Holidays, what a stress-relieving word!!! Everyone waits for them to spend quality time with family, friends, relatives, and loved ones. Along with enjoying, everyone spends a lot of money on entertainment and luxuries.
On the other hand, sales are planned on holidays, offers are provided by brands, marketing strategies are built, and a lot of business is done during holidays.
Everyone including brands as well as consumers waits for holidays. This is where holiday marketing takes place to bring back existing consumers and attract new consumers.
Are you excited to know more about holiday marketing strategy, best practices for holidays, and how to plan for them?
Marketing tactics such as offers, discounts, and coupons performed during holidays to retarget existing consumers and target new consumers are called holiday marketing.
During holidays brands seek consumer attention with different marketing tactics because higher visibility will gain you more revenue as it’s the time when customers are actively looking for the products and services either for themselves or their loved ones.
Consumers are ready to buy, but are you ready to showcase your products and services on all the marketing and social media platforms where your consumers are looking for you?
Steps To Build Robust and Successful Holiday Marketing Strategy
Building a successful marketing strategy isn’t a piece of cake, but not that much difficult if followed by a process. Following the steps below will make it so much easier for you to build a successful holiday marketing strategy, and it’ll surely become a piece of cake;
Define Your Existing Consumers and Potential Consumers
You already have defined your existing and potential consumers but if not then it’s time to define your consumers and build user personas.
It’ll help you in retargeting your existing consumers, and precisely targeting new potential consumers. If you have an understanding of who’s going to make a purchase you’ll be able to craft personalized magical marketing campaigns for your consumers. You can also take help from our blog on “Marketing Personas”.
Audit Previous Holiday Marketing Campaigns from Your Brands and Competitors
Auditing previous campaigns will help in understanding the logic and magic behind the success of previous holiday marketing campaigns. It’ll help you in repeating the tasks that make you win and avoid those that make you lose.
If you’re lacking something in your current marketing campaigns, you’ll get to know by auditing your previous marketing campaigns, even you can also have a look at your competitors’ previous successful holiday marketing campaigns.
You’ve heard this saying “History repeats itself”. Now, it’s time to repeat the success of your previous successful holiday marketing campaigns.
Build Offers, Discounts, Deals, and Coupons for Consumers
Holidays are HOLYdays, so they definitely demand something exciting, something sacred, something amazing. And what can be amazing more than an offer, discount, deal, and coupon code that can save you money?
Offers, discounts, deals, and coupons will help your target existing and potential consumers build a connection with your brand and make a purchase. Knowing your consumers first will help you in building customized and personalized marketing campaigns for your business.
Define Best Holiday Marketing Strategies and Messaging for Your Consumers
Holiday marketing strategies can be so much experimental as consumers are willing to buy here and tie knots with new brands as well.
So, even with so many experiments, you can get so much from holiday marketing and it’ll provide you with a thorough understanding of what works and what does not. Don’t copy your competitors’ successful holiday marketing campaigns as it’ll represent you as a copycat and will consumers a chance to compare your brand with others.
Schedule the Whole Holiday Marketing Plan and Events
Scheduling all the events and completing holiday marketing efforts will save you from the stress of execution. As we know that it’s better to start the promotions one week before the start of the holidays.
People start planning their holidays before the start of it, so, you need to be smarter and plan your whole marketing campaigns and events and schedule them to avoid any delay in execution.
Execution on Time
Timing matters the most, if your competitors are reaching out to your audiences first, then you’ll lose. I hope you don’t want to lose.
So, you need to be better than your competitors and execute every task on time as you’ve planned. Executing on time and reaching out to the audiences before your competitors will provide you with a higher chance of getting more sales and revenue than your competitors.
Make Dynamic Changes by Measuring Results
As we’ve already mentioned that holiday marketing is so experimental, so you can also make dynamic changes in the campaigns.
If some campaigns are not working great then you can experiment with a more emotional approach to your marketing efforts and strategies. Holiday marketing is so much sophisticated for new and different marketing approaches, you can even change your brand tone during holidays if you need to.
This way you can get to know what is working more suitably for your brand and which type of tone is engaging more consumers with your brand.
We’ve discussed the 7-step framework of holiday marketing that can help you in winning the holidays in terms of sales, revenue, new consumers, and returning consumers.
Now, let’s move one step ahead and have a sharp look at the best practices we should keep in mind while working on holiday marketing strategies!
17 Essential Tips for a Successful and Effortless Holiday Marketing Strategy
Best practices help us in the proper execution of any marketing strategy and also keep us updated with the latest marketing trends in the marketing. Holiday marketing tips, best practices, and promotional ideas help us in refining our efforts and tactics. Increase your sales and revenue by implementing these best tips for holiday marketing;
Provide holiday discounts, coupons code, deals, and offers to get the attention of your consumers.
Make your checkout process as simple as possible with a maximum of 3 steps checkout process. Keep it easy, clean and secure.
Experiment with your strategies and be ready to adapt to the changes quickly and effectively. Quick response during the campaigns makes you ready to react and adapt to the dynamic changes.
As we’ve already mentioned that holiday marketing is amazing, exciting, and sacred. Holidays are Holy Days. So make your campaigns as if you’re saying your consumers to perform a ritual.
Make content marketing your friend for holiday marketing. As people are looking for different brands during holidays, so whenever they get a glimpse of your business they’ll search about your business. And if the content you’ve on your platforms isn’t valuable and problem-solving to them, they’ll definitely get one step back and move to other products of other brands.
We’ve discussed that content marketing is a crucial element in the success of holiday marketing, but what if the content isn’t optimized accordingly? You need to optimize the content now according to holidays aligned with your products and services. First research holiday-centric keywords, and then incorporate these keywords in your content related to holiday marketing. Perform this every year as keyword volume changes every year and people look for the products and services in different manners than last year.
You need to be ready for competition and outstand from the competitors as everyone wants to make a big chunk from holidays. So, it’s a race you need to win but it’ll demand a lot from you, are you ready for that?
Leveraging influencer marketing is great at grabbing attention and conversion. This is why you see more advertisements for your favorite public figures during holidays. You can also incorporate influencer marketing strategies in your holiday marketing campaigns.
Don’t Fake, give them a valid reason to make a purchase, only then consumers will be satisfied that they’ve took the right decisions. Giving them a valid reason to make a purchase from your brand is like putting them into the driver’s seat in the whole sales process.
Retarget your existing consumers. Most people that are easy to convert into brand advocates are your existing loyal consumers. So, give them something special on holidays.
Sorting out your holiday marketing goals will help you in measuring the results.
Appealing to holiday emotions and feelings that are flowing through the veins of your consumers during holidays. Tap into their emotions and feelings with storytelling, sonic branding, and consumer stories. It’ll help your consumers in establishing a strong connection with your brand.
Provide personalized experiences to your consumers and make them feel valued. Make your emails and SMS campaigns personalized for every consumer.
Delegation of tasks to the particular marketing teams such as email marketing to the email marketers, content marketing to content marketers, and so as paid promotions. But don’t let them create organizational silos, let them feel like they’re one team. Also, make use of automation tools such as blog2social wherever possible.
Personalize your ad copy according to the holiday emotions and your targeted and existing consumers. You can also give try A/B testing in ad copies.
Create positive excitement through all your holiday marketing tactics.
Last but not least, also make natural use of urgency. You can use countdown timers, and limited-time discount codes to show urgency in your brand’s promotions.
