’s time to get acquainted with some tips in Cause Marketing.
Tips for Cause Marketing
Well, tips are the ways of remembering everything we learn so far. Without wasting time, let’s see, what tips you should keep in mind while performing Cause Marketing for Your Business:
Choose a related cause to support and you feel passionate about
Give More than Just Money, It can be time, services, and anything that keeps you integrated directly with the cause
Create a Strong Advertising Campaign
Set Up a Goal and Keep Your Launching Timing perfect According to The Audience
Have a single and clear CTA
Until now you must have started dreaming about your own cause marketing campaign. Well, that’s good everything that comes in reality first comes to mind. Thoughts are responsible for every creation we see.
Let’s conclude it in some words
Conclusion
I would say this can be the best marketing strategy if you do it the right way. Don’t perform this if you just want to sell your products, believe in the cause you’re associating with, and the cause should also reflect in your brand. Follow the strategy told in this article and boom, you’ll definitely get what you deserve. For performing this strategy you need to be aligned with the cause. Follow the 7-step framework, and keep in mind the tips, you’ll definitely reach where you want to.
You shouldn’t have any questions, as we’ve tried to cover everything for you. But if you still have Team DigiAvtar is here for you. You can place your queries related to this article in the comment section blog. If you want to read a similar blog on marketing then visit our blog.
We’ve heard these marketing terms b2b, b2c, blah, blah, blah…
Do you know what these terms mean? When one company is selling their products then someone or another company is buying them. On the basis of the type of the customer, we differentiate them whether they are performing b2b operations or b2c.
What is the meaning of b2b marketing?
Let’s understand first what b2b means! Well, the word is self-explanatory, it means business-to-business marketing (b2b).
In simple words, when a company is aiming to sell their products to a group of people or businesses rather than an individual buyer, then it’s called b2b marketing.
This whole sales process is called a b2b sales process in which all the steps, phases, and series of events are included that occur when a business is selling its services or products to another business. It is a way of generating demands for products and services from other companies.
B2B marketing strategy doesn’t bind itself to some particular types of strategies but any strategy can be a b2b marketing strategy if it is being used to promote and sell products or services to other businesses.
B2B and B2C marketing can intersect in a lot of ways, you need to define yourself what is according to you b2b or what is b2c, as they’re not any strict definitions of these marketing strategies.
One person can represent both b2b or b2c depending on the purchase, for what and why they are making it. E.g. some masters of marketing say that freelancers and solopreneurs are technically a b2c audience, do you agree?
Well, they can be both! How? Let’s make it clear with another example.
Freelancers and solopreneurs also need to take a strong decision on how to spend their resources and where. At this position they work as a business, so they should be targeting through b2b marketing strategies.
But, on the other hand when they’re making a purchase for their personal use, services or products on which their career or income sources isn’t dependent then they should be targeted under b2c marketing strategies.
I hope you all have got it crystal clear!!!
So, you must be thinking to perform it as soon as possible and getting the most out of this marketing strategy for your business, let’s wait until we’re coming to the topic.
Types of Strategies of B2B Marketing
There’re plenty of strategies being used in B2B Marketing. We’re including here the top most and easily implementable strategies.
Website and SEO
These are the two things you should be always focusing on, no marketing campaign can be said successful if you’re not focussing on these two things.
Every B2B company should have a fully responsive mobile-friendly website. The sales process of a B2B customers is longer than that of B2C customers, they just don’t buy anything being impulsive.
Before purchasing from other businesses, they perform a lot of market research and I would say that a website is the most effective way to showcase the benefits of your products and services, and spread awareness.
Follow the CATT Marketing funnel, it’s an easy and effective marketing funnel to make the best use of the marketing strategies. In which c represents Content, and attention, trust, transaction respectively for ATT.
First, develop your content, the content should be educational and informational to educate your customers, it’ll help in getting attention. As much they’ll consume the content and engage with the brand, their trust in the company will get stronger and the transactions will occur effortlessly.
In the same way, good website design will help your user in remembering your brand name easily because it’ll provide them outstanding user experience with an awesome user interface.
We at DigiAvtar also specialise in providing the best website designing & development services for our customers as this is a big part of every marketing campaign.
What if you have a fully responsive mobile-friendly website and none is able to find your website on the internet? Don’t worry search engine optimisation is a solution for this, so once your website is ready focus on performing SEO tactics that include, on-page optimisation, off-page optimisation, and technical optimisation. If you’re using WordPress then there’re so many plugins that can be helpful for you in easily adding the alt text to images, optimising site speed and much more.
Search Engine Optimisation is the way of getting organic and targeted traffic if you’re focusing on the right keywords as well as on the search intent of the users.
Now, let’s move ahead to the next strategy of B2B Marketing which is
Content Marketing
Well, content is worshipped everywhere, without content no marketing campaigns can run. But why is it an important part of B2B Marketing strategies?
As we’ve aforementioned that B2B don’t purchase anything being impulsive, so before making a decision they prefer to get the information about the products and services of a particular company.
To get the information they prefer long-form articles rather than an advertisement. So, B2B marketing companies should focus more on creating content rather than spending so much on advertising. Advertising is always a part, but in b2b it should be minimal, as advertising is impulsive in nature and b2b marketing isn’t.
Your long-form article should include valuable information to help in the success and growth of the businesses. If you’re providing value, they’ll always have time to look back at it.
Email marketing helps in getting engaged with your audience without disturbing them with the overwhelming ads. It is the best way to deliver the content you developed in the previous section directly to the inbox of your consumers.
As we all know that email marketing is the work of the person who has patience, and it takes time to show results so as with b2b marketing, the client in b2b marketing also takes time before making the decision to purchase.
So, craft your emails and segment them according to the businesses’ needs, and analyse the results. Colds are also effective in these cases as they’re also targeted according to the need of the client.
It’ll be easier for you if you include drip marketing email sequence and marketing automation in your email marketing campaigns. It’ll decrease your cost and save time. Email marketing automation will also help you in nurturing the leads faster than sending out targeted emails.
PPC Campaigns
You must be wondering I’ve aforementioned that in b2b marketing advertising doesn’t impart so much. Well, I’m still with those words, but still, you can get so much with the advertising. How, let’s discuss!
Don’t directly try to sell your products or services to businesses through PPC campaigns as it’ll show urgency that’s the form of impulsiveness and businesses wouldn’t take any action.
So, rather than directing the targeted consumers to the sales page, direct them to the blogs, or pages that can help in building their trust in your brand and products.
Don’t show them what they can buy from you but show them why they should buy from you.
Social Media
As we’ve discussed a little bit about the CATT marketing funnel, in which A represents attention and you can get attention only if people know about you. Social media can be the best tool for you to build brand awareness.
Social media is a tool which not only works as an awareness tool but also works as an engagement tool. It’s the easiest way to showcase your expertise in a particular field and establish yourself as a brand in the market. But only presenting on social media will not help you, you’ll need to be active on social media and engage with your users.
In the terms of B2B Marketing, you may gather leads with the help of social media but you need to nurture them with the help of other ways and platforms.
Over the past few years, organic reach in social media is decreasing because of user saturation and content shock. So, we always should have a budget for paid advertising on social media.
Include Reviews, Testimonial, Case Studies and Success Stories
I hope you’ve understood until now how important reviews, testimonials, case studies and success stories are. The success of b2b marketing depends on trust, and to build trust we need to show them the stories of the businesses who’ve got successful with the help of our business’s services or products.
The easiest way to show the stories are reviews, testimonials, case studies and success stories, so make these part of your marketing campaigns.
There’re many ways to get reviews and testimonials like Google My Business, Trust Pilot etc. It’s better to take reviews on platforms like these because it’s easy to manage the reviews in a single place. You can also check out the reviews of the clients on Google My Business of DigiAvtar.
On the other hand, you can publish success stories and case studies on your blogs’ Social Media channels or on YouTube. As we all know storytelling is the way through which our mind can remember everything.
So making the stories and case studies part of our b2b marketing campaigns can help in strengthening trust, and giving closer to a purchase decision.
All these things help in organic ranking and outranking the competitors in Ads Click Rates.
Well, we’ve discussed so many strategies to perform b2b marketing campaigns and make them successful by implementing small steps.
Now, let’s know what the tips are that should be remembered in b2b marketing.
Tips in b2b marketing
Research about pain points of potential customers
Researching about the customers is the best way to get ahead of the market before starting, so research a little bit about your potential customers. Know their needs, desires, and pain points. Build a customer persona on the basis of these factors. Provide the solutions to their problems with the help of your products and services.
Use Storytelling: Tell a Story
Our minds can comprehend easily a story. So, always incorporate storytelling in your marketing strategies and campaigns wherever it is possible. The story can be either product, brand, service, or customer story.
Incorporate Multimedia Content
Don’t be dependent on just text, include multimedia content in your marketing strategies and campaigns. Our eyes are more attentive to the movable content. So, it’s better if you’ve included animation in your content with the help of videos, gifs, visuals etc.
Be in Context
As we all know, content is king. But are you agree that content is a king without context? No, without context content can’t do anything, it’s just a piece of some sentences.
So, always be in context, keeping your brand voice consistent all over the marketing materials. It’s easy to imagine and comprehend the meaning of the content in context.
Use Marketing Automation
Marketing automation saves a lot of effort and time. Incorporating it will help to be available 24/7 to all of your users, it’ll feel valued when they’ll get answers on time. We can use marketing automation somewhat in every segment of our campaigns from engaging with the audience to getting leads and nurturing them to transactions.
