Creating an authentic connection between your brand and audience
- EDUCATION
- AUTHOR: KENSHŌ
- DATE: 23 FEB 2022
Knowing your audience is the most important element in effective brand strategy. While this may sound like a simple concept, it often gets lost in all the marketing clutter. Every single piece of communication needs to address the audiences’ needs and interest, otherwise it’s impossible to achieve the desired return on investment.
Marketing agencies in Oman will benefit immensely from completing a thorough audience analysis to determine the target audience, their wants and needs, and most importantly the journey they go through. Journey is an incredibly important aspect in digital marketing – how do we take them through the funnel to generate a lead and convert them into a sale.
Knowing your audience has changed
When a brand starts with marketing efforts, one of the first things that many branding and marketing agencies in Oman do is an audience analysis followed by messaging creation and optimization. However, with digital marketing channels and communication fast becoming the number one audience communication channel – regardless of platform – the personalization that is often expected from brands is missed because brands are still using the tried-and-true methods of audience research and target audience identification. We will go through these below, as knowing your audience remains important; however, today it is more important to create an authentic and genuine connection between brand and audience, to achieve the most impact.
Knowing your audience is vital for your brand, because when your target audience feels like you are speaking to a deep desire, want or need, they feel understood. When you give them a benefit through your product or service, and understand them, your leads and referrals increase. While it sounds overly simplified, there are proven ways to know your audience – old and new.
Most digital marketing agencies in Oman already know the basic way to get to know their audience, and we want to refresh your memory with these four steps that will help your brand determine and tier their target audience.
Step 1: Start with your brand’s current customer
Creating an authentic connection between your brand and audience is essential for success. To start, you should focus on understanding the needs of your current customers. This can be done by gathering feedback from surveys or interviews to get a better idea of what they want out of their experience with your brand. You should also consider creating content that resonates with them such as videos, podcasts, blog posts, etc., in order to build trust and loyalty among them. Finally, it’s important to stay engaged with them through social media platforms like Twitter or Instagram so that you can continue building relationships over time.
Step 2: Consider the demographics
When considering demographics in building your audience profiles, it’s important to remember that there are many points for demographics, and it can get complicated quickly. Instead, try to pick and choose that will most benefit the brand and product. For example, use age, gender, earning bracket and location demographics when determining who the decision maker, buyer and user of your product or service are. However, demographics don’t reveal how your audience feels and how you can connect to them emotionally. So, it’s crucial that your target audience analysis takes demographics a step further to help craft marketing messages and stories that resonate.
Step 3: Research psychographics that help your brand
Psychographics is a step further from demographics as it can tell your brand about the state of mind of your target audience. While with demographics, you learn about the physical state of your target audience, psychographics help determine the mental state of your potential customer – what they are afraid of, what they struggle with and what their hobbies are. These analytics are focused on activities, interests, and opinions, and can guide you to niche platforms where you can reach your target audience, but still cannot help you craft the marketing message, or what the target audience wants to hear.
Step 4: Online data and statistics
Google Analytics and similar tools have made it easier to see where your target audience is coming from (platforms), which pages they are visiting more, and spending a lot of time on. This information is, again, certainly useful. And can help marketers send the right messages at the right time.
All of the above methods are useful and valuable, but none tell you how you should craft your marketing message and what exactly to say to your audience. Now we’ll get really deep into getting to know your target audience to create an authentic connection with your brand.
Creating marketing messages that your audience will believe
Where do the best marketing messages come from? Certainly not from marketing managers or the sales team. Not even from the CEO. The best marketing messages, that resonate, that drive leads and that convert customers, more often come directly from the mouths of your customers. Let’s check out the ways in which we can connect with customers directly.
Step 1: Online reviews
Online reviews are a huge resource for marketers in Oman, as they are authentic examples of voice-of-customer language. Customers litter their reviews with valuable information, both positive and negative. Read customer reviews to determine what your customers like about your product or service, and how the product was specifically able to solve their problem. Also look for any specific problems that they need to solve, and other elements that are not included in your product or service but are desired. Then use this information to craft marketing messages that are personal and directed to your actual audiences, thereby drawing new audiences in.
Step 2: Get into online conversations
Online reviews are an incredible resource to determine what your customers want, and to enrich that knowledge, researching the various communication platforms such as Facebook Groups, Online Forums and even platforms like Reddit can help you delve further into your audience’s psyche and their feelings about your brand. Remember, we’re using this messaging to craft authentic and engaging content that resonates.
Storytelling in your marketing messages
Now you can use all the information that you’ve generated to create the marketing messages that will drive lead generation and increase conversion rates.
We understand that getting to know your audience isn’t always as simple as it may seem, but it’s such a necessary first step to take for any marketing endeavor. Even if your brands’ audience profiles have been determined, they should be revisited and confirmed at least once every year. This is the only way to make sure that the stories that you are telling as a brand truly resonate.
Storytelling in marketing messages also converts target audiences into paying customers, and more importantly loyal brand advocates and promoters. People love stories. More importantly, marketing messages have more stickiness when delivered through storytelling, and especially storytelling with an emotional connection. This connection, once created, is difficult to break, and forms a solid foundation of trust with your brand. In addition, great stories prompt people to share your content and invite new potential customers to engage with your brand directly, while immediately establishing trust through influence.
Start building your brand the right way. Subscribe to stay updated on industry insights, the latest trends and mindful communications.
Join Our Community
Add your email to the mailing list to get our latest blogposts.