One after another, media houses are announcing the closure of established magazines and print titles. There’s a saying that when you sail your ship in a storm, the faults in your hull and your crew become very apparent. Covid has been the storm that has accelerated the decline of these magazines.
A shrinking media landscape has a number of impacts, one of which is that smaller businesses have fewer and fewer channels to reach their customers. Small businesses that could affort to take out a couple of adverts a few times a year, to be seen and heard above the noise, no longer have that option.
What’s left? Digital but there’s a massive concentration of digital platforms globally – Facebook and Instagram, Google and Youtube, Twitter, Linked in and increasingly Amazon is where everyone is spending. It’s become a ‘CAC’ position for small and medium businesses as the Customer Acquisiton Cost is unaffordable to compete with corporate budgets.
We used to believe that good content would win on these platforms as it would serve the audiences on the platform. So businesses invested heavily in content to attract big followings on these platforms. But now when you post something, you get access to 10% of your earned following – to reach the rest, it is pay to play.
It is getting rougher and tougher in the marketing space.
A ‘spray and pray’ approach is no longer an option.
The number of competitors you faced 10 years ago are far fewer than the number today. To get seen and heard, you can’t focus on your product or service, you need to focus on the customer group you want to reach. You need to dig into the measurable aspects of your desired market. Location, socio-economic level, possibly job title etc. These demographics are a start, but not enough.
You also need to understand the psychographics of your audience. These talk to the psychology of the people or businesses you are trying to reach. How do they behave, how do they think, and how do they buy your product and service?
That’s still not enough – you also have to understand the dynamics. What are their problems, how do they come about, how do they experience these, what does it cost them to solve them and how do they want them solved?
Once you have these three elements: demographics, psychographics and dynamics, you’ve then got a persona – a characterisation of the business you want to reach.
When you can clarify your client persona(s), you start cutting through the noise in your marketing.
Pounding the pavement in a digital world.
In the old days you would meet people, knock on doors… how do you pound the pavement in a digital world?
First,decide which platforms you need to be on and then structure appropriate approaches for each. The way you would work with Instagram should be different to Google, LinkedIn etc. Each of these platforms have a particularstyle of communication.
When you have picked your platforms, then you have to start relationship building. People’s aliases are very guarded, you can’t assume someone’s profile reflects an accurate version of who that person is. You need to share content that attracts people who are within your target audience. The messaging to connect needs to resonate with the right people. Then as in physical discussions, you need to build rapport with small talk – a few messages to establish fit before you present the business opportunity. Get the engagement right first to get the transaction right.
It’s not easy but you need to constantly test and evolve your messaging to see what works, and keep measuring to ensure it still works.
At Aurik we focus on getting your positioning right first, to ensure your marketing strategy works. Contact us if this is something you need to get right.