Use Influencer Marketing
Influence marketing can be most effective in the b2b marketing strategies. As marketing is all about trust and people trust most on the public figures. So, to make influencer marketing cost-effective contact local influencers so that you’ll be able to target local audiences in a cost-effective way.
Clear CTAs in the content
If you’re not mentioning a clear call to action in your marketing content then you’re confusing your audience and moving them away from your business. If we get confused about something we just want to leave it if we can. So, if you’re providing two or more calls to action in a particular marketing material you’re moving away from your clients by confusing them.
Always keep a single call to action on what you want to make your users do with the particular content so that the chances of clicking on the CTAs will be higher.
Track Campaigns and Use Reports
It’s better to track and use reports for the improvements. As we can’t deliver a perfect product to our users, so we always need to keep improving our products and services. It’s an ever-running process, not a one-time task and you’ll be able to improve only if you’re keeping track of what you’re doing.
Well, we’ve seen a lot of strategies and tips for b2b marketing, now it’s time to reap the benefits. Let’s see what types of benefits you’ll get by implementing these strategies.
Benefits of b2b Marketing
Like any other marketing strategy, this marketing strategy also has so many benefits, here we’re pointing out some of the most valuable benefits of b2b marketing in today’s technological world.
Improved Brand Awareness
Identifying New Markets
Scalability
Improved Efficiency and Productivity
Large Scale Ordering
Increased Sales
Increased Customer Life Time Value
Makes Marketing Accountable
Improved Return on Investment(ROI)
Launching of b2b Marketing Campaigns
Use the following steps and launch your b2b marketing campaigns with the help of these steps with no difficulty.
Well, launching the marketing campaigns takes somewhat similar steps to every marketing strategy. I hope we’ve covered every important aspect of b2b marketing in this post, so let’s conclude this article here.
Conclusion
B2B marketing is best for targeting businesses and the entities that have to take the decision like some big companies. It’s easy to scale in b2b marketing. We connect different types of businesses that open doors to new markets for our businesses. And we can implement b2b marketing strategies with some simple steps.
One thing that needs to always remember is that whether it’s a b2b marketing strategy or a b2c marketing strategy always focus on benefits rather than features. Communicate with your audience by talking about the benefits of your products and services, not about the features. When someone talks about features it seems that they’re boasting and that’s not liked by anyone.
So always describe the benefits of your product, it’ll be easier for you to perform any type of marketing tactics.
If you still have any questions related to b2b marketing, you can ask in the comment section, and for more similar blogs visit our blog.
Hello there, I hope you’re here to learn about Omnichannel Marketing, and how can you make the best use of your own business.
Let’s see some flashbacks first before starting out with Omnichannel Marketing. Let me take you back to 2010 somewhat 12 years from now. You’ll agree that at that time social media channels were not as evolved as now. Now, every social media channel provides you with tons of features for promoting your business in this digital world and establishing yourself as a brand.
It was the same with online shopping websites. There were only some selected online stores from where you could buy your products, consumers were limited to either these selected eCommerce websites or brick-and-mortar stores. The competition wasn’t so much high and so the world wasn’t so much technology-driven.
But in the present scenario, there’re hundreds of social media channels, and thousands of online shopping websites, and everyone is trying to prove themselves better than any others in the market.
So, because of all these platforms, most brands are having multiple avenues from which people can buy their products and services. That’s why you also need to leverage all of these multiple avenues to market your products and services in this technology-driven world.
Your consumers should be able to buy from you on any platform they’re using, whether it’s social media that’s having a shop option or your website, any other online store where your products and services are being displayed, or from your brick-and-mortar store.
You can make this possible only in one way, and that’s by making the best use of Omnichannel marketing.
Let’s learn first what is the meaning of Omnichannel?
What is Omnichannel?
Omnichannel means, all the ways and channels possible, sometimes spells as Omni-channel. Omnichannel is a cross-channel content strategy. It is used for lead nurturing by improving the customer experience and driving better relationships across all possible channels and touchpoints. In this approach, a brand gives access to all of its products, offers, and services to customers on all the channels, platforms, and devices.
What is the Omnichannel Experience?
As we all know that with the help of omnichannel marketing Brands promote their products and services in all the ways possible and in all places. But, they do this to provide the omnichannel experience.
Providing an omnichannel experience is an effort to provide an integrated and cohesive customer experience to every user no matter on which platform the user is reaching out to us. So keeping the seamless and consistent experience on each platform is called Omnichannel experience.
We’ve known what the Omnichannel experience is!
Let me ask you one important question. Do you think Multichannel Marketing and Omnichannel Marketing are single entities?
Well, they’re two totally different marketing strategies, having many things in common, but some things different. So before getting together with Omnichannel Marketing, we need to understand the difference between multichannel & Omnichannel Marketing Strategies, so we don’t get confused about which is one!
Difference between Omnichannel and Multichannel Marketing
Both the Marketing Strategies are based on the idea of engaging consumers across multiple platforms. So, the role of the user is very important here.
In the Multichannel Marketing Strategy, we look at the particular platform only and make sure that the transaction is being completed there. Multichannel is all about using multiple platforms to promote your products and services. The user connects with the multiple platforms in different conditions, and his entire customer journey is ruled by the choices he’ll make on that particular platform. These choices are being put in front of the user by the company beforehand, so he/ she will have to make purchases on the basis of these choices.
When users interact with the brands who’re using Multichannel Marketing as their marketing strategy they feel like, on each platform of the brand, they’re interacting with the different entities. Because in this marketing strategy multiple platforms are being used, but they’re used in unison, and the brand voice isn’t consistent.
But in Omni-channel Marketing, we’re just not using multiple platforms, but we make sure that all the platforms will work in unison. This is done by creating a user’s journey map before implementing the marketing strategy. In this it is assumed that the customer journey can span between 2-3 platforms, so you’ve to make sure that the brand voice and the experience on each platform should be uniform and seamless. Being users the centre of attention on every level, this marketing strategy provides the best user experience. To provide a seamless user experience in Omnichannel marketing, data of the users is collected from different sources, and then the brands make effort to personalized user experience through all the platforms.
When users interact with the brands that are performing Omnichannel Marketing in their business, they feel like they’re interacting with just one platform even switching between 2 or 3 platforms of that brand, because in this all the platforms work as a single entity, in unison for providing unified user experience, and keeping the brand voice consistent.
Last but not least don’t get confused with Omnichannel and Multichannel Marketing, you could be able to differentiate which brand is using which marketing strategy if you keep in mind just one thing: in multichannel individual channels don’t integrate with other channels, none of them speaks to each other, but in Omni-channel, all the channels are being integrated to work as a single entity.
What is Omnichannel Marketing?
Well, we’ve already discussed a lot about what the buzz is about Omnichannel Marketing, but we’ll be elaborating more.
It is a customer-centric approach in which we ensure that our clients will have a positive, and consistent user experience across the brand channels.
It is the integration of all the marketing tactics such as branding, messaging, storytelling, and all the online and offline marketing touchpoints. This is done to provide the consumers with an impactful user experience from top to bottom of the sales funnel.
It makes the users’ journey totally effortless by providing consumers, with a seamless, integrated, and personalized experience.
We can cover all about Omnichannel marketing in the following topics:
Creating a user journey map to keep everything uniform across the channels
Focuses on integrating all of a company’s touchpoints from SMM platforms, website, email, mobile, and brick-and-mortar stores.
Customers can move seamlessly among any of the above mentioned different channels without breaking the consistency of the brand voice.
It is the cohesion of different channels of marketing
Keeping your Brand voice, mission, vision and values consistent & making them identifiable on each platform
Provides personalized messaging based on the interests of the users.
Keeping your visual identity Uniform
I hope all of your doubts are obliterated about Omnichannel marketing. Let’s move ahead and discuss the steps of developing a successful Omni-channel marketing strategy.
Steps of building a successful Omnichannel Marketing Strategy
Every digital marketer and marketing agency describes the steps of building Omnichannel marketing in its own words. We’re providing the step-by-step process you should implement to build a robust Omnichannel Marketing Strategy:
Collecting User Data: Data Collection
Data collection is very necessary and to collect accurate and timely data about your consumers, every brand should use Unified Marketing Measurement (UMM). UMM is an attribution level model. These attributions are the personal level metrics such as demographics, psychographics, geographic, historic, and aggregate measurements of media mix modelling.
This data will help you in understanding how your target audiences want to interact with your brand, and which platform and device they want to interact with. This will also help you in building messaging of your brand, and what type of products are your users looking for.
If you collect the data, you will be able to develop a rough draft of what you need.
Analysing Collected Data: Emphasized Context
You have raw data that you collected in the first step, but you need to refine the data. It’ll help you in making sure what’s useful and what’s not. Analyse your data in this step.
You are thinking about what the metrics are on the basis of which we can analyse the data. You must’ve heard one thing, “Content is King”.
It’s still true but not completely, without context content is nothing. Well, we have the king now, the data we collected in the first step. But we’ve to analyse it and then refine it.
Ask some questions about the relevancy of the data such as what kind of content is your consumer consuming, when are they consuming the content, is your marketing materials relevant to what they are desiring, and what is the occasion when they feel most valued, have you optimized your content for the devices they’re using your content on?
These questions will help you in putting your raw data in different sections so that you can easily know who your consumers are and what’re their expectations?
