Are you missing out on one of the most important segments of your target market? Your branded audience – the people already familiar with your brand in some way.
Developing the relationship with the audience that has already paid some attention to your brand can increase your marketing ROI significantly. Consider this:
- First-time contacts are harder to close than those customers who already have several touch points with your brand.
- Most businesses generate half or more of their revenue from referrals or returning customers.
- Customers who have been nurtured through the buying process are more informed and tend to spend more money.
Although it is always essential to attract new leads for your business, you shouldn’t neglect the seeds you’ve already sown. Try these strategies to reach your branded audience:
- E-newsletters or old-fashioned paper newsletters. Keep your audience up-to-date on your business and give them new information that you know your customer base will be interested in.
- Personal follow-up. Don’t just send an email. Call the new contact or send a thank you gift to keep your brand in the forefront of that customer’s mind.
- Celebrate holidays and birthdays. Send cards, e-cards, postcards or any unique token gift to remind your customers that they are in your thoughts. Then you will be sure to remain in theirs.
- Interact on social media. Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, and the many other social media sites aren’t just a place for you to post information and forget about it. Designate someone on your staff who interacts regularly with your customers on these social media outlets. They will begin to see you more as a trusted friend than just a business on their feed.
- Curate reviews. Ask your customers to leave feedback on review sites commonly used in your line of business. Almost everyone checks online reviews before making buying decisions. Make sure your satisfied customers are speaking up on your behalf.
- Re-marketing through paid ads online. Programs like AdWords allow you to place a snipped of javascript code (not as scary as it sounds) on you website. Once a visitor comes to your site a cookie is placed on their browser, allowing you to create a list of visitors to your site. You can then create ad campaigns that target people that already showed interest in your product or service. If they came to your site but didn’t convert, try sending them a discount special to get them off the fence.