Branding is always a bold endeavour, so it’s good to assess different approaches.
They say that 70% of Brand marketers and 60% of agency professionals view social media advertising as more valuable for building brand awareness than for driving direct responses.
However there are differing views on the effectiveness of Social media when it comes to marketing and branding.
You will see from Sheridan’s comments below that content marketing is one way to increase Brand Awareness and he was so successful that his approach has been taken on by many. I have been using content marketing since 2008 and have built a huge network of connections.
Some stats on content marketing are that the same 70% of marketers say that content marketing has increased their brand awareness; 59% believe it supports sales growth; and 45% say it has reduced their advertising.costs.
Another way is to create educational and engaging content which can help you become an invaluable resource to your target audience. If you can do that, they will obviously share with their peers and contacts.
The thing is that most businesses don’t have the resources to hire an entire content team, but that’s not really necessary as there are lots of ways to create content that gets your brand in front of the right people and they can spread the word.
Content helps you achieve brand awareness, but it’s not free and often difficult to create. For this you can outsource like I’ve done.
The way Sheridan (see below) did it was “to turn all of the frequently asked questions across your entire organisation into a full calendar of content that will get your brand name found in search engines.”
You can, like I have done with BIZLEAP @ https://bizleap.com.au/blog/,create blog posts, articles and Ebooks (yes it does take time) and create content from the questions people ask you and which you see in the search engines. I have a VA in the Philippines without whom I could do nothing to create awareness and for copy I always recommend someone in Sydney, Australia.
Sheridan from River Pools now spearheading his new venture TheSalesLion @ http://www.thesaleslion.com/, turned his company marketing around with a new approach.
An excerpt of the Article is below-
Take us back. How did you save your company?
- I just started thinking more about the way I use the Internet. Most of the time when I type in a search, I’m looking for an answer to a specific question. The problem in my industry, and a lot of industries, is you don’t get a lot of great search results because most businesses don’t want to give answers; they want to talk about their company. So I realized that if I was willing to answer all these questions that people have about fiberglass pools, we might have a chance to pull this out.
- What was the first question you answered?
- The question I was always asked within the first two minutes of talking to customers was, how much does a fiberglass pool cost? Pool installers are like mattress or car dealers — we hate talking about how much a pool costs until we have you in person because there are so many options and accessories we want to sell you. As a result, pool companies never mention price on their Web sites. But I said, I don’t care what the question is, we’re going to answer it.
- Did you actually tell people the price of a pool?
- No — because I couldn’t. But see, that’s the magic behind this. Google’s search engine doesn’t really care if we answer the question. It’s just looking for companies that are willing to address the question. So I saidin that article that there are a ton of options, so it depends; the price can range anywhere from $20,000 to $200,000 and a lot of our customers end up between $40,000 and $80,000. And that was enough. Within about 24 hours of writing that article, it was No. 1 for every fiberglass-pool, cost-related phrase you could possibly type in. And because I have analytics, so far to this day, I’ve been able to track a minimum of $1.7 million in sales to that one article.
The CEO of one Company presented at the B2B Marketing forum, and afterwards he uploaded the deck he used to SlideShare. That presentation got over 36,000 views and was embedded into 60 other websites.
As a marketing concept, in relation to Brand Awareness and Social Media, the main thing I have learned is the effectiveness and power of full Engagement. If anything works it is full Engagement with customers and turning around even the disgruntled ones by addressing all issues can turn a D customer into a Raving fan.
Whatever you do, in my opinion the direction of your Company will depend a lot on you and your team engaging in a really personable manner with future prospects.
People have to feel you care and then they are interested in your services. You know the old saying, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
Cheers
Chris
Image Credit- FreeImages.com:Nichole Warman
If by chance, you have not encountered my previous posts outside this blog, one of my favourites is about “A Woman’s Labour of Love.” You have the luxury of reading it by clicking here.