You can also segment your users on the basis of the following factors:
Past Purchases
Behaviour
Interest
Desires
Average order value
Loyalty Status
Lifecycle
Create a Customer’s Journey Map for Personalization
I hope you would’ve understood what omnichannel marketing is all about. We all want to hear from a person, not from software or tool that automatically generates the same messages over and over again. Nowadays robots and bots have also been advanced, but they generate what we instruct them. So, to keep messaging personalized we need to create a customer’s journey map, so that they’ll feel like they’re being listened to and some person is replying to them not a bot.
Make a customer journey map for each of the segments we’ve discussed in the previous section. The customer journey map evaluates all the steps taken by the consumers from discovering the brand to purchasing from it. Outlining the customer journey map will help us in creating more targeted campaigns in Omni-channel marketing. Because when we outline the customer journey map many factors are considered in which some of which are out of the brand’s control. Always consider individual user interests, user interface, and user experience, economic, geographic, and historic factors while creating the map.
Determining Branding Rules and Guidelines
Branding rules and guidelines help you in keeping your messaging and creativity consistent on all the platforms. These rules and guidelines will help you spread awareness about your brand and make your brand easily recognizable with a consistent brand voice and visual identity.
Choosing Your Marketing Platforms: Aligning Your Website and Social Media Channels with Omni-channel Marketing
Well, you’ve complete control over your website, and social media channels also provide you with tons of features for interaction and engagement with your users.
You don’t need to run everywhere to build an Omnichannel experience, it’s a slow process. Start with your website first, your landing pages and web pages should be designed perfectly and mobile responsive. The content should adapt according to a different screen-sized, it needs to display well no matter what the screen sizes are. Start working on your website and make your website mobile responsive, if you’re unable to do that, we can help you, connect with us Team Digiavtar will take care of everything.
You don’t need to focus on every social media available in marketing, as there’re hundreds of social media platforms.
You should focus on 1-3 SMM platforms, or any number you can handle. We’re saying this because if you’re using so many platforms, and engage with your users on one platform but not on others then they’ll get offended. So, it’s better to use only the number of social media channels we can use.
Always make sure that you’re engaging with the users who’re reaching out to you from these social media handles keeping your tone of communication uniform, and posting consistently valuable relevant content to keep your audiences attached to your brand.
Solve Your Customer’s Queries in No time: Make Customer Support Your Top Priority
Whenever you’re moving one step ahead in Omni-channel Marketing, always take those steps to solve your users’ query with that step. And on the current platforms also, always try to give your users the answers to their queries as soon as possible, it’ll feel them valued, and increase their loyalty towards the brand. Every consumer wants an easy and issue-free experience, but if any issues occur, always try to solve them in no time.
Establish Your Brand Online: Keep Consistent Brand Voice across Channels but Avoid Duplication of Content
Branding is the ultimate aim of all of your marketing efforts so that you’ll not need to put effort into making you reachable, and recognizable because branding is the solution. But, I would say don’t make just a brand, but build a cohesive brand. A cohesive brand delivers a cohesive user experience to its users. Keep your persona approachable, and conversational whether it’s a SMM platform, website or your brick and mortar store.
Consistency brings the feeling of reliability and responsibility and hen trust is developed in the marketing. So we need to keep our brand voice and messaging the same across the channels making the use of uniform storytelling.
Consistency will increase brand exposure, if you’re not sure how to keep consistency then create a brand style guide before starting. Because if you’re not consistent then it’ll result in a disconnected experience and that’ll cause more harm than good.
Don’t just copy-paste the same data everywhere, but repurpose it on the basis of platforms. You can convert a blog post into a YouTube Video for YouTube, Creative for FB & or Instagram. Can also use an illustration for Pinterest, and a summary and creative for LinkedIn. It depends on you how you’re going to repurpose your content keeping the tone of communication the same. It will also save you from the duplication of content
Create Quality Content having repeated taglines
People remember taglines the most because they represent some strong emotion. Taglines are the summary of what is going to come next.
That is why whenever something is organised whether it’s revolution or any function, a slogan or theme is attached to this.
It’s easy for us to connect with the theme, and this theme represents everything for what the function is being organised.
When you’ll look at our own brand DigiAvtar, you find that a tagline is being attached to it that is “Digitalising Brands for Exponential Growth”. I hope the tagline is telling you what we stand for.
One thing to remember is always to be honest, and make genuine taglines that don’t lure people with false and tricky headlines.
Digiavtar is digitalising brands for establishing their robust web presence, and after take working on different marketing strategies for the exponential growth of the brands. So, as we’ve built a genuine tagline for our brand, so you should do that.
Keep your tagline in your own ton of communication, and unique in both online and offline marketing materials.
Invest in the Right Tools
Investing in the right tools can save you a fortune. The world is evolving and there are tools available to perform every single task. Every company is investing in tools, and you should also get one step ahead of the rest of the market.
Include a fully integrated Marketing technology stack according to your requirement in your marketing campaigns. The marketing Technology stack is the group of tools that can work together to improve all of your marketing experience.
The different kinds of tools that are being used in the marketing are the following: –
Website Designing and Development Tools
Graphics Designing Tools
Video Marketing Tools
Email Marketing Tools
Content Management and Marketing tools
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software
Marketing Automation Tools
Video and Web Conferencing Tools
Integrated Customer Engagement Tools
Social Media Management and Marketing Tools
Data Analytics and Visualization Tools
Befriend with technology, it’s better to accept changes than to avoid them. All of the tools mentioned above are very necessary for the success of the Omni-channel marketing strategy. For example, CRM allows you to record each people’s journey from becoming a prospect to a buyer.
As you can see how much CRM is imparting in this strategy, as with other tools, they’re also as much impactful and useful.
Keep your checkout process simple and streamlined
It’s a survey that most the online stores or eCommerce websites use the 3 step checkout process, and in some stores, we can see providing single page checkout. So, if you’re exceeding 3 steps I’m sure you’re going to lose a lot of consumers.
So, it’s better to keep your checkout process simple, and streamlined across the channels. You should always try to offer an easy, quick, and seamless experience for your checkout process.
It is very much necessary to make your checkout process effortless. Remove friction from your checkout process in any place you see it.
Retarget Abandoned Carts
Always retarget your consumer who’s abandoned the checkout process after adding the products to the cart. It means they trust your brand, but something is keeping them back from making a decision.
So, you can easily convert these users into customers with little effort. Give them a push by sending push-notifications when they click away from the checkout process.
It has happened to me also several times, sometimes I stopped buying the products, but when I got the push notifications, I went ahead and purchased the products.
So, implement this strategy, because when the brand sends a push notification, people feel like they’ve listened to. And it makes them feel valued, so they make purchases.
Personalize Your Paid Ads: Connect Your Digital and Print Ads
Always make your ads personalized and target according to a specific user persona. Be specific as much as you can, it’ll provide you with high ROI. You can’t target a generic audience, as everybody’s interests, needs, and psychographics are different.
As of now, you must’ve understood that being personalized is the heart of Omnichannel marketing, so you should present offers to your audiences personalized to their needs.
For grabbing the attention and making the ad copy personalized, you should pay attention to storytelling marketing, with the help of storytelling marketing, you can make sure that they’ll find your offer tailor-made only for themselves
Always keep your digital and print ads relevant and consistent, and try to connect both the platforms, because Omni-channel marketing believes in providing a unified user experience.
Implementing, Analysing and Optimization of the Marketing Strategies
As we all know that there’re hundreds of strategies that can be used in Omni-channel Marketing, but can you determine what will work for you and what will not?
None can say which strategy will work, so go implement the strategies, analyse your results of marketing campaigns, test them on the basis of different factors, then optimize the whole marketing plan, and again repeat the process.
Always use your data to find and nurture brand advocates, that can bring business without promotions.
We’ve already discussed the tools in which you should invest your money, with the help of those tools we can track the right metrics, and from analysing and testing those metrics we can derive actionable insights that can help us to optimize campaigns.
Always keep improving yourself, and make yourself comfortable with the new marketing strategies.
Examples of Omnichannel Marketing
You can see using this type of marketing in the big brands, and even nowadays small businesses also have started working on the strategies of Omnichannel Marketing.
You can identify with the following tips if the company is using Omni-channel marketing:
Getting messages or emails while visiting a website or offline store.
Getting being notified about the promotion and sale
Getting push notification to complete the checkout process
Getting thank you message after buying some products
Getting answers to your queries in no time
Seeing Visual Brand Identity and Brand Voice Same across the channels
Famous Companies who are implementing Omnichannel Marketing strategies are the following:
Starbucks
IKEA
Nike
Wall Greens
Timberland
Disney
Bank of America
Oasis
Pepperfry
Amazon
Apple
Flipkart
Google Chrome
The aforementioned companies are the world’s topmost companies that’ve included Omni-channel marketing in their marketing strategies.
We’ve seen so much in this blog but, without knowing about the benefits we can get from Omnichannel Marketing, it’ll be incomplete, and don’t you want to know what benefits you’ll get if you perform the Omnichannel Marketing tactics.
Benefits of Omnichannel Marketing Strategies
We’ve come so far and we’re certain now that this marketing technique is all about seamless customer experience. In this approach, we make effort to provide a personalized experience to each user, so they feel that they’ve been listened to and understood. And it makes them feel valued, and who doesn’t want to be valued in someone’s life?
This emotion creates a sense of comfort in users’ mind and they tend to loyal, and thus seamless sales start happening. With Omni-channel marketing, we try to represent all our marketing channels as a single entity by providing users similar user experiences on each platform. We try to fill the gap between the offline and online world, by keeping both the voices same. We all have a digital and real-world avatar. Filling the gap between the online and offline world is the best thing that makes this marketing strategy so much success in today’s scenario.
