Big Audience Is Not Always The Best: Four Tips To Get Better Quality Audiences

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big-audiences

Brands have learned that appealing to the largest population possible with the most universally sound message means more impressions for less money.

The problem with that issue is they have forgotten how to talk with the people who matter to them most. It’s not about counting impressions. It’s about making one. Here are four ways to make sure your brand is talking not just to any audience, but to the right one. Let’s start our first tips:

1. Be a human

Back in the day, shoppers had a relationship with sellers. The seller understood the customer’s interests, concerns, and needs—often better than the customers themselves. They chatted about local happenings. They shared products that would benefit the customer. In turns, customers were loyal, not for a lack of options, but because they valued the relationship with the person selling to them. Today’s brands need to think about their customers the same way.

2. Stand for something

Do a quick poll about brands that care about customer issues. Most of your respondents will throw out names like Chipotle, Dove, and Toms. Each makes an effort to stand for more than just business results: sustainable fast food, realistic beauty standards, even something as big as helping the developing world. A recent fan favorite is P&G. With its “Like a Girl” campaign, it’s established a new hashtag, taken home a Glass Lion from Cannes, snagged an Emmy nomination, and established a whole new way of thinking about girls and sports.

3. Share what matters

With marketers so focused on capturing and broadcasting customer data, we’ve forgotten a major part of relating to customers: sharing. It’s not only countable social actions, but truly sharing something of your own. Sharing is difficult because it means taking a stance and that can run contrary to our instincts as marketers because it may mean appealing to fewer people. Still, it’s a sacrifice worth making.

4. Engage with the right customer as soon as possible

Engaging with the right customers from the start will make you a more efficient marketer. You’ll spend less. You’ll capture cleaner customer information, which will allow you to retain long-term relationships with those customers.

These tips are important to every brand, but especially relevant to brands that spend a lot on acquiring and/or maintaining customers. A brand’s job today is very much what it was many years ago: Identify the things that matter about itself, and share those things in a meaningful way with the people who matter most.