Mass targeting is dead.
That’s a bold statement, nonetheless true.
Grouping audiences with a broad definition no longer works. It is ineffective to show your content and messaging if nobody can relate to it.
Instead, ask yourself what value you can bring to your customers. It’s not about your business — and until you can create value, you will not get the attention ROI.
Sparking a movement is the new marketing strategy to pay serious attention to.
If you haven’t noticed, it’s no longer about what you are trying to sell. Everyone is selling something these days.
It’s about the story you tell, the conversation it sparks, and the movement that your story can start.
Any brand that wants to thrive and scale will have to rethink their marketing strategy to focus on:
- word-of-mouth relationship
- micro-influencers
- authentic human stories
- community adoption and amplification
- stand for something
- solving problem for specific persons
Stop going for the sale
A mistake many brands do is to go for the sale out of the gate.
Customers will not hand over their hard-earned money if whatever you are selling does not create value for them.
Consequently, customers go somewhere else, and buy from another brand.
They seek brands that create value and solve their problem.
It’s no longer about just throwing money at social media ads or search ads No amount of sale, discounts, and promotion can build your brand. Those are band-aid solutions; and seasonal obligations.
It’s no longer about trying to hack algorithms, or show your banner ad across articles, or dwelling on how to reach the masses.
So what should brands be focusing on this year and beyond? Identifying customers, solving problems, and impacting change in the world.
Value
Education is underestimated and undervalued by brands. Why? Because it takes time to curate content.
Additionally, it is challenging for brands to create educational content at scale.
As a result, brands either get complacent or avoid it altogether. Don’t.
Creating value can also be in the form of telling a human story that can resonate with your customers’ purpose, spark a memory, or create goodwill.
Inspire your audience. Let your story connect with their emotions. Make sure your content adds massive value to their life.
When you focus on your customers, they will identify with your brand, evangelize your story, and be inspired to organically share your message with their friends across social media like Facebook and Instagram.
Without creating value, without solving a problem, your brand would not earn the attention of your loyal customers.
And frankly, you don’t deserve the attention if you’re just going for the quick sale.
Attention
Once you have created meaningful value for your customers, you will have generated your best ROI – attention.
Attention is expensive. It is earned. No brand is entitled to its customers’ attention.
Let’s talk about the attention influencers can bring to a brand.
The old guard of social media marketing is to reach as many people as possible through huge influencers with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers.
That’s exactly what the Fyre Festival’s mysterious “orange squares” and mega social influencers did. It drove massive buzz, unfortunately didn’t materialize at the end.
My point is capturing the attention of your customers takes a lot of intentional effort and thoughtfulness, now and beyond.
Instead of wasting ad money on reaching millions of un-engaged people, work with micro-influencers.
They have more niche followings, deeper engagement, and more authentic rapport with their followers.
This is no “secret sauce.” It’s straight forward. There’s more authentic engagement because they have the time and interest to connect in a real way.
When your marketing campaign is designed to focus on smaller, more specific types of people, you start to attract attention in the highest degree.
“Generic” doesn’t work anymore. Will it take more work to create 20 ads that are very specific – definitely.
But as a brand, you owe this to your customers. You are obligated to your customers to give them the experience they deserve.
Conversion
This is what you’ve been waiting for.
The sale.
Once you have create value and getting the attention of your audience, the sales will come.
When your audience believe in what your brand stands for, they align with your movement, and they become believers in your product.
Brands that are successful in connecting the dots between their product and a mission will fair exponentially better and be more sustainable than their counterparts.
A conversion doesn’t, however, always have to be a purchase. It could also be an email newsletter signup, a lead submission, a phone call, get more in-store traffic, whitepaper download, podcast subscription, etc.
There’s a lot of actions that can be set up as a conversion. It’s up to you and your team to define it so you can measure your successes.
Wrapping it up
If your brand is only focusing on the quick sale, you might want to rethink your marketing campaigns.
Take the time to figure out what value you can create for the type of person you want to align your brand with.
Continue testing your campaign message and see what resonates. Fine-tune as you get feedback and start to earn your audiences’ attention.
I hope this article has added value for your brand.