So, are you going to implement these tactics for your business now? Good luck with that!
There’re uncountable benefits of Omnichannel Marketing, but we’ve tried to summarize them in some principle topics that are following:
It helps in Reaching New Customer Segments.
Improve Customer Lifetime Value.
Provides a better user experience at every step of the customer journey.
Unify all the offline and online marketing channels of a particular brand for effortless consumption.
Provides Better Customer Data in various segments.
Helps in establishing a Uniform Brand Strategy and Visual Identity.
It increases operational efficiency by including inter-departmental coordination and agility.
It boosts customer loyalty & provides a high sense of brand loyalty and faith.
Improves Brand Recalling.
Build More Brand Advocates.
Helps in increasing revenue exponentially.
By retargeting the abandoned carts, in the end we find fewer abandoned carts in online stores.
Conclusion
We’ve discussed the many benefits Omni-channel marketing can provide to us. It can take your marketing game to the next level. Most the businesses haven’t started using it, and who’s using it are confused with multichannel marketing. They take both the same but there’s a vast difference in multichannel and Omnichannel Marketing Strategies.
Every industry is implementing Omni-channel Marketing Strategies, to gain great exposure in marketing, but the topmost industries are the following: Retail, Healthcare, automotive, Financial, eCommerce, Marketing etc. These industries are also following many trends of Omnichannel marketing such as; integration of offline and online stores, focusing on the brand building, not the channel, Using more devices for a single purchase, and leveraging multiple channels for the awesome experience.
So, if you start using it from today, then you’ll be much more ahead of everyone. Omni-channel marketing is all about the user and user experience. So, it’s your responsibility to make your community feel valued, and make their experience awesome and unforgettable. Provide your users what they desire from you, you’ll get what you want.
Provide value and make your consumers feel valued, you will also get value in return for increased sales, and engagement with an added benefit of brand loyalty.
If you still have questions about anything related to Omnichannel marketing, Team DigiAvtar is at your service, you’re free to comment in the comment section, we’ll solve your queries as soon as possible.
If you want to learn more about other marketing strategies, then feel free to check out our blog.
You must’ve started thinking, hey friend, can I also be excellent in this art?
Yes, of course, you can also be a master in this art of marketing, all you need to do is go through the blog, and follow everything step by step.
You’ll get to know everything from this blog about what is storytelling, what is storytelling in business, the importance of storytelling in marketing, what is storytelling in digital marketing, the different types of stories in marketing, and the most important part how to write stories in marketing?
Yes, you’ll get to know about all of these things, be patient, and go ahead.
Let’s start with
What is Storytelling?
Storytelling is a way in which you consciously include narrative. Narrative helps users make them better connect with the narrator. Here narrator can be anyone, it can a brand, business, person, or any imaginary character.
With the help of storytelling, we can captivate our audiences better than data and facts. You may see some of the brands don’t include a call to action in their advertising, they just tell a story and connect with the audiences better. And not only small brands but also big brands are using this technique.
Do you want to know why storytelling is the most loved marketing technique? And why people are not stopping using this technique? Well, there is a scientific reason behind this. Do you want to know?
Of course, you want to know what the importance of storytelling in marketing is, and why storytelling in marketing works.
Importance of Storytelling Marketing
Well, we’ve learnt so far that storytelling in marketing works so much, but the reason behind this is our Human Psychology.
According to Human Psychology, our brain tries to better remember and connect with the things that have included the narrative part. It is one of the most fundamental aspects of human psychology to keep things framed in the narrative. Our human brain makes so much sense to the narrative part because it’s easy to comprehend the narrative.
Storytelling is the easiest way to create beliefs. The belief system is the most important part of what we think and what we do, and it’s not an easy task to break the current belief system or create a new belief system.
Whenever anyone tries this in his own brain, every cell of the body opposes this, so it’s the best way to tell a story. When breaking your own belief system is so much difficult task, then you may comprehend how much difficult will it be difficult for you to break your targeted consumers’ belief system, and create a new one.
You can’t get benefitted from your marketing efforts until you don’t create a belief in your users’ minds that your products and services are better than anyone. To create a belief easily you must include storytelling in your business.
Once you’re able to create a belief in your business community, they will no more be your targeted users, but will become clients, and will automatically promote your products and services consciously or subconsciously.
Let me give the biggest examples for this, have you heard about myths?
I’m sure there may be some of the myths that you still follow, they’ve been included in almost every culture of the world, why?
When they were told they included a story with them. That’s why they still seem correct to us, not because they’re correct, but they’re understandable, our human mind can easily comprehend the stories behind them.
Why Storytelling in Marketing Works?
You can take Storytelling as the soul of all of your marketing strategies. As you’ll need marketing materials to promote your brand, products, and services. And for that, we would suggest that you’ll create your marketing materials in the Storytelling format. As well know now that storytelling and narrative are so much ingrained in our human psychology. The more we will tie stories into our marketing material the more the customers will engage with our brand.
One thing about Storytelling that matters is you should be telling a story, it doesn’t matter what type of story you are conveying to your consumers. In simple words, you can tell storytelling in a way in which you use narrative to community your message. Using the narrative in your marketing strategies, storytelling is also called narrative marketing.
Storytelling is a way that empowers your users to understand why they should care about your brand, products, and services. It is the simplest way to humanise your brand.
In the storytelling you don’t focus on your products only, you just don’t commend your products to the people, but this is a way that tells people how your products and services can solve their problems.
In short, Storytelling is the way that makes your consumers aware of the solution to their problem you can bring into their life with the help of your products and services.
Storytelling is about your customer, it’s not about you or your brand, whenever you include storytelling tell your user, how can they be benefitted if they join your brand. This is the strength of storytelling marketing.
What is Storytelling in Business?
Your Business can be either offline or online or both. You’ve to decide how you want to convey your message to the people in both scenarios. Storytelling is the best thing you can do to evolve your business. Your audiences want stories to listen to, stories compel them to create deeper relationships with them. Whenever your business gets time to interact with your consumers you can use this, like in the local events you can tell who are you, and how you started?
It can help your business in spreading more awareness, driving customer acquisition, expediting sales, and increasing retention and royalty.
Want to see how big businesses like Samsung India, Nike, and Apple have included Storytelling in their businesses to promote their brand and build a deep connection with their users. Click here to watch how they’ve cooked up their stories!
It would not be a surprise if I say this, “Brands don’t sell products, they sell a story.”
We’re passing through a digital era, and we perform so many things digitally. Digital Marketing is the form of marketing your products with the help of digital presence and digital marketing tools.
To perform these tactics and build a robust online presence we need to promote our brand by including storytelling in our digital marketing materials.
While performing social media marketing, we can design posts or creatives for the social media in a way that it looks like we’re conveying some story. So, as with graphics, content and other aspects of digital marketing.
Digital Storytelling telling is the same as traditional storytelling, but the difference is in digital storytelling you’re conveying your messages through the digital world and media.
We can include the digital storytelling process in some of the following basic steps:
Look for an Idea
Research how other brands are conveying their messages
Write and Script your Story with Your Brand Voice
Create a Visual Storyboard—A storyboard is an idea of how you’d represent your Branding & Marketing Materials
Build Your Visual Identity – Create Graphics, Animations, Music and Videos
Put them altogether
Share Your Digital Story
Get Feedback
Improve and Repeat the Process for New Idea
So, we’ve got knowledge of what digital storytelling is all about, and how you can cook up a story for your brand.
I would like to repeat one thing again, it’s no different from than traditional way of storytelling, rather than the delivery methods of the stories.
Different Types of Stories in Marketing?
Stories in marketing play a wider role in the whole marketing campaign. On the basis of different aspects a Business contains we can divide the stories into different parts that are the following:
Brand Storytelling
Brand Storytelling is also an Umbrella Term like Digital Marketing, containing different types of brand stories in it. In this, we use storytelling techniques to promote and shape the identity of a brand.
Different types of brand stories you can tell to your consumers are the following:
Brand Origin Story: – This is the story of your brand in which you tell how and why you started this brand or business. Like when I met Sonal, we were just friends helping each other in learning new aspects of marketing. There was no plan of starting DigiAvtar. But, one day Sonal approached me that we’re doing solely so much in this field why don’t we get together and give it a form of a Brand? I agreed and that’s how we started DigiAvtar.
Brand Founder’s Stories: – In this, you should include the stories of your founders how they get to know each other, and when and how they came to the decision of starting the particular Brand.
Brand Mission Story: –Brand Mission Story is to express your mission statement in the format of a story, and tell why your brand exists.
Brand Vision Story: – In the Brand Vision Story you paint compelling glimpses of the future of your company, brand, products, and services.
Brand Legacy Story: – In the Brand Legacy Story you tell people about what your brand has gone through.
Brand Value Story: – Value and Ethics are very important for you to establish yourself as a Brand. You should share what your stand for with your community.
Thus, there’re many stories you can deliver to your users on Brand Storytelling. You should be focussing on the following three elements the most while building a Brand’s Story:
Narrative: – It is the way how you tell stories, this is the term that represents elements of storytelling. A Story includes characters, plot, conflict, action, and end result (climax).
Why you started: The problem you’re trying to solve: – This is the second thing, you should include, always represents yourself as a problem solver, not on who just wants to sell their products.
Values: – This is the soul of a Brand, without values your Brand can’t last long. Values are the character traits of your community, these show the best behaviour of your company. Values define what your company is all about.
Have you got an overview of where you should be moving with Brand Storytelling, and how you should represent yourself? I hope you have a very good idea now about what should be needed to tell your brand’s story. So, start building a Brand Story of your Brand.
