As a B2B marketer, creating memorable and share-worthy brand experiences can help your brand rise above the competition and raise your company above average and even great brands. One of the biggest mistakes business owners, managers, and marketers make is over-complicating their marketing strategies looking for the next new “viral” trend, and hoping their brand will start it.
Because they complicate what should be simple messaging and brand awareness tactics, they wind up failing in their strategies and often end up creating anything other than what their target audience thinks is a “good experience” which can negatively impact their branding. By focusing on vanity metrics and random, spur-of-the-minute marketing campaigns, they hurt their brand rather than help it. This boils down to wasting company time, money, and marketing opportunities, all because they couldn’t be bothered to plan, set goals, and align their messaging and social media content.
Here are four key ideas to help you focus on what’s really important when it comes to providing your target audience a shareable experience with your brand.
Know Your Customer
It seems like a no-brainer, but many marketers spend a lot of time trying to manipulate their audience into liking their content instead of providing content that they actually want. How can you know what they want if you don’t know them? We’re not talking about basic personas, profiles, demographics, and targets. What do your core followers find memorable? What matters to them? What are their dreams, and what makes them happy? What issues do they struggle with, and how can your product or service solve them? Find out what brings them joy.
Your Customers Are Human
Don’t fall into the habit of thinking of your customers as commodities. Don’t forget that they are human and want to be treated as more than consumers. Create experiences that connect them with your brand or values emotionally. Make your target audience laugh with hilarious content, make them cry with sentimental content that makes them feel something. Provide inspiration and encouragement to be more, do more, and give more. Tap into their dreams. Inspire them to dream bigger. Don’t forget that your customers love to live, laugh, and enjoy life, so spend time focusing on fulfilling that need rather than only paying attention to metrics, stats, and your company’s bottom line.
Spend More Time Actively Listening
Some brands never seem to stop talking, but smart brands spend more time listening than talking. If you take the time to listen to what your customers, target audience and community is talking about, it will be easier to develop memorable experiences that engage and excite them, and ultimately make them want to share your content. You’ll learn what people’s pain points are, how best to improve your products and services, and find out what the real first-hand experiences they’ve had that left an impression. Don’t be afraid to make use of social listening tools to gauge what people are talking about, in order to develop a specific strategy utilizing the data and insights from your social networks to help your company improve to improve customer brand experiences.
Keep it Simple and Sweet
Try to avoid complicated marketing strategies that think too much. Don’t over complicate your customer’s experience. Focus on creating sweet moments of enjoyment that create a favorable impression of your brand. The simplest marketing campaigns most often are the most simplistic, which makes it even more likely your customer will enjoy, remember the experience, and share.