Feeling like you’ve mastered holiday marketing and are ready to make a big change in the sales of your brand in the coming holiday seasons?
I’m also confident that you’re ready to implement it now, go for it and learn by doing. Now, let’s conclude the blog here!
If you want to boost your sales and generate more revenue during holidays for yourself and your clients then make the best use of thoroughly explained holiday marketing strategy and campaigns.
We’d like to know your thoughts on holiday marketing in the comment section below!
Crisis, is one of the most fearful words, right? We don’t want crises in our life and business, but still, most people face crises at some point in their life as well business.
So, the question is how to avoid and handle the crisis if it is happening in your business.
The reason behind a crisis can be anything and it’s not necessary that the crisis is happening because of the fault of the organization but there may be some uncontrollable factors. Situational crisis communication theory will help you in understanding the type of crisis and crisis management planning will help you in handling the crisis carefully.
Let’s get started with an understanding of crisis!
What is a Crisis?
Situational Crisis Communication Theory was given by Timothy Coombs, he described the crisis as a negative circumstance.
A crisis is a negative circumstance that can have negative consequences for an organization and its stakeholders such as employees, customers, and investors if it is not handled with care.
To overcome the crisis we need to first identify it and then need to communicate properly with our audiences.
Crisis are being classified on the basis of cause and effect. On the basis of what caused the crisis and what the effects of the crisis on a particular organisation would be, determine the type of crisis an organisation is facing.
The developer of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) Timothy Coombs divided crises into three types; Victim, Accidental and Preventable. But we’re going to discuss other types of crises also, one thing more to bring to attention, one crisis can overlap with other.
Victim Crisis
In the victim crisis, the victim of the situation is the organization itself. The cause of the victim crisis can be any rumour or natural disaster. No one can prevent a victim crisis, as there’s no way of preventing a natural event that can destroy the physical infrastructure of the organization.
As the company isn’t responsible for the crisis but instead a victim itself, there’s no significant threat to the reputation of the company because of the victim crisis.
Accidental Crisis
An accidental crisis happens when the organization is at fault for the accident. The organization didn’t want to cause the crisis intentionally but it took place.
The cause of an accidental crisis can be any product or service failure or any allegations from the consumers. As the brands are at fault in this crisis so accidental crises can cause significant damage to the reputation of the organization.
It’s better to address these crises as soon as possible and get over them.
Preventable Crisis
These crises are caused when a brand takes risks for the betterment and it causes the crisis. The cause of these crises can be any fundraising campaign that went sideways and the company couldn’t fulfil the promises made during the campaign.
These types of crises are so much fatal and can cause serious damage to the brand’s reputation. The situational crisis communication theory is made to deal with these types of crises in a smooth way.
We’ve discussed the main crises mentioned by Timothy Coombs in his situational crisis communication theory, now we’re going to discuss some more crises;
Financial Crisis
Any company face a financial crisis when it faces a significant amount of drop in demand for the company’s products and services. The result is company loses its value in the market and the brand has to look for new sources for generating a good amount of long-term income.
Natural Crisis
Natural crises are difficult to see coming. Before starting any infrastructure, you need to consider all the natural reports about the particular place for the offices. Always build workspaces suitable for all weather crises.
Organizational Crisis
Organizational crises happen when brands start thinking about their own profit instead of focusing on consumers’ needs and user experience. Sometimes it also happens because of the creation of organizational silos i.e. lack of communication between different marketing teams.
Personnel Crisis
A Personnel crisis is caused by the misconduct of a person associated with a brand. To avoid these type of crises the company need to explain the work ethics and mould employees according to the culture of the organization. When the employees will be aligned with the vision and mission of the company they’ll less likely to want to be involved in any unethical or illegal things.
Technological Crisis
Technological crises are because by server failure or issues in the technical system of the organization. Many big companies such as GoDaddy have already faced this crisis. To avoid and prevent this crisis you need to have an excellent technical team on board. So, first, they’ll avoid these types of crises and if anything happens with the system, they’ll be able to remedy the situation in no time.
Social Media Crisis
Discussing errors in judgements or service issues on social media are considered social media crises as sometimes they may escalate into a large crisis.
As we all know social media is a platform where consumers share their opinions and thoughts about something with their friends and families, and it’s also a place where they bring out their frustrations on the brand after facing irregularities in their services or products. This is the reason social media is considered a social listening tool.
So handle your consumers, solve their queries and build a big family of happy consumers!
We’ve discussed all the types of crises including the three main crises described by Timothy Coombs in SCCT.
Now let’s move ahead and discuss what a situational crisis is.
What is a situational crisis?
All the crises that are unexpected, uncontrollable and damageable are considered situational crises. As situational crises pose threats to the reputation of the business, they need to be taken care of as soon as possible and with care.
To handle the situational crisis we need to communicate with the audience. For quick and improved communication situational crisis communicational theory was created.
All the above-mentioned crises are considered situational crises but the 3 are main and most important crises that are victim crisis, accidental crisis, and preventable crisis.
Situational crises can be caused by many issues such as unexpected events, extreme weather events, supply chain issues, defective products, drop and hype in demands, misconduct of employees or management, mishandled customer complaints etc.
So, avoid these things and no crises will happen, but what if we’re unable to avoid them?
Then, the solution is situational crisis communicationtheory (SCCT), now we’ll understand it deeply.
What is situational crisis communication theory?
Situational crisis communication theory is a principle that tells brands how they should respond to a crisis. Response strategies have been described in the SCCT and these response strategies guide brands to communicate quickly and appropriately with audiences to handle a crisis.
There are 4 types of crisis response communication strategies that are Bolster, Deny, Diminish and Rebuild.
These strategies will light your path in times of crisis by showing you the steps for resolving the crisis as quickly and appropriately as possible.
Let’s discuss all of the strategies one by one;
Bolster
Do you like assets? Everyone wants to have assets and bolstering strategy represents the organization as an asset to its stakeholders.
It’s a prominent strategy to be used when a brand is facing a victim crisis. Whenever the brand starts facing a victim crisis, with the help of this strategy you can make your consumers keep firm faith in your organization by appreciating their loyalty and reminding their positive past experiences with the brand.
One more thing to keep in mind, you can use this strategy to handle any type of crisis by combining it with other strategies.
Deny
Is there any moment in your life when you’re being accused of something without any fault, what was your reaction then?
You definitely have resisted the accusations and denied them. Why, because you know you’ve not done any mistake.
You can use this method of denial when your organization is facing some false and invalid accusations or rumours that are harmful.
In this situation, you can confront the accusers claiming that you’re not responsible for anything that is happening that there is no crisis or another party should be blamed for this.
Confronting the accusers will stop the escalation of the crisis but it’ll only work only when your organization is truly at no fault for the situation and save you from rebuilding the relationship with your consumers.
Diminish
If the company is also responsible at some places for the crisis then using the diminish strategy will lower the responsibility of the organization.
This strategy looks a little bit defensive or negligent because the company justify and offers excuses for the actions they’ve taken. That’s why it also should frequently be used in victim crises where a company is not at fault.
It can also be useful in accidental crises only if the company doesn’t have any past crisis history and has had a positive experience with consumers.
Rebuild
The last strategy in situational crisis communication theory is rebuilding. This is best suitable for accidental and preventable crises where the reputation of the company has been severely damaged.
In this strategy, the company first redeem its reputation and then rebuild its relationships with stakeholders.