Let’s move a little bit further and discuss the customer Stories
Customer Stories
Testimonials of your users are the easiest way to introduce storytelling in your marketing campaigns. Through the testimonials, people tell about their journeys, how they started, and where they’ve reached.
As we’ve discussed already that storytelling is the way of telling stories about how your product solved your users’ problems, and what can be the best way of telling this rather than Testimonials.
People love to read testimonials because they want to see themselves in those places people are talking about. So, make reviews part of your landing pages, and products pages. It’ll help people in building a new belief system that this product can make their lives better. They can be any audio, videos, or text.
We can also take testimonials on prominent places just like Google My Business, Trust Pilot etc, and make them work as an element of external marketing.
So, ready to take reviews and include them in your marketing strategies?
The next one we’ll be reading is Products and services Stories.
Product and Services Stories
You can use some of your customers’ reviews here also in which they’re talking about how your services and products helped them in achieving what they were looking for.
But, if you don’t want to post those in your product stories, then you can make your own kinds of stuff about your products like most of the brands do. You’ve seen it in the television ads, they show a man achieving something with their products. Like most of the cold drink ads, people are trying hard to get a sip of the particular cold drink, how amazing is this? I hope you’re right now remembering all of these types of ads at once.
Making your own product or service stories doesn’t mean you should be lying and unethical. Make up the stories about the end result they’ll get by using your products and services. Think about what they want to hear from you, and make a story. While describing your products and services, your narrative should have a sense of what people expect in their own lives.
We’ve gone so far until now, and learned the different types of stories you may include, but can you include stories in your advertising copy? Definitely yes, you can include stories anywhere you want in your marketing materials
Ads Copy Stories
Ad copies are used for advertising your products and services on social media websites or elsewhere. After seeing the ad copy one decides whether they want to interact with our brand or not by clicking, filling up a form, or paying up for the services.
So, for the success of your advertising campaigns, it’s a must that you write a compelling ad copy. This ad copy will make sure that most of the users will interact with your brand.
Now, let’s discuss, what an ad copy should be like if you’re making storytelling a part of it.
Well, in simple words, if we want to conclude how an ad copy should like is, “show your target audience how the products or services can be useful in their real life.”
Don’t tell them, just show them, by telling them you would try to impose your belief on them, and that everyone hates.
So, show how useful your products or services can be in their daily life.
E.g. “Aurora feels bad whenever she goes to a party when she sees her shaped and slim friend. There was a time she was also like that. But, as the time passes nothing remains as it is, because of so many responsibilities she couldn’t give herself time. One day she saw an ad for Fitness & More, Gurgaon that showed how you can reduce your weight in just 30 days by doing a daily half an hour of exercise. She joined their program. And see, now whenever she goes into parties, everyone looks at her, how she’s shaped herself again.”
“Avani was so much stressed with the work of previous web developer has done for her, she is one of the people who didn’t get a chance to work with an expert. She was thinking that none can improve her website. One day she was scrolling Facebook randomly and noticed the sponsored post of DigiAvtar. She thought of giving them a try also, and after taking services from them. She felt so content. She is satisfied now and working on the marketing strategies for her business with Team DigiAvtar.”
Thus, we’ve shown you two different ad copies in which you can see how we’ve used the story to make people believe that this can be the best fit for them.
Make your own copy in your own words.
Educational Stories
Storytelling is an extremely effective way of learning and teaching new skills. With the help of educational stories, you can plant messages, ideas, thoughts and emotions into your listener’s mind.
Educational Stories can bring value to both your employees and your customers. So, when can include this strategy into our teaching material with the following types:
How to Story: – In this, you show how to complete a particular task.
Problem Solver Story: – Solve your users’ problems with the help of a story.
Training Story: – Employee training can be much more effective and interesting when you make storytelling a part of your Training Story. Inject stories in your training materials.
Ask the Expert Story: – You may interview some of the expert people in the same field you’re in and discuss with them the needs and challenges of your consumers. Then tell those stories.
Instructional Story: – You can use immersive instructional stories in your product or service material
You can use so many other types of stories in your educational material and teach your students and employees in an unforgettable way.
Seasonal Stories
With every season passed we change our hobbies, likes, and dislikes. Then why should we change our storytelling approach in marketing? We definitely should, and most marketers use this kind of storytelling in their brands.
As we all know whether it’s Yoga Day or Environment Day, there is a particular theme is being attached to that day to make it relevant to the season. And that’s where the seasonal stories come into existence. It’s the best way to make your content and marketing materials more relevant to your brands.
And relevancy is one of the most important factors in the branding strategies of your brand. Making content relevant makes your brand more relatable and recognizable among the users.
There’re many types so seasonal stories you may include in your stories are the following:
Seasons Story: – Tell stories about your products or services that are relatable to the particular season that’s going on.
Seasonal Event Story: – In this area, you can make up stories about your upcoming online and offline events.
Weather Story: – If you sell products and services according to the weather then showing a weather story would be the best fit.
Monthly, Weekly Stories: – You must’ve seen some brands using this strategy, whenever they want to run sales, they tell us like Black Friday Sale, this day sale or that day sale.
So, which one do you think is best suitable for you, find the one best suitable and start working on that type of story.
Next and last is community stories we’re going to discuss in this blog post
Community Stories
You are a human so you must know that a human is a social being. So, everybody wants to live in a community that cherishes success, happiness, education, and experiences.
You should always focus on building community, even I’d say a community for your every product and service.
Community Stories can also be many types that are following:
Community Spotlight Story: – Tell what the strength of your community is and what the values of your community are.
Person of the Year Story: – Nominate a person who has done well in the last Financial Year, and Award him among the community to cherish his success and motivate other members of the community.
Employee Spotlight Story: – In this type of story you can spotlight an employee that exemplifies your community’s values. This way you can create a real character who represents your company’s mission, vision, and values in the best possible way.
Thus, you can picture different community stories and make the best use of them in your marketing materials.
Until now, we’ve been talking about different types of stories…take a deep breath!
Thanks for giving this much time to this blog post but I’m sure you are finding it the most valuable blogpost so far in storytelling, well, it’s going to be more interesting when we’ll discuss how to write stories? We’ve talked about everything rather than this part, so let’s talk about this also:
How to write stories?
Writing stories isn’t that easy task as you understand this, as it needs a lot of time to understand the concepts of storytelling and make it a part of your writing style.
But, if you’ll follow along with the methods we’ll be discussing further, then I’m sure you’ll be able to easily make up stories for your brand.
Create an Audience Journey Map
Creating an audience journey map help will help in understanding your customer better, and create a more compelling and efficient story to promote your brand. You can only create a suitable audience journey map when you know your customers completely. To understand your customers first, you’ll need to create a marketing persona for them. This user persona will help you in understanding your consumers’ current state and desired state (what can they expect from your products and services). Click here to know more about how to create a buyer persona.
Create a Visual Storyboard
Visuals look more appealing to the users, so I would recommend you always try to make a visual storyboard. Still, wondering what a storyboard is? Well, it is a graphics organizer that plans a narrative. Graphics can be an illustration, animation, images, short videos, or any type of interactive media that is like a visual. Visual Storyboard helps in keeping all these media in a sequence so that it can make some sense. In short, these are a set of sequential graphics to tell a story.
Well, we’ve understood everything now, what things we’ll need to create a story for our brand. Now let’s understand how many ways you can make up your stories.
The Pitching
I know you also use this word a lot, whenever we meet a new client we say we pitched him/ her this much. And my pitching was so perfect that she agreed with that.
Whenever we’re recommending someone a new action or solution this is the perfect fit. Pitching is also consisting several other short steps in it that’s the following
The Windup: – In this step, we tell a quick summary of the position of where our brand is.
The Hurdle: – This may be the problem your new client is facing right now, you can describe the client a little bit about it.
The Vision: – Vision is the part of this whole story writing technique in which we show a glimpse of a way over the problem.
The Options: – Always try to present two ways of achieving the same thing. This way you’ll certain that your client will become interested in what you’re saying. And he/ she will choose the inspiring one leaving the boring one behind.
The Close: – Here, we also make our users see why is the inspiring one option is the option by which he/ she can achieve what they want to achieve in their life. This is to warm up our audience.
The Fine Print: – Now as we all know that our audiences are excited, here we will cover how we will make it happen. This is the stage where they get to know how our products and services will help them in achieving their desired results.
The Hook: – Never leave your audience without telling them about the added benefits. Everyone desires to get something for free, and this is the stage we show our users the added benefits of our products and services.
The Drama
You also like drama, I like so many and am a big fan of movies. Why do you like them so much? Dramas are based on some hero’s journey and we can easily connect with that hero’s journey, we feel in the place of the hero, and it gives our brain comfort and happiness. Don’t you feel this way?
Dramas are used to inspire a new belief, they show us a unique way to see the world. Let’s know how they build a story in the drama.
Let’s assume you’re a hero, and everything is working well in your life, but one day out of nowhere some problem enters your life and all of your happiness vanishes in a moment of time. What to do now, you try harder and harder but nothing works, and then you reach a situation where there is no hope. You’re completely hopeless.
This is the point they show us, that out of nowhere the hero sees a way out. Then with the abilities, we thought we never had we fight back for success. And we see that hero not just only removes obstacles of his life but enters into a whole of infinite possibilities.
Thus, drama tries to create a belief that whenever we fight back we always get a way out of the problems, and enters into the world of infinite possibilities.
This is the way of cooking up the stories dramatically. Get ready to cook one up for you.
