Becoming Relevant With Your Marketing : Strategic > Loud

"A prospect needs to “hear” an advertiser's message at least 7 times before they'll take action to buy that product or service."

That's known colloquially in advertising as the Rule of 7. In the landscape of digital marketing, content acts as the conduit through which businesses communicate, engage, and ultimately convert potential customers. The efficacy of a campaign lies not just in its creativity, but in its strategic development.

Learn to do it well through understanding customer behavior, finding the right platform, and delivering consistently high quality long-form content. In this article, we unravel the core elements of content development, emphasizing the critical role of leveraging the right networks and understanding what your future customers need.

Platform Relevance: Find Where Your Customers Actually Are

Different platforms cater to diverse demographics and interests. Tailor your campaigns accordingly. For instance, if your target audience comprises professionals and businesses, LinkedIn might be the best place to focus your attention. If it’s a visual type of product, Instagram or TikTok might be more effective. One of the critical steps of campaign development lies in choosing the right platforms to broadcast your message. Your audience is dispersed across a vast digital realm, and understanding their preferences is akin to selecting the right frequency on the radio dial.

Do the work to understand where your target audience spends their time online. Analyze which social media platforms, websites, or forums are frequented by your potential customers, or by customers that your competitors already have. Then tailor your approach so that your business is present and active where your audience already congregates.

Define Your Goals

It isn't quite enough to simply say that you want more people to know about your business, though of course that is the idea. You should structure your workload for content around the result you are trying to achieve. In the beginning, you may simply need to gain some awareness from people who have never heard of your company. If you start pushing people to buy during this type of campaign, you may lose out on the opportunity to build trust. As such, a campaign focused on brand awareness would have a different tonality than a campaign aimed at driving direct sales, or establishing technical expertise.

You can get clear about your goals by asking yourself a few questions about the current position your business is in:

What am I trying to achieve?

Am I looking to increase brand awareness?

Do I want to drive direct sales?

Does my business need to rank higher in search results?

Where is my target audience in the buyer's journey?

What tone and messaging will resonate best with my audience?

How will I measure success?

By answering these questions, you can better define their goals and tailor your campaign or content strategy to achieve them effectively.

Crafting Your Brand's Cross-Platform Voice and Image

Your brand's voice is the bedrock of successful campaigns. It encapsulates your brand's personality, values, and messaging strategy. An effective brand voice cuts through the digital noise, resonates with your target audience, and forms a lasting connection.

Here are some simple steps to become recognizable:

1. Define Your Brand's Persona:

Maintain consistent visual elements such as logo, color schemes, and typography in all your campaign materials. A uniform visual identity fosters brand recognition and creates a cohesive brand image and allows customers to gain a sense of familiarity.

2. Maintain Consistency Across Channels:

Whether it's a social media ad or a blog post, ensure that your brand's unique tone and messaging shine through, reinforcing brand recall, recognizability and credibility.

3. Adaptability to Marketing Objectives:

Tailor your brand voice to align with the specific goals of each campaign. As we mentioned, a campaign focused on brand awareness might have a different tonality than a campaign aimed at driving direct sales, or establishing technical expertise. Adapt your voice to suit the desired outcome.

Leveraging Branding: Clear and Concise to Convert

The digital realm is as broad as it gets. To navigate it successfully, your campaigns need a strong beacon—clear branding. Your branding can be a lighthouse that guides potential customers to your shores. Remember the rule of 7? These may be things that move the needle and establishes your business as the experts to turn to:

1. Message Clarity:

Ensure that your content is clear, concise, and that it actually answers the questions you hear coming from your customers. Ambiguity in messaging can confuse your audience, ruin the potential for search engines to rank you, and dilute the impact of your content.

2. Visual Consistency:

This is where effective design helps your business grow. It is an often overlooked piece of the puzzle that can make customers unwilling to engage with your content if it is ignored. Get rid of the pop-ups, the unnecessary on-site ads, and make sure that the user has a delightful experience every time they come across your brand. Maintain consistent visual elements such graphics, colors and style your video content to suit your intended messaging.

3. Call to Action (CTA):

Craft compelling CTAs that leave no room for doubt regarding the action you expect from your audience.

Whether it’s 'Shop Now,' 'Sign Up,' or 'Learn More,' make it clear and enticing- but don't overdo it. The savvy online customer of today knows where to find things they need on a website- there is no need to beg anyone to buy. Your clear and obvious industry expertise in your content should be enough to nurture the potential sale.

Remember: Being Strategic is Better than Being Loud

Content development necessitates a profound understanding of both your audience and your brand. Rather than spending a lot of money on advertising everywhere, be precise and be clear about what you are trying to do and where you do it. By leveraging the right networks, crafting a familiar and trustable brand voice, and being consistent, your results will be hugely amplified. Your target audience will be on the receiving end of a comprehensive series of strategic content that ultimately leads to real conversions and tangible business growth.