In 2017, your marketing needs to be personal. If you’re simply pushing out promotional messages about your product or service, you will gain little with an audience that’s increasingly fatigued from and cynical toward traditional advertising.
In fact, that’s exactly the reason why inbound marketing has become so popular in recent years. The ability to provide value rather than promotion helps you pull your potential customers in rather than simply pushing a promotional message toward them. But as the concept has become more popular, competition is increased. How do you continue to stand out among a wealth of brands looking to add their own content and value?
The answer: personality. If you can establish yourself as being uniquely personal and relevant to your audience, you will have an advantage that not many others will be able to match. Here are 5 ways you can accomplish that goal within your inbound marketing strategy.
1) Define and Establish Your Brand Voice
All of your digital content should follow a single, unified, and unique voice. In fact, we’d argue that a core part of building your brand identity is finding your voice. Are you looking to be edgy, professional, fun, serious, or a mix of all of them? Here are 5 steps you can take to define and build your brand voice online.
2) Create More Relevant Content
Think of your brand personality as similar to the way you create interpersonal relationships: while your own voice is important, so is listening and responding to the individual needs of your audience. For your inbound marketing, that means creating only content that solves actual needs, and relates to your audience as closely as possible.
HubSpot’s smart content is a particularly intriguing option to maximize your success in this area. 74% of consumers get frustrated when a website is not personalized toward their needs. Through smart content, you can customize that experience specifically toward individual visitors.
3) Step Away from the Promotional Ledge
We cannot say it enough: if you want to be successful in inbound marketing, step away from promotional messages. If your goal is creating value, you can seriously undermine that goal by inserting obviously promotional messages in the process. Just like that, a successful Facebook page will tumble down the waste land of negligible organic reach.
Instead, trust that the value you create will do the job for you. Offer advice, discuss industry news, and publish in-depth guides. Rather than going for the cheap sale, try to build trust. Over time, your audience will be more likely to enter into a relationship with you that they now consider personal.
4) Tap Into Your Influencers
You know who is even better at conveying your brand personality than you are? Your audience. In fact, that’s a major reason why influencer marketing has become so popular in recent years.
On social media, identify individuals whose opinion is valued by your target audience. They may be simply influential members of the group, or perceived experts. Then, reach out to them directly to convey your messages and intent, and work with them to spread that message (and personality) in a more credible way.
5) Highlight Your Individuals
Finally, don’t be afraid to bring in the individuals who drive your organization to success. Chances are that the brand voice you established in the first step above is at least in some ways derived from your internal culture, be it your leadership or your on-the-ground personnel. So why not highlight them to add authenticity to your messaging?
Through inbound marketing vehicles, you can do that in a variety of ways. Allow different members of your organization to write blog posts, or feature them in videos. Plan a social media takeover by someone who is especially representative of your intended brand voice. Then, share the content in a variety of ways to emphasize your personality.
Within the larger framework of inbound marketing, you can choose to sell your product or service on an entirely rational basis. But surprise: your competitors will try to do the exact same thing. To set yourself apart, a touch of personality is needed. Using the above 5 steps, you can add that personality to your strategy, enhancing your inbound marketing as a result.
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies and grow your business, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