Start thinking about how you’ll show your brand’s story to the community?
Situation-Complication-Resolution
This is the simplest form of storytelling used in consultation or B2B sales. We use “but” and “therefore” to link this three-act structure. This is a three-step storytelling technique in which we talk about our current unbiased situation, then we talk about the complication our brand can face in the near future, and in the resolution step we talk about overcoming the problems and providing solutions.
The situation is the view of current conditions that should be totally unbiased. This describes how your brand or business is doing right now.
The complication is the third stage where challenges lie. Here we talk about the problems that our brand can face in the near future.
The Resolution is the third step of this storytelling technique. In this stage, we talk about the proposed product, service or solution that can face the complications. Always show some proof of how your service or product can help people to overcome their challenges, this will add credibility to your brand.
Situation-Opportunity-Resolution
This is the same as the previous storytelling model in which complication is being replaced by an opportunity. An opportunity is the hopeful path alternative path that leads the story in a hopeful manner.
Hook-Meat-Payoff
This is the last technique of writing stories we’re going to discuss in this blog post. In this you take the help of a hook to engage with your audience, then you show the meat of the story, and then at last with the help of payoff you end it with an effective conclusion taking back your audience to the introduction. This story structure is being used by one of the good companies of the world fassforward.
So, this is how it works, it’s basically like you’re meeting with someone and spending time, but doing the things in an orderly manner.
A hook can be anything that creates sense in people’s minds of what is coming next, it can be any question, statement or personal story). This is how you start engaging with your question by telling your story to them. This is like an introduction phase to everyone.
Meat is the next step that is completely organized, it can be any list or timeline. People get to know in this step where they are standing right now, and where they can go with the help of the services or products a brand is providing.
The payoff is the phase in which we make our audiences remember that if they want to achieve the things we discussed in the second phase then they need to do an action, right now.
So here this strategy ends, and you can again go with the first step.
I hope you have comprehended everything properly, and we’ve tried to cover everything so far relating to storytelling and its different aspects with it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that you know what storytelling is, what the importance of storytelling in marketing is, why storytelling in marketing works, what is storytelling in business, what is storytelling in digital marketing, Types of stories in the marketing of a brand, how to write stories in marketing?
You say you’ve learnt so much even with a single blog post and in a funnel-like way, now it’s time to implement the knowledge you’ve got.
What story you’re going to spread around the world? The important thing is to show the people how your products and services made their life better.
Storytelling is an art with a process. You just focus on telling a story in the world, no matter what you’re telling and how you’re telling it, the thing that matters is what you’re telling. You can start with one aspect of your marketing strategy, then increase the region of the storytelling in your marketing materials as it suits you. Do it, analyse, and then improve. It requires practice to master storytelling. Start with one, then next, and so on…
Every brand has a story, you tell what is yours! As many brands as many stories…
If you get stuck somewhere, and any question arises in your brain, we’re always here to help you, you can always comment in the comment section.
Thinking to make your local brand global? We all want to sell our products and services globally. But are we global in local? Does everyone in our locality know about our business? What’s the brand value of our business in a particular geographical region where our physical office. What is the local marketing of our brand?
Importance of local market
It is a fact that the 97% of the people learn more about a local company online, 85%of business owners depend on word of mouth referrals that are only possible by focussing on local business marketing, & 88% of mobile searches for local businesses result in either a call or business visit within a day. This is the reason you should focus on local business marketing. Set up a physical location for your business and market it locally.
You must be wondering, what is local store marketing, how to do local business marketing, and what are the local business marketing strategies, tips or ideas? Don’t get worried, follow the blog along and you’ll get to know about everything here, this is an ultimate guide to local business marketing.
What is Local Business Marketing?
A local Marketing strategy focuses on a particular geographical area and targets the community within a fixed radius of the physical location of a Business. This is attached to a particular nearby region, and because of that, it’s called neighbourhood marketing. And as it is performed keeping in mind the physical location (e.g. an office or store) of the brand, it is also called local store marketing.
Many think that local business marketing should be done by only brick and mortar businesses such as restaurants, bars, spas, medical offices, and chiropractors, it is a must for them but any business can get benefitted from local store marketing. Local marketing can be an entirely new game for the success of your business whether it’s product-based or service-based.
How to do local business marketing?
Everyone has different views on how to do local business marketing in this competitive world, we will be showing our views also on this marketing strategy. First, you should know everything about your target audience before targeting local marketing. Here are 4 important factors that define the success of your local marketing campaigns, it’s better to know your users and create a buyer persona on the basis of these factors. Let’s understand them:
Demographics: – These details show Name, Age, Gender etc.
Psychographics: – These show goals, motivations, fears, strengths etc.
Professional Details: – Job Title, Income Details, Industry etc.
Geographical Location: – It is the most important factor in local business marketing as the whole marketing campaign takes place in a particular geographical region. Every effort in local business marketing revolves around the physical location of the store or business.
Now, we can promote our brand keeping in mind the aforementioned 4 important factors. Most of the local business marketing revolves around the following 3 things:
Feedback: – Feedback is very important and when we’ll discuss the local business marketing tips, we’ll see that most of the platform that is helping in local marketing asks for feedback from the users.
Qualitative Products/ Service: – Products or Service is the soul of every business. In every business either products or services are sold. So, keep your products and services qualitative.
Customer Expectations: – Measuring your customer’s expectations can keep you one step ahead of the rest of the market, so work accordingly keeping in mind what your users want from you.
We’ve discussed the 4 important factors in local business marketing, and 3 things that should be kept in mind. There’re several platforms and tips by using them you can promote your brand. We’ve also made a list of the local business marketing ideas, by implementing them you can build a local marketing campaign for your business also.
Local Business Marketing Strategies for Small Business
Most of the strategies depend on NAP (Name, Address, & Phone Number), SEO, and engagement with businesses and users. Let’s discuss the most important tips that can give wing to your marketing campaigns:
1. Focus on Creating an Awesome, Optimized Quick-Loading Mobile Friendly Site: –
Do you know about websites? I’m sure you definitely know what a website is. But if you want to know more, you can check out our blog, click here.
Well, having a website is a must, but having an awesome, fully optimized quick-loading mobile-friendly fully responsive dynamic website is the need of today’s world.
Everybody thinks a website is just some piece of code used to provide information about some person, brand or business. But a website is more than that. It’s a collection of web pages, and to make those web pages lively, we need to know about a lot of things such as user interface (UI), User Experience (UX), a good knowledge of graphics and graphics designing, and so much other small and big things.
If you want to make an awesome website then you’ll need to pay attention and time to all of these things.
Well, we’ve talked a lot about what a website is, but what do you think why do we need a mobile-friendly website?
Everything has a reason, and we’ve to find out that reason. Google is the largest search engine in the whole world and it improves its algorithms for the betterment of the system. It took a decision to switch to mobile-first indexing. Mobile-first indexing is enabled by default for all new and previously unknown webpages starting from July 1, 2019.
It means whenever anywhere anybody searches something about a particular webpage, then Google will give priority to those webpages that are mobile-friendly, which means loading smoothly on mobile without breaking the architecture of the website. Do you know that 61% of mobile users are more likely to contact a local business if they are having a mobile-friendly site?
Google took this decision because nowadays somewhat 80% of internet users use their smartphones to search for something. So, because of the large number of mobile users, Google gives priority to mobile-friendly websites.
Well, Now you have a website that’s attention-grabbing and mobile-friendly, but what if it’s not loading so fast? What to do and how will the speed of the website will impact your website traffic?
Website speed is a big factor in keeping your users engaged with you or your business because if your website is taking more than 3 seconds to load then 40% of consumers will abandon your website and move to the next one.
It’s been proven with the results of some big brands, they’ve also been affected by the speed of the website. Do you know about Yahoo, I know you already know? But the fact that you don’t know is when it reduced its page loading time by just 0.4 seconds, its traffic increased by 9%. So as with BBC, it loses an additional 10% of users for every extra second it takes for loading its site.
To increase the speed of your website, you need to optimize the website code, and graphics and choose a reliable blazing-fast loading web-hosting provider. Optimize these things and you’ll see the impact yourself. You can use Google’s Page Speed Analysis Tool or GTMetrix to test the speed of your website.
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/digiavtar.com/sDGDBBU6/Google Page Speed Analysis of DigiAvtar
That’s why you need an awesome, optimized quick-loading mobile-friendly website to keep your visitors happy, engaged, and returning. If you’re not able to do that, Team DigiAvtar can help you in optimizing your website.
This is the foremost and must thing to keep your website mobile-friendly before you embark on the lateral local business marketing ideas. If you’re not sure whether your website is mobile-friendly or not, you can check out Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool.
2. Localize Your Website: Update Title Tags and Meta Descriptions: –
Website optimization that we’ve discussed in the earlier topic, is the key to driving traffic, but is your website optimized for the local users?
Localizing your website is the solution of your website. Now, the question is how to localize our website and what it means to localize the website.
Well, localizing your website means making your website and web content relevant to your local audience and consumer base by determining keywords and key phrases based on Local SEO. Let’s elaborate more, you should consider adding more location-based keywords, mentioning more nearby communities on your website, and adding a map of your physical location on the website. Adding your business name, address, phone number, and other relevant information will help your website in ranking higher on Local SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Now the question is how to add location terms to your website content, well,
Update your Meta Descriptions and Title Tags of the web pages with the local keywords having location and business term.
Title Tags are 60 characters long in length and Meta Descriptions are 160 characters in length.