There’re three steps that are followed in rebuilding strategy;
Taking responsibility for the crisis
Apologizing for the actions
Offering appropriate compensation to the users affected by the outcome of the crisis
It’s also used when the brand has faced similar crises in the past. So, use it to remove negative reputation from the market in the situation of accidental and preventable crises.
We’ve discussed the situational crisis communication theory and 4 response communication strategies to deal with crises.
Now, let’s have a look at the steps for proper use of the SCCT for crises!
Steps for Efficiently Using Situational Crisis Communication Theory
Every business should have a crisis management plan in place so that when they need it they can execute it quickly and appropriately.
Quick and appropriate decision matters so much in a crisis because if the decision wouldn’t quick then it’d be difficult to repair the damages and if the decision wouldn’t appropriate it’d worsen the situation.
You may follow the following steps to build a crisis management plan for your business and always keep it updated with the latest innovations;
Understand and Identify the Crisis
If you’ve started facing a crisis then you first need to categorize it. Identify which type of crisis you’re facing. We know that there are 3 main crises that are victim, accidental, and preventable and so many complementary crises.
Knowing the crisis will help you in building your public communication strategy for different platforms such as a notice on the website, addressing on social media, sending a press release, and organizing a seminar and press conference.
Decide Whom You Want To Address
It depends on you whom you want to address first your stakeholders, employees, consumers or the public.
Deciding will help you in communicating properly and convey the message quickly and appropriately as possible.
Identify Your Strategy and Goal
We’ve discussed four strategies that are bolster, deny, diminish and rebuild in the situational crisis communication theory. You need to identify on the basis of the crisis which strategy is going to work for your brand.
Alongside this, you need to define the goals you want to achieve by implementing those strategies. If we have already defined the goals we can measure the success of the situational crisis communication theory campaigns.
Take suggestions from your employees and trusted consultants
Taking suggestions from your employees and trusted consultants can show you a better path to overcome the crisis in a way you can never think of.
Brainstorm with the people who’ve dealt with similar crises having better analytical skills and insights or consultants who have had similar experiences in crisis management.
This will help you in building proper communication messaging with methods of proper execution of the plan.
Send E-mail to all associated consumers
As we’ve determined communication strategy and messaging, it’s time to send an email to all the associated consumers with the crisis that will show consumers your spontaneity in solving the crisis.
They’ll be aware of the efforts you’re putting to overcome the crisis, and they’ll feel satisfied and fearless that it’ll get over soon.
You can also provide the details of your support team for any questions the consumers want to ask the brand related to the crisis.
Launch a Press Conference and Press Release
Launching a press conference and publishing a press release will make your consumers aware of the real situations the brand is facing instead of just rumours.
You can include every small and significant detail in the press conference and press release. Include the reason behind the crisis, what is the crisis, how you’re dealing with the crisis, and how much time will it take to solve the problem or compensations if you’re offering.
Put a Notice on All Marketing Platforms of the Brand such as Social Media and the Website
Putting a notice on social media platforms and websites will make aware of your existing and previous consumers about the situation.
Put a clear message about the crisis and the steps you’ve taken to deal with it. You can also mention the compensation offered to all the affected consumers.
Benefits of SCCT and Situational Crisis Management Plan
If you’ve already determined a situational crisis management plan then you’ll be able to ensure a smoother and quick crisis response.
Having a plan in place can also save you a lot of time and provide peace of mind in times of crisis. Here are some of the major benefits SCCT can provide to your organization;
Having a management plan beforehand
Understanding the situation and types of crisis
Quick and Appropriate response in no time
Saving time and providing peace of mind by having a management plan
Smooth communication through the right marketing platforms
Don’t let you panic in times of crisis
Offering apologizes and compensation to only targeted and affected audiences
Counting the benefits of situational crisis communication theory, there’s a lot, right? You can also get these benefits in times of crisis if you’ve already followed situational crisis communication theory and built a management plan for times of crisis.
Now, let’s wrap up this blog!
Conclusion
Most crises are unexpected and they can make a lot of damage to the brand’s infrastructure and reputation if not dealt with properly. To handle the crisis quick, well and professionally a situational crisis communication theory was developed that provides a great chance of recovering from the crisis in no time and with fewer efforts.
Situational crisis communication theory is also referred to as SCCT and was developed by Timothy Coombs to handle the crisis and build a quick and appropriate response plan and messaging.
You can properly communicate and convey your messages with the help of SCCT if your business is facing such situations.
Are you going to build a crisis management plan for your brand? Please do let us know in the comment section what thoughts are coming to your mind about your brand by reading this article!
Empathy in marketing is such a great state of having the power of understanding the perspective of another person’s feelings and emotions as if they are your own.
Have you ever experienced it?
I’m sure everyone has experienced it once in a while. Will you like to listen to a short story to understand it better and how I came to know about empathy?
One day one of my knowns called me, I haven’t talked to that person for many months. But he called me and asked for my help. I listened to his problem and helped him even though I barely know him. Here, I had two options either not to help or to help him. I chose the second one.
This is not an issue if it happens with you once in a while, but it happened with me every time, and I couldn’t say no to anyone at least once.
One day I was talking to someone, that person is in the field of healing, and I told her why this happens to me every time, and why I can’t control myself. She told me I’m an Empath and it’s natural for me but it’s not natural for everyone.
Then, I started digging about it and came to know that we use empathy in our daily lives, and because of having empathy in me I helped those people.
Some People use empathy to ask for help even though they don’t need help, it’s for us to determine whether is it the right decision to help or not.
You can take the right decision only when you know about empathy in depth. Even I myself started identifying who need my help and who doesn’t. So, let’s explore empathy in marketing more and take the right decision!
What is Empathy in Marketing?
Empathy is a vast concept in the field of marketing. In simple words, Empathy is the power of understanding what someone else is going through. It enables a person to see the world from another person’s perspective.
Marketers use common words for elaborating empathy in marketing such as, “Empathy is all about putting yourself in your audience’s shoes”.
Two well-known psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have classified Empathy into three aspects;
Cognitive Empathy
Cognitive Empathy is also called perspective-taking. In cognitive empathy, you’re only aware of the emotional state of other people. Cognitive Empathy gives you the power to get to know how another person is feeling and what he/she might be thinking at the moment. In this situation, you only have a perspective, so it’s called perspective-taking.
You can build your perspective through several means such as conducting audience research, social media listening etc. You can know what your consumers are feeling just by observing and listening to your consumers without engaging with them.
Emotional Empathy
We took the perspective of other people in cognitive empathy, but emotional empathy moves one step ahead. It’s the state of empathy where you start feeling the emotions that the next person is feeling. It happens because you start engaging with the person to share those emotions.
If you start experiencing the emotions your target audience is feeling, you can optimize the brand messaging according to the emotions.
Compassionate Empathy
Compassionate Empathy is balanced between cognitive and emotional empathy. Compassionate empathy gives you the power to not only understand the perspective but also feel the emotions that other persons are feeling. And this empathy allows people to help spontaneously when another person is in need of something.
I hope you’ve understood everything about empathy. I would like to put light on sympathy also. In both sympathy and empathy, we understand the thoughts and emotions from the point of view of that person who’s facing the situation rather than our own.
As we know in empathy we feel the emotions of another person, but in sympathy, we keep an emotional distance from the person who’s facing the situation.
Sympathy is just about understanding, not feeling those emotions, and a sympathizer will not be willing to help as much as an empathizer will.
I hope now you understand empathy, and how sympathy works. One more thing I would like to bring to attention, empathy doesn’t happen naturally for a lot of people.
