Susan GilbertReach More Customers for Your Business Through Authority Marketing
Word of mouth online is the main driver for a brand or business today, as the consumer dictates how a reputation is built. When a person buys a product or service they usually turn to social media to gather feedback and ask questions. This makes for an emotional or human connection to sales as they make a decision based on trust.
According to Jim Stengel, author of Grow and former Proctor & Gamble exec, in an article on Entrepreneur: “We’re seeing more of an emphasis on brands building emotional relationships with consumers because it’s powerful and it works. When you do it, you have a much stronger affinity, a much stronger business, much stronger growth and much stronger results.”
In order to effectively grow your business you need to build your authority through helpful and compelling content, free advice and tips, and excellent customer service that includes a quick response to questions and issues. In order to establish an emotional connection your business needs to get on the level of your audience, and clearly demonstrate that you understand their pain points with a clear solution.
Where should your company begin in building better relationships with your leads and customers? Here are three tips that will help you establish more authority:
1. Determine where your target market is most active
Depending on your niche, your audience might be easier to reach on places like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Instagram. If email is the better choice you will want to keep the line of communication open and share news, tips, events, and enticing offers in order to hold their interest. Use the powerful Google Analytics tool to gain a better understanding of exactly who your market is and how to best reach out to them.
2. Maximize your website and content strategy
Your business landing page is the beacon for the starting point of your online reputation. The brand message should be clear, easy to follow, and the design up to date with the ability to easily convert to mobile. Whether you are an individual or company the menus should be simple to navigate with an optin area to capture leads. Here is a great example of this from author and marketing expert, Peg Fitzpatrick:
The quality of your blog posts and website content is equally important, and should attract your market by appealing to their needs and desires. By including social sharing and links to other helpful articles your business can increase engagement and shares.
3. Have a thorough understanding of your market and the latest trends
With target market research your business will be able to not only be in the know of what the competition is doing (or not doing) as well as tap into conversations circulating in your industry. Social media is a great place to discover what is happening through hashtags and keyword search, especially on Twitter.
Businesses can no longer depend on the products or services that they offer in an era social communication. It is the companies that pay special attention to their market and make a personal connection that come out on top, such as Apple, Amazon, Google, and Whole Foods according to Sagefrog research.
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