Your Title Tags should be enriched with your brand and location terms, keeping them shorter than 60 characters in length. These 60 characters that title tags contain, search engine users see on the SERPs. Title tags are an SEO ranking factor so keep them optimal and enriched with local terms for better ranking of your web pages.
After the latest google algorithm updates, Meta Descriptions directly do not impart so much in SEO, but they can help you in improving your click-through rates (CTRs). They tell users in brief what they’re going to find on the particular web pages, so keep it optimal and within 160 characters (limit).
You can improve your Local SEO Insights by leveraging free keyword research tools like Google Analytics, Google Trends and Google Search Console. These tools will inform you precisely what local terms you should incorporate in your web content.
3. Setup up Local Landing Pages for All Your Business Locations: –
If you’re having your business in different locations then it’s better to have a particular page for a particular location.
Each Individual page should have the completer information about the business that is situated in that particular location including business hours, address, how to get there (maps), services, and everything that’s specific about that particular location.
So, if you’ve not done it so far, then it’s time to do this now, make separate pages for separate locations. Most brands don’t do this, so if you do this, you’ll be one step ahead of the rest of the market.
4. Invest in Local SEO: Make Sure Your Local SEO is Perfect: –
Perfecting your local SEO can be the first step toward making this a successful marketing campaign. You should know that 80% of the consumers search for local business on the internet & 50% of consumers who perform local searches on their smartphone result in visiting the physical location (store) of the business within a day. Keep your Local SEO tactics perfect. Local SEO is part of the search engine optimisation (SEO) that helps you in ranking locally whenever anyone put queries relating to your brand.
Google Trends will help you in finding popular local terms in your industry and locality. You can find the keywords and then include those key phrases in your web content to optimize your website locally. Create local content, it will help you in localizing your website and paint you as a local authority in your niche and industry.
5. Submit Your Website to Search Engines: Get Indexed on Google and Bing: –
Submitting your website to search engines is a must. Whenever we want to go for something, we just search it on Google, Bing or any other search engines, after that we visit any business.
Search Engines automatically crawl your website, but it’s not certain it’ll cover every part of your website. So, it’s better for you if you manually submit your websites to the search engines with the help of sitemaps.
It’ll help search engines to better understand your website content and rank it on their search engine results pages. Optimize your website according to the Local SEO aforementioned in the previous topic, and submit it to search engines to get crawled and indexed fast.
6. Make Local Business Contacts: Join Local Business Organizations: –
Making Local Business contacts can be a great deal for your business. These local business contacts can bring your business with the referrals. It is a great local marketing strategy to expand your business. Implement and try if this works out for you.
These local contacts can be any individual or any business that can help you in growing your business. Whenever someone asks them about the services that you provide, they can refer your business to them.
Joining Local Business Organizations can be a good fit for building your local business contacts. Local Business associations are the best way to develop cross-platform relationships. You may also network with your potential buyers. Be specific to your industry, join the associations that are related to your industry, but don’t be limited to your own industry, you can seek out where your potential customers are active.
Like we’re in the Digital Marketing Field, then we should first target the local association that is working in this field, then move ahead to other associations that are not directly in this field, but have our potential consumers active in their community.
7. Build an Email List & Sent Out Targeted Email Campaigns: Utilize Localized Email Marketing: –
Most people think that building an email list is for Internet Brands, but it’s not like that they’re very beneficial for every type of Marketing Strategy. Even in Local Business Marketing, it can be a huge asset for the success of local business marketing campaigns.
You must be thinking about how to build an email list for your business, this must be hard. Well, I would say, you’re never going to achieve anything for free, but don’t worry if you’ll follow the process it would just be a piece of cake for you.
As we all know that personal information is a part of privacy for everybody, so users will not give you their email address, and mobile number, if you’re not going to provide them with something valuable. So, the deal is what can be provided in exchange for their information?
It’s called the lead magnet that attracts leads. A lead magnet is different for every business according to its niche. So, make your own unique and value providing lead magnet. If you want to know about lead magnets in detail, click here.
Now you have your users’ email addresses, you can send them newsletters to notify them about your special offers. Always remember you should send relevant and helpful emails, this is how you can avoid spamming and nurture your leads.
Well, it is a fact that 75% of the marketers find that User Engagement can be increased by targeted personalization. So, if you want to optimize this whole email marketing strategy for local businesses then you should ask your potential customers to visit your physical location and give you their email addresses. Request permission to send them communications over the mail.
This way you can target your whole email marketing campaign for the local marketing and this is the best way of utilizing localized email marketing.
8. Follow Up with Customers: –
Following up with your users about the inquiries they’ve taken or about the product is the best thing you can do for your business. Following up with the users will represent your more responsible in the market.
Send a thank you mail if someone has visited your stores, or asked for an inquiry. When any sale happens through your store or online, you should send a thank you mail to encourage reviews. Some the business offers something in exchange for a positive review, you should never work on this strategy. Just ask them, if they are satisfied with your services, and then they would definitely provide you with a good testimonial.
So, make part of following up with your users to your local marketing strategy.
9. Optimize Social Media Pages For Nearby Users: Engage and Target Local Audience: Don’t be Too Focussed on Social Media: –
A lot of businesses are still focussing on social media, but I would say don’t be too focussed on social media. Because since when we entered the state of content shock (click here to know more about content shock), the organic reach of social media has decreased.
You create content in which your target consumers are interested, and put it on social media. Rest leave everything on social media, as we’ve already said that because of the content shock organic reach is lessening day by day. So, whenever you want to really get your content seen, go for social media advertising.
But it does not mean that you don’t need to optimize your social media pages add the location of your physical office or store, put your website URL, and add the contact address of your business. You can still make a fortune from SMM platforms if you are following a perfect content marketing strategy and providing valuable and high-quality content for your users. Promote local events on your social media to engage and target your local audience.
Somewhat every social media provide you with the features to add all of these details, so, it depends on you how you’re going to optimize your social media pages for nearby users.
10. Cross-promote with other Local Businesses: Partner with another Business: –
Partnering with another business & cross-promoting products and services can be a good local marketing strategy for you.
Let me show you an example of how it’s good for both businesses. For example, if you alone offer some promotion to your customers then you will only reach the people who’re already associated with you or at least know about your business already. But if you are offering a promotion partnering with another business then not only your consumers but consumers from both the business will hear about it, and both the businesses will get benefitted from this. So, it’s a win-win situation for both of the businesses, if you’re not direct competitors to each other.
If you’re running a local business then there’re better chances of developing a good and deep relationship with other local businesses. These relationships are the foundations of cross-promoting businesses on each other’s marketing platforms. It is a great local marketing strategy when you’re not direct competitors of each other.
So, what are you waiting for? Go and partner with other businesses. If you’re from Gurgaon (Haryana), then DigiAvtar Marketing Solutions is also open for collaborations.
11. Showcase Yourself on Local TV, Local Newspapers, Local Bloggers, and Online Journalists: Make Best Use of Your Local Media: –
Getting yourself on these platforms is an excellent way to promote your business and get the most out of the local marketing campaigns.
We all watch television, read newspapers, local bloggers, and follow online journalists, then I think we should not only remain a consumer of this but become a part of this.
If you want to get yourself on Television then offer them your expertise. If you’ll approach them like you want to promote your business, then they’ll not consider you a worthy business for premiering. But if you’ll pitch them in a way that your ideas will be beneficial for their viewers also then be sure, you’ll definitely be interviewed.
There are local blogs and news websites in every community. In the same way, you can reach out to these local bloggers and online journalists. Get yourself published on their platform. The articles they’ll write about you, will not only help you in driving traffic to your website but will also drive foot traffic to your physical store. Because mentioning your business on the online local platforms will help you in Local SEO also. It’ll benefit your business in higher search engine results pages than other businesses.
Getting yourself or your business in the local newspaper is the next strategy you can implement. Well, you can always buy advertising but why go for advertising when you can achieve it with a few efforts. Represent yourself as an industry expert and call or pitch through the email to a local journalist as a source. So, if they consider you a good fit, they might interview you without any cost. You should help them in localizing big stories. It can only be done if you’re following important industry trends.
So get ready to be published in the local newspaper, blogs, and news websites, and get yourself interviewed on Local TV to give more life to your local marketing campaigns.
12. Host and Get Involved (Experience) with Local Community Events: –
There are two ways of using an event as a local marketing strategy, either you yourself along through an event or you can partner with other businesses and through large events to promote all of your services and products.
Event is the best way to know your local customers personally, what they want from you, and in which area you need improvements.
Also if you’re hosting an event then it gives you an opportunity to be a speaker or leader and talk about the changes you and your business in bringing into others’ lives. Taking a leadership or speaking role is the best strategy you can implement during an event. It’ll not only provide you with exposure but will also establish you as an authority in your niche, or industry.
We’re just talking about hosting an event, but does it not have any benefit in attending the events?
Well, of course, take part in the local events that are your industry related, it’s better to attend than not. You’ll always get something from the events.
Last but not least, don’t hold an event for the sake of sales, but turn it into a “Memorable Experience”. Offer free food, drinks, beverages, entertainment, and music. Let your users enjoy the event.
Sponsoring an event will build a real-world invaluable bridge between your brand and your audience. It will feel them more connected to your brand and will increase your brand’s visibility in your local community. You can also get local press coverage, and it’ll impart in your Local SEO that will bring you more traffic by founding easily in search engine results pages (SERPs).
A loyalty program is run to make customers feel valued. And who doesn’t want to be valuable in someone’s life? In a loyalty program, we provide rewards to the customers who’re taking our services or using our products for a particular amount of time. Loyalty rewards can be any discount or you can provide any things for free to your beloved loyal customers. It’ll generate a feeling of belongingness to your business in their mind, and they’ll promote your business to others subconsciously.