If you know a little bit about marketing, you can easily incorporate it into your marketing strategies. Empathy is the way of building strong relationships with your target audiences through connecting on a deeper level with them.
Know Your Customers and Be Sensitive with their Reality
Knowing your customers is the first step in every marketing strategy. Research in the marketing, and build customer personas according to them. One more thing while performing research is to be sensitive to the reality of your consumers. As we all know that empathetic marketing is all about strengthening relationships with consumers through feeling their thoughts and emotions. It can all become possible if you’re being sensitive to the emotions and reality of your consumers. Knowing your consumers will allow you to understand the emotions your target audience is resonating with. Thorough market research will provide you with information about the needs, desires, pain points, problems, concerns, fears, and frustrations they’re facing. Ready to perform market research now?
Tell your customer what they want to know
Nowadays customers are becoming more enthusiastic and eager to know about secret recipes, resources, and whatever that’s happening behind the scenes. That’s why most of the brands you’ve seen sharing behind-the-scenes videos on their marketing platforms and this is happening most in the film industry. You must have seen many actors, directors, and producers sharing behind-the-scenes content. Are you ready to share behind the scene content?
Tell Origin Story of Brand and Let Customers Know Why You Exist
Telling your origin story will let your consumers know about your vision, mission, goals and the impact you want to put on the world through your brand. The essence of the brand is the values a brand is associated with. Show your brand’s purpose and values in a way so that users can connect with you on an emphatic level.
Put Yourself into Your Audiences’ Shoes to think like your customers
You need to start to think like your customers and for this, you need to put yourself in your audiences’ shoes. The best way to put yourself into your audience’s shoes is to listen to what they’re saying about your brand without reacting. It’ll help you in understanding the things your target audience is struggling with. Once you understand their pains, needs and desires, you can provide them with customized solutions to fulfil their needs and solve their problems. Always remember emphatic marketing is all about solving and fulfilling consumers’ problems, so build products to fulfil consumers’ requirements, not yourself.
Educate your customers
Education is what empowers all of us in several aspects. Educating your target audiences can be a great emphatic move you can incorporate into your marketing strategies. If you’re providing educational content to solve your consumers’ problems, then whenever they need answers to their problems, they’ll look at your brand to solve the problems. This way you can establish yourself as a problem-solver in the market.
Make your marketing interactive
Making marketing interactive helps you and your audiences to build strong relationships with each other. There are many ways of making your marketing interactive such as quizzes, and giveaways. Always make your interactive content as simple as possible. As simple as the process will be as much as the interactions you’ll get for your brand.
Tell Your Customers’ Stories
Customer Stories are a great way to incorporate empathy into your marketing strategies. As we all know, people want to see themselves in marketing materials, and customer stories are the places where customers can see their own struggles and problems along with the solutions to overcome those stressful situations. If you want to learn more about storytelling then read about it on our blog “Storytelling: Tell the Story of Your Brand”.
Use UGC to honour your customers
Sharing user-generated content makes your brand a responsible and caring one in front of your consumers. User-generated content can be of different types such as a collage, a review, or anything valuable information that has been generated by a consumer. It is a strong tool for building brand connections with consumers as users will only create content if they’re very much satisfied with your products or services. You can also say your users to develop content for your brand by announcing brand contests, giveaways etc. You will also be able to expand your reach by tagging your users.
Give Customers Useful Content
Since when marketers have identified the potential of content marketing, they’re putting so much content as a publishing machine. This type of content lacks empathetic context. Brands are focussing on producing so much content without paying attention to its usefulness, and value. All of this has created a state of content shock that means the content is not going to work anymore.
Is it so? Then, why are marketers still developing content?
Is there any way to overcome the situation of content shock?
Yes, there’s a solution, if you’re developing content keeping the context in mind using empathetic language along with solving the problems of your consumers with your useful and valuable content, then you’ve won the match. The state of content shock isn’t going to affect your business if you’re creating customer-centric content and helping your consumers to move on the right paths with your valuable resources.
Be authentic and Clear with No Confusion
Provide authentic content to your audiences with a clear and single message in one campaign. If you’re not having a clear conversation, it’ll create confusion and repel your audiences which will end up in losing consumers or loyalty. Do you want to lose the loyalty of your audiences? If not, then provide authentic content as much as possible. And even if your products or services are complex, their description should be clear and concise with a single message.
Empathetic Language in Branding Materials
Using empathetic language in your marketing materials, messaging and stories will help you in connecting with your consumers on an emotional level. This way you can build a strong relationship with your consumers in no time.
Improve UX of the Website
User experience and user interface tell so much about the brand. User experience tells how your brand is treating consumers, and user interface tells how much your brand understands your target audience. If you know your consumers very well, then you can improve both UX and UI in no time.
Listen and Observe closely to Map Buyer Motivation and Evolve
Listening empathetically and observing closely will give you deeper insights into your consumers. With the help of empathetic listening, you can get to know about the implied assumptions, beliefs and motivations behind what a consumer is talking about. To map your buyer’s motivations you should personally meet them only when you’ll be able to understand the context and nonverbal things such as feelings and behaviour.
Develop Personalized Conversations
Conversations are more natural than any other marketing strategy, and there is also so much value in understanding other person’s problems and solving them. Being so powerful conversations have a big role in therapy. Even one of our clients has named his whole initiative conversations, you can visit his web platform by clicking here. In the same way, conversations are also playing a wide role in marketing, and marketing through conversations is called conversational marketing.
Conversations work in a slow but effective way and contain so many empathetic values, so first invite your consumers, then listen to them as people want to be listened to, converse with them and at last when they’ve established good communication with them you may recommend products and services of your brand without hesitating. Be focused on developing conversations more rather than running campaigns.
Help Others with Your Services instead of selling them
Helping others with your services will also help you in return in terms of return on investments. And we should always try to help consumers with our services and products. But One thing to keep in mind is if you genuinely want to help people only then it’ll work as we subconsciously can tell if the next person is genuinely willing to help or not, so consumers will recognize if you’re faking for the sake of sales.
Provide Exceptional Value
Providing exceptional value through your brand’s messaging, marketing materials, content, and conversations will help you in establishing authority in your domain. So, be focused on consumers’ needs, and solving their problems.
Give them a positive experience
Providing a positive experience to your consumers will push them to get back to you for advice and guidance in future in the domain you’re providing services and products. It will help you in building retainer clients. So, if you’re willing to retain your clients, then your consumer experience should be positive, genuine and unique.
Well, I hope we’ve covered every tip related to empathetic marketing. Now, let’s discuss some of the benefits we can get by implementing empathetic marketing.
Benefits of Empathetic Marketing Strategy
Benefits are what everyone looks for. Implementing empathetic marketing has thousands of benefits in which some following;
Using empathetic language will help you in establishing yourself as an authority in your domain
Your consumers will start listening to you as you’ll be addressing their problems, and solving them with your solutions.
Empathy in marketing will strengthen your consumers’ trust in your brand.
Empathy in marketing will help you in building more brand advocates in no time and with no extra effort.
It simplifies conversations with more deep insights.
There is an easy generation of leads with the help of empathy in marketing.
Empathy in marketing nurtures your relationships with your consumers in a genuine way connecting with them on an emotional level
I hope empathy has the power to provide everything you need from your marketing campaigns. Now, let’s conclude this blog!
Wrapping Up
People want to share their thoughts, emotions and feeling with others and empathetic marketing provides them with an opportunity to share these things as empathetic marketing is all about putting yourself in consumers’ shoes and understanding the above-mentioned things.