Starting a referral program can help you in returning customers and making your present customers your brand promoters. So, most companies in today’s world follow this method of affiliate marketing. You can give some credits/ discounts to the person who is referring to your business. That person can use this credit/discounts whenever he/she wants to take services from you, or you can provide this credit in cash also.
These two methods will help you in increasing customer referrals, one is related to giving your customers value and another is giving them discounts, and who hates value and money?
So, Loyalty Program and Referral Program can give a boost to the word of mouth marketing. Create a tempting freebie or special discount for the referrer and referee, and go for it. Both of these programs help a lot in local marketing, but the referral program is a kind of forceful program, so it depends on you if you want to include this in your eco-system.
But, I would say, don’t think so much, let’s give these a try.
14. Put Marketing Collateral in Public Places with Permission: –
Want to reach people in your community with the help of public places?
Whenever we go somewhere we see so many hoardings and banners here and there in public places.
If you also want to put hoarding and banners in public places, then it can be the next good marketing strategy in local business marketing.
But, first, seek the permission of the authorities there, don’t go for it without the permission of the authorities otherwise, you may get caught for misuse of the public property.
The best way to put marketing collateral in public places is to reach out to the businesses that complement your business. Find out these types of businesses and put a banner there, so, whenever anybody visits their places they can also get to know about you and your services.
Let’s move ahead and discuss the next strategy
15. Get Listed in Local Business Directories: Claim your Google My Business Listing: –
Local business directories play a big role in local marketing strategies. Most of the time when a local user searches on the internet, he/she looks to local directories to find businesses or professionals from a particular niche in a fixed region. So, it’s better if you enlist your business on local directories, and provide accurate information about your business.
When you will search for local business directories on google or any other search engine you use, you’ll find plenty of local directories third party websites, directories, and review websites. They help consumers to know about the businesses and how much they’re reliable to them. So, it’s better if you list your business on these directories and get the most out of it in form of digital and foot traffic.
These websites are important for Local SEO, and to understand users’ search intent. You must be thinking what are the best local business directories? Well, get the list provided by HubSpot by clicking here.
Always try to list your business in as many directories as possible. Not any of the single directories is going to get you a massive amount of traffic but a lot of local directories can make it possible. Don’t worry you will not get penalised and it’ll not break your local marketing strategies.
Go, list your business, and drive localized traffic.
These directories also impart Local SEO, so you’ll also get organic traffic directly, not just through the directories.
It’s very easy to list your businesses and it’s one time if you are not going for rebranding. Without wasting time, get your business listed on these directories.
Most of these websites follow NAP consistency in their platforms. NAP is a short form for Name, Address, and phone number information, and these directories help you in establishing NAP online.
According to a study more than half of the small businesses still haven’t claimed their Google my business profile. In your Google My Business Profile you can include so many things such as Business name, address zip code, phone number, map, direction, hours of operations, link to your business website, description of business, industry, products or services, and feature to take reviews, and so much more.
So, if you’ve not still claimed your Google My Business Listing, you’re missing out so much. You should at least claim your google my business listing now.
Whenever someone will search for your business name, industry, products or services, your business will show up in SERPs.
These listings will help you in creating a robust web presence, and rank your pages higher in SERPs. Last but not least Local Business Listing Websites are for the local community so whenever you put your information on these websites, they’ll reach the local community. And this will give a boost to your word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth marketing is the strongest marketing so far.
Claim your own Listings now, and provide a helping hand to Local SEO.
16. Launch a Local Coupon Campaign: –
You can launch a local coupon campaign in your locality and attract more new potential clients to your business. As we all know humans are always hungry to get something for free. So, if you’ll launch a coupon campaign it’ll attract them to your business. We’ve used this strategy for one of our clients, Fitness and More – Boutique Fitness Studio in Gurugram. Click here to see how it’s used.
17. Offer a Free Consultation or Advice: –
Who doesn’t want to give consultations? Well, everybody wants to share thoughts with someone, don’t you?
But when we share our thoughts in the professional world, it’s called consultation. Consultation is a great way to showcase your expertise in the field you’re working. When you’ll provide someone with advice on something that can help that person in building their business, I’m sure they’ll surely make a purchase later in the near future from your business.
This will also build your connections, don’t hesitate to provide consultations, it’s good also for you to seek new perspectives, and get to know what and how people think.
Are you ready to provide your first free consultation? Go ahead, I believe in you, you can do it.
18. Request Reviews: Encourage Positive User Reviews from Happy Customers and Engage Online: –
Do you also see reviews online before purchasing anything? I know you look for these.
Well, for a matter of fact 95% of people read testimonials before making online purchases, and 81% of these read reviews from local businesses.
You should always ask your users for reviews after they’ve taken your services. You may get negative reviews along with positive ones, but don’t worry. Learn why some people are not satisfied with your services, and you can always improve in those areas. Reviews are just feedback, and you may not always get positive ones, so be with it, if you see you need improvements then you may perform some improvements, if not then reply humbly and move ahead with another one.
Always spend some time responding to reviews whether it’s negative or positive. When you respond people take you as a responsible one, and think they’ve listened, and who doesn’t want to listen.
If you’re running an offline business, and want reviews from the customers that visit your store, then you can place a request to leave a review at the bottom of the receipt generated for them.
And if your consumers are communicating with you over email, then you’ll always have the luxury to request a review from them in the email itself. An email signature would be the best place to put a review request.
70% of the consumers would leave a review if you request them to leave, and 75% of the users have said that they started trusting most of the Local Businesses after reading their reviews.
The best platform for getting reviews is google my business, you can also check out the reviews of DigiAvtar on its Google My Business Profile by Clicking here.
You should also start taking reviews on Google My Business. GMB (Google My Business) isn’t the only platforms there’re hundreds of platforms for getting reviews from the clients like Facebook, Yelp, Trust Pilot etc.
Choose the platform you think is the best fit according to your business, and start taking reviews for a better tomorrow.
19. Tell Your Story: Stories are Memorable: –
Why do you like dramas, movies, and series so much? Because they have got a story in them, and in some place of your mind you’re able to relate those characters to yourself. And you remember every piece of these stories.
Somewhat same happens with your business also, when you start telling your brand’s or your journey in a story. It becomes unforgettable. You and your brand or business become memorable forever.
So, telling a story about your brand is the best way of generating human interest and making your brand memorable. It’ll help your users more likely and easily buy from you. And for existing customers, always be connected with you.
You can include in your story how was your growing up locality and how you thought of starting this business idea, how’re you helping people, and what problem did you try to solve with this business idea, and what’re your mission and vision, how you got partnered with someone if you’ve.
You can tell your story in TV ads, Local Newspapers and Blogs, online videos, blog posts, and on your team or about us pages. One thing to remember while telling your story is to keep it always consistent so users don’t get confused about what your personality is?
So, don’t waste time, and build a story for your brand, and for yourself.
20. Leverage Your Ecommerce Activity: –
You’re having an online presence as well as offline stores, and then leveraging your eCommerce activity can help you in your business. You can use Local Visitors to boost your eCommerce by providing them coupons for every online purchase.
And you can do the opposite by providing free pick up and returns who visit your stores and have made a purchase online. So, you can use your eCommerce activities in getting engaged with your Local Community.
Being localized for individual markets, it’s also an excellent local business marketing strategy. Craigslist is one of the websites in the top hundreds that gets a massive amount of traffic in the world. Craigslist targets every community, gender and age group in its database. You can also get benefitted from the craigslist marketing strategy to target the community you’re in right now.
Localize paid promotions means optimizing paid ads for the local terms, and locations keywords. SMM Platforms such as Facebook, and Instagram provides several ways to target local users. They provide us filtering options in demographics, behaviours, Professional details, Geographical location, and much more.
So as with google ads, they can also be targeted with the local terms. Always use a targeted optimized landing page for Local Business Marketing. You can always remarket these customers by using remarketing ads who visit your landing page. With the help of this advertising, you not only can target specific persona and users but also can include relevant key phrases to your ad copy content. You may include the city name, locality name, along with the business name, and other terms relating to your local business.
You may target the whole world in the digital space, but when you promote your brick and mortar business, advertise it locally so that people can visit your store. This will help you in getting more out of your advertising campaigns as it’s easier for local users to convert into customers.
So think globally, and advertise locally.
Conclusion
We’ve included somewhat every local business marketing strategy in this post. You implement these strategies as they suit you, but I’d recommend you to work on a particular strategy at a time, as it’s not possible to work on several strategies at a time.
What we’ve learnt so far from this blog post is local business marketing helps you in growing better and faster. It helps in reaching out to new audiences, boosting online rankings along with massive organic traffic. Local business marketing strategies also help you in bringing new customers to your doorstep and establishing your brand as an authority in your local community.
You can easily implement these local marketing strategies and most of them are free to implement. Update your website first, and then go through all the local marketing strategies step by step, and you’ll see exponential growth in your business.
Don’t try to be a master first and then implement. Stop overthinking where to start, choose a particular strategy, and take action. You’ll have to decide what will work for you and what will not. It’s better to implement than wait for the magic to happen in your life.
Go for it, thanks for giving your valuable time to reading this blog post, it’s appreciating that you’ve come so far in this blog post.
We’ve tried to cover every local marketing strategy, but if you still have questions in your mind, then you’re free to ask, Team DigiAvtar will be happy to help you.
You can contact us or comment on your query in the below comment sections.