After the pandemic, people need more support on an emotional and mental level and they want to be heard and understood, you can cash this opportunity through empathetic marketing.
Start with understanding your audiences first, and feeling what they’re feeling, then establishing conversations with them along with following the tips mentioned in the blog. At last, you can recommend products and services to them. This way the number of retainer clients will increase drastically.
We would love to know in the comment section how you’re going to incorporate empathy in marketing. If you’ve any questions and want the help of the DigiAvtar Teamto build your empathetic marketing strategy then Connect with Us.
The marketing field is an ever-evolving and dynamic field. We’ve to adapt according to the market. There are many aspects of marketing but marketing always revolves around consumers, products, services and channels of marketing.
Understanding consumers is the first and foremost aspect of marketing, moving ahead with promotions without understanding our target consumers will be like shooting in the dark.
Do you want to shoot in the dark?
I hope not!
So, first, understand your buyers through several aspects and then create the profiles of your target audiences. The profiles of potential consumers are called buyer personas.
But here we’re not talking about how to create buyer personas, if you want to read more about buyer personas visit the blog “Marketing Persona | 3 Important Tips for Creating Customer Persona” written by Team DigiAvtar. DigiAvtar is the best digital marketing agency in Gurugram and provides complete digital marketing solutions to start-ups and small business owners.
When you visit the blog you’ll find out that a buyer persona is made up of several elements such as professional details, geographic, behavioural data, firmographics, demographics and psychographics.
All the elements play their parts, but when it comes to psychographics in marketing they make the conversion process smoother.
It may happen with you that you’re targeting the right audiences and getting traffic with a few interactions but the transactions aren’t taking place, then you are definitely not making use of psychographics in your marketing campaigns.
Psychographics helps you in providing tailored relevant content according to the needs and goals of your consumers.
Want to convert your prospects into customers and make the best use of psychographics in marketing then this blog is only for you.
Psychographics is the key to understanding what consumers buy, why they buy it and how they buy it. If you know the answers to these questions, then you can provide our consumers with tailored solutions and grow our businesses in no time.
You can see that the word psychographics is relating to psychology, so in other words, psychographics can be taken as the psychological study of consumers. This psychological study examines consumers with several aspects such as attitudes, personalities, interests, opinions, values, and lifestyle.
Psychographics Factors
Let’s discuss the most important and powerful Psychographics Factors;
Beliefs Systems show the beliefs consumers believe in. Remember one thing about belief systems, don’t ever try to break the people’s existing beliefs instead work on creating new beliefs.
Attitude is a psychological construct. It involves mindset, outlook, and feelings.
Opinions show the ideas a person is having about something or someone. Opinions are based on feelings and beliefs.
Personality characteristics determine the way a person interacts with the environment all around them. These can be of several types such as introverted vs extroverted, spontaneous vs planner, emotional vs logical, creative vs “by-the-books” and idealistic vs pragmatic.
Habits represent the things and activities a person has been accustomed to.
Social Class are also another factor in buying decisions. In India, some of the widely used words regarding social classes are lower middle class, lower class, middle class, upper middle class, and upper class.
Interests show what kinds of products a consumer is willing to buy. Common interests are shared by a particular target audience.
Behavioural data represent time spent, buying patterns, product usage and benefits. It’s become wider nowadays and has a particular segment in marketing. During the development of buyer personas, behavioural data is also collected separately.
Lifestyle is the way of living a life. It is all about regarding the ways a consumer is treating relationships and making life choices.
Values are individual beliefs. This decides the way people live and work and motivate them to act one way or another. They also give a sense of right or wrong according to you.
So, you’ve seen the most important psychographic factors, now let’s explore more in this blog!
We include several aspects while creating marketing personas, but demographics and psychographics are the most basic aspects of the buyer persona.
So, let’s discuss how psychographics and demographics are different from each other, and how they can be used in marketing!
Difference between Psychographics and Demographics
Psychographics and demographics complement each other and base elements of buyer personas. The combo of information from both of them does a better job in audience segmentation and targeting your audiences. It also helps in positioning the brand products and services in your marketing campaigns.
Demographics data is about the sociological aspects and structure of the audiences, but psychographics covers psychological and cognitive attributes such as opinions, interests and the reasoning behind the customers’ actions.
Demographics can help you in understanding and drive consumers to your brands, but to really understand your audiences and get in the heads of your consumers, you’ll need psychographic data.
Demographic data include;
Age
Name
Gender
Race
Religious Belief
Ethnicity
Income
Occupations
Employment Status
Social Class
Educational Level
Marital Status
Psychographic data include;
Goals
Interests
Attitudes
Personalities
Values
Lifestyles
Biases
Prejudices
Belief Systems
We’ve seen what different types of data demographics and psychographics include, I hope now you understand how both complement each other. Psychographics focuses on understanding cognitive factors. These cognitive factors drive consumer behaviours. That’s why psychographics have a big place along with demographics while creating a potential consumer profile.
When we create a profile based on demographic elements, it’s called a “demographics profile” but when we create a profile based on psychographic elements then it’s called a “psychographics profile”.
The best user persona is made-up of the combo of demographics and psychographics along with geographic, firmographics, and behavioural data. Firmographics are so much important for Account Based Marketing (ABM).
We’ve discussed the difference between psychographics and demographics, now let’s understand some of the best marketing strategies that are built on this marketing segment psychographics.
Some of the powerful and the best marketing strategies based on psychographics
We know that market is segmented into different parts that are Demographics such as age, gender, income, and marital status; Geographic such as Local, Regional, Global, National, and International; Behavioural data such as benefits, patterns, spent time, usage rates and Psychographics data such as activities, attitudes, values, personalities, belief systems.
Based on this market segmentation, many marketing strategies have been built to target consumers and grow businesses.
Some of the powerful and best marketing strategies are;
Storytelling Marketing
Storytelling marketing is a very popular marketing strategy, but do you know it uses human psychology? Everyone remembers a story because the brain makes so much sense of narratives.
When we associate social or environmental causes with a business, people take that business as a responsible one. Adding a cause to the brand fulfils the brand’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) along with increased sales and revenue. This all becomes possible because brands are able to tap into people’s emotions with a cause.
Read more about cause-related marketing and cause-related marketing examples in India in our blog on “Cause Marketing”.
Personalized Marketing
We all want to feel special, don’t you? Personalized marketing is all about providing a completely exclusive customized experience for consumers. The feeling of exclusiveness makes consumers loyal to the brands. If a brand is able to provide a consistent exclusive experience then the consumers also start advocating for it.
Human beings only take 0.146 seconds to react to a sound. Incorporating sound into your brand’s marketing material can make your brand recognizable and memorable along with improved user experience. Sonic branding is the right way to add sound to your brands in different ways such as sonic logos, sonic signatures etc.
We’ve seen some of the most powerful marketing strategies that use psychographics. There are more marketing strategies that are based on human psychology and tapping into emotions through psychographics. You can comprehend now how much psychographics is important in marketing.
Now let’s understand the ways of collecting psychographic data and using it for marketing purposes;
Ways of Collecting Psychographics Data
Collecting psychographic data is the first thing we need to do to run any marketing campaigns with the help of psychographics. For collecting the data we can make use of several methods;
Focus Groups
These are the groups of potential clients for a guided discussion about a product or service. People are carefully selected and demographically diverse. A strong facilitator can is the best chance in exposing future products and campaigns to collect the consumers’ reactions without getting avoided in the crowd.
Modern Analytics Tools
There are many modern analytics tools in marketing that can provide you with powerful psychographic insights. Google Analytics is also one of the completely free and powerful tools that can provide you reports about the behaviour and other aspects with the different types of reports such as acquisition reports, and behavioural data reports.
Interviewing existing Clients
Interviewing existing clients is a win-win situation for both clients as well as businesses. Clients can get more visibility and businesses can get insights into the products and services.
Market Research
You can perform market research on companies that are working in similar niches and have already carried out similar research. You can also extract data from their reports and resources
Online Surveys
Creating the best online survey asks for the right questions. If you’re conducting an online survey then your questions should be appropriate and the survey shouldn’t exceed more than 5 minutes. People will provide time for online surveys but if it’s time taking then they leave immediately.
Online Quizzes
Online quizzes are a little bit different than surveys, these are valuable for consumers also. So, they’ll be more likely to take quizzes.
Browsing Data
Browsing data also tells what types of products and service experiences consumers are looking for.
Social Media
SMM Platforms also work as listening tools. Likes, clicks, tweets, shares, and time spent on SMM platforms provides us with a lot of data about psychographics.
Online surveys and quizzes are the most scalable methods for collecting psychographic data. We’ve seen many different ways of collecting psychographic data, now let’s move forward in
Benefits of Psychographics in Marketing
There are a lot of benefits psychographics provide in marketing, and I would say most of the conversion that happens nowadays in the marketing field is because of using psychographics as an element of the marketing strategies.
In creating more refined social media audiences
Writing emotional and more compelling ad copies
Enhancing A/B testing
Marking new content ideas.
Improving conversion
Generating more sales and revenue
Establishing brand and brand values
Targeted and Relevant Email Marketing
Making brand messaging more effective and compelling
Motivating Buyers based on their beliefs, needs, and lifestyle
Targeted based on their interests
Meeting the consumers where they’re spending time
Creating tailored “Call to Actions” for increased sales
Thus, you’ve seen how psychographics help in marketing, and how you can get benefitted including psychographics in your marketing strategies.
Now, let’s conclude the blog here!
Wrapping Up
Psychographics are the base elements of buyer personas and helps in conversions. Without the use of psychographics in your marketing materials your conversion rates will be nominal but with psychographics, the conversions rates will be phenomenal.
Some marketers classify psychographics mainly into three types such as interests, activities and opinions. Some others classify it in several psychographic factors that we’ve already discussed above.
Psychographics helps you in understanding and know your consumers on a deeper level. It lets you know from where and how you acquire your consumers. For making the best use of psychographics follow the simple 3 steps;
Collect the data from several resources
Create psychographic profiles based on that data
Optimize your marketing materials according to the psychographic profiles
We would love to hear how you’re going to incorporate psychographics in your branding materials. Let us know in the comment sections if you also have any more questions regarding it.
Before understanding what is marketing for introverts, first, let’s understand properly what an introvert is.
What is an introvert?
An introvert is a quiet, thoughtful and reserved individual person who prefers calm, minimally stimulating environments. Introverted people limit their social engagement and prefer to be in solitude.
When they interact with people around them they feel drained, that is why they keep limited social engagement with people around them. There’s a misconception that introvert personalities prefer to be alone always and dislike people, but it is not like this, by going into solitude they recharge themselves for interacting again with people when it’s time.
On the other hand, extroverts are just the opposite personalities of introverts. Extroverts feel drained while being alone but prefer so much social engagement with others.
Is there any way to check if you’re an introvert or not?
Yes, there’re many ways and psychological tests that can help you in identifying your personality. Let me tell you one of the famous tests to identify your personality.
Based on 5 different factors such as mind, energy, nature, tactics, and identity one of the leading platforms named “16personalities” has divided the personalities into 16 different personality types.
We know now what an introvert is, and how you can identify your personality type.
Now, let’s understand what marketing for introverts means and whether is marketing a viable option for introverts!
What does marketing for introverts mean?
We know that marketing needs social interactions and we also know that introverts don’t prefer social interactions. Does it mean that marketing for introverts is a full stop?
No, not preferring social interactions doesn’t mean they dislike marketing and introverts are not a good fit for marketing.
But marketing for introverts simply means stopping comparing yourself to extroverts.
Most people think that marketing is a field made for only extroverts. Only extroverted marketers can harness the power of marketing.
But there’re a lot of things in marketing that only introverts can do perfectly such as analysing the campaigns, performing marketing research, building buyer personas, determining the potential of the business, better at social media listening and creatively running successful campaigns.
You can be relaxed now as a lot of tasks are there in the field of marketing that can only be efficiently performed by an introverted marketer.
Now, you can yourself answer the question, is marketing a viable option for introverts?
Definitely, it is!
From my personal experience also I can say that marketing is a good fit for introverts.
I’m also an introvert person and I also like to prefer being alone but I’ve friends from all over the world now. I discuss ideas, share insights and much more with them.
If you can remember we’ve mentioned earlier in this blog about a personality test provided by 16personalities. I also took that test and I’m sharing some of my test results with you;
As you can see in the picture my personality type is Turbulent Logician (INTP-T) and I am 94% introverted, still, I’m one of the CoFounder of DigiAvtarMarketing Solutions LLP. DigiAvtar is a digital marketing agency situated in Gurugram (India) providing complete digital marketing solutions to businesses for digitalising them for their exponential growth.
You can see even though I am having a 94% introverted mindset and still, I’m working in the marketing field. If I can achieve this then you also definitely can.
Being an introvert provides you with several superpowers such as;
Intuition
Intuition is like a super-power. People use meditation and affirmations to lean towards intuition. When you’ll study chakras, you’ll find out that intuition is the power of the third eye. So, people focus on third eye activation to become more intuitive. Intuition makes a person a good listener and provides a heightened sense of awareness of the environment. As it is said only a good listener can be a good speaker.
Introvert marketers need to practice intuition to use it efficiently in marketing. They can use it is taking business decisions such as whom to hire and to work with or with whom to collaborate in business.
Creative
Introverts are quite creative as they spend time with themselves. And most creative ideas struck the mind when we’re spending time with ourselves.
Some of the most preferred creative work for introverts include designing, photography, illustrations, writing, analysis, prediction-related tasks etc.
Good Listener and Thinker
We already know that introverts a lot of time spend with themselves recharging and thinking. People like to share ideas and want that others will listen to them. But, in the same way, extroverted marketers also want to speak.
Here, introverted marketers fit in the marketplace, they listen to their consumers first being attentive, and then they reply to their queries with the help of the same phrases they’ve used during the conversations. This capability of listening makes them a good fit for the market.
In other words, we can say that introvert marketers are good at conversational marketing because they can have a high-quality conversation with their audiences.
Techniques and Job Roles Performed By Introvert Marketers
We’ve seen how an introverted marketer can impart a big role in the establishment of a brand and the success of marketing strategies. But choosing the right role is the most crucial and important thing for an introverted marketer. Now, let’s see what techniques and job roles are best fitted for an introverted marketer;
Content Marketing
Becoming a content marketer and developing high-quality content is easy for introverted marketers. As we know that content is an umbrella term that contains blog posts, newsletters, emails, infographics, short animations, podcasts etc. For more content marketing and lead magnet ideas, you can visit our blog on “Content Marketing”
As while developing content we need peace of mind and solitude and both are the friends of an introvert marketer, so becoming a content marketer can be a good option for you. Content marketing is the most important factor for the establishment of any business to a brand. Content marketing gives power to other marketing strategies such as conversational marketing and inbound marketing strategies that are dependent on content.
Social Media
Social Media Marketer is one who knows in and out about social media platforms. We also spend a lot of time on social media platforms. Click here to know more about the 9 most popular social media platforms.
Social media are the best fit to showcase your company’s reputation, products, and services and share company news. Social media platforms also work as a listening tool that provides us with insights about brands. Social Media Platforms tell you what people think about our brand.
You can write about company news, important events, giveaways, brand products, and brand services on social media platforms with the help of different types of engaging content such as posts and short animations.
SEO
Search engine optimisation specialist is the next job role where introverts can try their luck and make a career. Search engine optimisation is all about optimising platforms such as websites, content, and image for appearing higher on search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO isn’t just a one-time job, we need to put consistent efforts to make the SEO work for the growth of the brand. When we put the effort into SEO, it gives us organic and quality results.
Research Analyst
Market research is a must and foremost thing we need to perform in marketing. Being intrusive, introverted marketers are able to better understand and analyse the insights.
Marker researchers collect the data from the market in several ways such as surveys, forms, and so on. This data is based on different factors such as psychographics, demographics, and behavioural. After collecting the data market researcher build buyer personas and decide the target audience.
Their world isn’t just limited to building buyer personas, but whenever we need analysis in any marketing campaigns, marketer researchers fulfil requirements. They analyse and then provide insights to optimise any marketing campaign.
We’ve seen different types of job roles an introvert can play in the field of digital marketing. Some other fields can be considered as;
Blogger
Vlogger
CopyWriter
SEM Specialist
Marketing Specialist
Marketing Consultant
So, we can see that even after having intrusion qualities an introvert can perform several tasks and make a promising career in the field of digital marketing.
Now, let’s discuss some best practices that need to remember in marketing for introverts.
Best Practices in Marketing for Introverts
We know that being an introvert doesn’t mean that you dislike connecting with others but your energy operates in a distinct way, and you need solitude to recharge yourself. Best practices come in handy as a checklist on what to do and what not to do, here is a list of some of the best practices an introvert should keep in mind to be a skilled and successful marketer;
Work where and in which field you want to, it’ll save your energy, and you’ll not get drained so soon.
Start and Move Slowly, as we know that introverts are not addicted to social and personal engagement, so start connecting with a few people, then move ahead slowly. In the same way, only after mastering a particular field in the digital marketing space, you should move on to the next.
Choose the Most Suitable Way of Communication: communication is what comes to mind when we hear about the word marketing. Directly communicating with others can be so much exhausting for an introvert. So, first, you can chat with your audiences on social media platforms or through chatbots, then if you find it comfortable talking with someone you can communicate with them directly.
Schedule Your Work Before Days: It’s better to decide what you need to perform tomorrow than to think about it after tomorrow morning. It’ll save your time, and your mind will be ready for the tasks.
Fix Your Appointment Timings: It’s better to have a timing fixed for appointments, this way you can save yourself from draining out of energy. You can also use google my business for this information as GMB provide an option for business hours. For better understanding, you can also have a look at the GMB of DigiAvtar!
Incorporate Inbound Marketing and Post the Details on the Website: Inbound marketing is all about people coming to the brand for finding answers to their problems. We should also post information about everything on the website such as visiting hours, services, products, frequently asked questions etc. This information will educate people about everything your brand is all about.
Make Use of Social Media: Social media is a great tool for connecting your target audiences and listening to them. Any introvert who feels uncomfortable directly connecting with the audiences can connect through SMM Platforms.
Email Marketing is the #BFF (Best Friend Forever): Email marketing is the BFF for introverts. You should send targeted and valuable emails to the users. Always remember don’t try to spam by sending bulk emails, but send quality emails that can add value to the lives of your consumers.
Know Your Limits: It’s better to know how much you can endure. You should be aware that only a particular number of hours you can devote to someone in a meeting. Once you start feeling drained just leave the meeting. Because if you don’t you would not be able to work on the next day, as you know you need time to recharge.
Be Natural: Don’t try to go against your nature and limits. Pushing your limits will end you up with lower efficiency which will be the cause of frustration. This way it’ll be suffocating for you to work on something, and you’ll feel that you’re not going anywhere in your life. So, whether you are an introvert or extrovert, always try to sharpen your natural skills. If you’re able to do so, you’ll be unique in your field.
Give Communication Personal Touch: Psychology says that when we hear someone attentively they feel positive and relaxed, this shows that they’re trusting us. So, first, listen to your consumers the consumers what they want to convey and expect from you. After listening, address them with their name, they’ll feel better because according to psychology people want to hear their name. You should also address them by their name even in the middle of the conversations.
So, we’ve seen the best practices we need to keep in mind for becoming a successful and unique introverted marketer. I hope this blog has covered everything you need to know about marketing for introverts. Now, let’s summarize it with some important facts.
Wrapping Up
After reading this blog, you can see that marketing for introverts isn’t a dream and out-of-the-question type situation. Introverts can be great marketers if they are able to focus their energy on the fields they’re best suited for along with capitalizing on strengths. Managing energy and using it where needed is the key to success in marketing for introverts.
Find where you can work naturally without draining so much of your energy, aligning with the methods and field you’re naturally good at will keep you filled with excitement and energy.
Introverts are good at playing with data, and good listeners with patience, creativity and problem-solving. All these qualities make them great problem solvers, analysts, innovators and researchers.
Introverted marketers should always focus on low-interaction methods of marketing. Low interaction methods demand the lowest direct engagement with the target audiences, these are;
Conversing with someone let you open up about your ideas, dreams, and needs in front of that person. When we start a conversation with people we start engaging in those talks and start building an understanding of the wants, problems, and goals of the people.
If we’ve something that can help people in solving their problems and achieving their wants and goals, we’d definitely recommend that thing to people.
What if we can use this method in marketing? It can make a great impact in the field of marketing, right?
You know most hypnotherapists, psychotherapists, and psychologists use conversation to heal the wounds of people. It’s a very good therapy, when you start sharing you start healing. Let me share with you something, one of our clients Mohit Verma has named his digital platform “Conversations”, and Mohit Verma has named his online platform Conversations. You can visit the website and look for yourself how much conversations are important and how powerful they can be!
So, let’s move ahead and get to know conversational marketing in detail along with its strategy and benefits of it!
What is Conversational Marketing?
Conversational Marketing is all about making communication at every step of the whole sales process conversational. Any form of two-way communication can be counted as a part of a conversational marketing strategy. It is based on real-time 1-to-1 interactions across the platforms.
As we’ve already discussed that conversing with someone is the heart of conversational marketing, so it’s a dialogue-driven approach that moves website visitors through the customer journey using real-time two-way engaging communication.
Is inbound marketing and conversational marketing the same?
After everything we’ve gone through don’t you think conversational marketing is looking like an inbound marketing strategy?
But, they’re not the same, instead, conversational marketing is a part of the inbound marketing strategy. Conversational marketing is about starting conversations, understanding the buyers’ perspective, recommending the products and services to the buyers and making improvements after getting feedback.
Starting Conversations
Engaging with the Audiences
Understanding the wants, problems, and goals of buyers
Recommending Products and services based on the insights
Getting Feedback
Making Improvements and Repeat the Process
So, we’ve seen how conversational marketing works, we just need to start the conversations, and build relationships with the clients. Engaging with your audiences is the best way of building ever-lasting strong relationships with your audiences.
Want to know how to build these relationships with the help of a solid and successful conversational marketing strategy?
Let’s get started with the strategy!
How to develop a solid and successful conversational marketing strategy?
If you want to build a solid and successful conversational marketing strategy for your brand, you should first understand what conversational marketing is all about and what happens in conversational marketing!
Building a successful marketing strategy becomes a piece of cake when we’ve studied thoroughly the particular marketing strategy.
Build a conversation starter
Building a conversation starter is the first step toward the success of conversational marketing campaigns. A conversation starter can be anything that enables users to start the conversation. As we know now that conversational marketing is an essential part of inbound marketing strategy, and inbound marketing strategy focuses on developing the different types of content that users are looking for. So, any type of content marketing idea that can start the conversation can be a conversation starter. Some of the most used conversation starters are;
Landing Pages
Surveys
Events either virtual or in-person
Social Media Posts
Valuable Targeted Emails
Webinars
Seminars
Video
Testimonials
Frequently Asked Questions
You can see choose yourself what type of conversation starter you want to make for your brand. Choose the best suitable one for yourself and your brand. To start the conversation most of the brands use a toggle button at the bottom left or right-hand corner of the website. This encourages users to start a conversation with a brand.
Making a Simpler Consumer Journey
The consumer journey lets you know about all the phases a consumer passes from an unknown person to becoming a faithful consumer. You need to keep it simple and short. As simple and short will the consumer journey be as likely the chances of conversion will be. A simpler consumer journey helps both brands as well as consumers.
Choose Your Channels
You need to choose you channels you will use for conversational marketing. It’s not an easy task to maintain the platforms and be consistent and engaged with the users on a platform. So, if you’re targeting every platform, you’re not targeting everything.
Determine on which platforms your target audiences are spending time, and target only those top platforms. It’ll save your resources and time, and management will be easier for you.
You’ll be easily able to manage those platforms and be successful in establishing a long-term personalized connection with your target audiences.
Define the wants, problems and goals of consumers
If you don’t know the wants, problems and goals of the consumer, you wouldn’t be able to make the conversations personalized and the campaign wouldn’t be that much effective as it should be. So, not in just conversational marketing strategy, but in every marketing strategy, it is a must to identify the problems, wants, and goals of the consumers for targeted targeting.
Find out the questions and note down the answers and methods of the problems you’re going to solve through your brand.
Couple it with other marketing strategies
Don’t be stubborn and stick with just one marketing strategy, because this way you’re not going to get anything as the end results. Instead, focus on the ways of coupling different marketing strategies in a successful and seamless way. As conversations are dialogues and conversational marketing is a dialogue-driven process of getting sales and generating more revenues.
The personalized experience is all about giving consumers a sense of exclusiveness. We customize the messaging according to different marketing personas and niches. This will help your brand make a strong relationship with the consumers. Want to know about the ways of providing a personalized experience to your consumers?
Read the valuable blog on “Personalized Experience” from DigiAvtar. We, at DigiAvtar, provide complete digital marketing solutions to our clients, and with the help of our blog, we provide valuable readable material on marketing to our readers.
Leverage the marketing tools
Leveraging the tools saves money, time, and effort along with providing none foreseen efficiency in the marketing campaigns. Tools also help you in automating the tasks, so that you’ll be able to converse with your target audiences 24*7. So, we’ve enlisted some of the best conversational marketing tools here;
Lead Capture Tools
After getting started with the conversation, brands engage with their audiences. There are many lead capture tools such as forms, surveys, and newsletters.
Mailchimp also can be a good example of lead capture tools, MailChimp connects the forms to its email marketing software where we can get the leads who signed up through that particular form.
We just need to connect the form with MailChimp through the API Key. Don’t worry it’s an easy task. After capturing leads, MailChimp can also work as an email marketing tool for sending targeted emails to its users.
ChatBots
The Chatbots are pre-written scripts that consist of some questions and answers of them. The questions are included based on previous queries of the users. For providing a better user experience nowadays we’re using AI-powered chatbots. These AI-powered chatbots are using a branch of Artificial Intelligence that is called NLP (Natural Language Processing).
As chatbots are not humans but computer programs, so they are available 24*7 at the service. If you’re not conversing with your audience, then the chatbot will do that for you always available for you. You can also capture the leads with the help of chatbots.
Some of the chatbots tools are;
Drift
Manychat
Chatfuel
Botfuel
Live Chat
Live chat is also another good tool for capturing leads, you can directly connect with your consumer if you’re available with the help of live chat. This is the best way to convey the message of what the brand is standing for and suggest the most suitable product to them.
If any consumer isn’t able to move forward in the sales process and facing difficulties with the system, you can help to solve that with the help of live chat.
Live Video Streaming
For interacting and engaging with your target audiences, live video streaming is the best option. With the help of live video streaming, you can launch your product, or can solve the queries of the users, and can have discussed some topics related to the brands.
Live video streaming also provides users with an exposure to connect with you personally, and it makes them feel how exclusive they are to the business.
Execute the campaigns
We’ve covered everything you can do to make conversational marketing campaigns successful. Now, without thinking so much just execute the campaign.
It doesn’t matter how much knowledge and plans you’ve if you are not going to execute them, so implement and look for insights.
After getting feedback analyse and optimise the campaign
After the successful execution, you need feedback, even the surveys or chatbots, provide a feedback form after the ending of conversations.
Performing an Analysis on feedback will tell you about the stronger and weaker parts of the campaigns. You can focus on parts and content on the strategies where you’ll need improvements and optimise the whole conversational marketing campaign for the next more successful executions.
You’ve seen the ways of using conversational marketing for the profit of the business. Now, let’s discuss some of the major benefits you can get after the successful execution of a conversational marketing strategy!
Benefits of Conversational Marketing
Conversations have a lot of benefits even in a world without marketing. We share ideas, thoughts, and referrals through dialogues. You can think if it can be targeted in the marketing what wonders it can do for the success of a business!
Some of the most expected benefits from conversational marketing are;
More Human and Personalized Consumer Experience
Long-term personal relationships with clients
Pre-programmed Automated 24*7 responses with the help of chatbots that use conditional logic to carry on conversations that seems natural with the help of Natural language processing, an artificial intelligence-powered technology.
Shortens sales process. Pass more buyers through sales funnels at a faster rate building awareness and trust in no time.
Better and customized recommendations to the consumers
Scalable because conversations are scalable
Increase brand loyalty and build brand advocates
You can see the benefits you can get with conversational marketing campaigns. Now, let’s wrap up this blog with some more deep insights about conversations and conversational marketing.
Wrapping up
Conversational marketing is another successful marketing strategy just like word-of-mouth marketing, and inbound marketing strategies. The reason for the success of conversational marketing is the power of conversations.
Conversations are so much power that they can help any person in getting out of any type of trauma. If you share you will heal. In the same way, they impart a big role in understanding the consumer’s goals, wants, requirements, problems, and so much more.
Conversations are more beneficial in marketing if it has been started by consumers. Being started from the consumer’s side, these are so much scalable but for that, we need to be available for consumers 24*7. Being contextual to the consumer’s requirements, needs, goals and problems, these should be personalized because personalized experience is what makes consumers loyal to your brand.
I’m damn sure, you’ve gotten everything you need to start with conversational marketing.
Please do let us know in the comment section how you’re going to use this for your brand!
