A few years ago, it was relatively easy for brands to establish and sustain relevance among their target audience. Now, a lot more is required. Globally, creative content creation is at an all-time high, and social media has become the global stage on which to share and highlight this. Staying relevant means that brands have to do more than post photos of conferences and team bonding nights. If you’re trying to reach a specific demographic, you have to become that demographic, by modeling their behaviour.
Here are a few ways we’re working with brands to transform or reinforce their relevance to their audiences:
1. Don’t just know the customer, know your target audience.
Your target audience is evolving. Their attention spans are changing, and they are on the internet discovering new things that fascinate them. They’re constantly making decisions about how they spend their time online. It is the job of the brand to know their audience deeply, to be able to meet them where they are, and share content with them that they will find interesting and engaging. A lot of this work will involve surveys, and keeping a close eye on social media and content trends.
Pulse has recorded repeated success with our online communities by providing recaps and summaries from their favourite reality shows. We noticed the spike in engagement when we shared content from the audience’s favourite reality shows, and aligned ourselves with that wave. As a brand, your content must find alignment between what your community is currently raving about, and your brand values.
You can establish your target audience on the basis of their interests, purchase intentions, demographics etc. Learn more about clarifying your target audience here.
2. Build a positioning statement
A positioning statement helps your team to get a sense of what you want to stand out for. Positioning also helps to clarify what exactly your audience values from your brand. For instance, your brand could be a lemonade brand, but the real reason people buy from you is that your operation is cruelty-free, and the lemons are organic.
Even if you have a positioning statement, it’s a good idea to go over the exercise again and remind the team about what’s important.
At Pulse, we have brand strategists in our teams who have worked with brands to clarify their positioning in the market and help them create and design brand collateral that reinforces this positioning, honing in on what their already existing audience loves about them, and attracting similar audiences.
Your positioning statement serves to make your product, focus and business super clear to your marketing team, to help them ideate better and more importantly, ideate in line with the objectives of the product, business or campaign.
Learn more about brand positioning statements here.
3. Build direct relationships with your audience
As a business, a big part of your marketing and branding strategy is to ensure that customers have pleasant interactions with you at every touchpoint where they meet you. This builds the brand reputation over time and increases brand value. The most frequent platform where customers will see your brand is on social media. Your social media platforms are not just something the company is required to have. They are an opportunity to warm the hearts of your already existing customers, while wooing others. Use this opportunity to your advantage.
Pulse undertakes social media management for brands and our strategy often involves delivering value to the community of people who care about what that brand has to say, by sharing knowledge, or exclusive footage. We can also use our vast network to increase the distribution of great content, get more prospective customers to see and engage with your brand, and lead to immediate and more long-term benefits.
You can engage your audience by creating opportunities for online interaction and even offline meets.
Read about engagement and audience connection here
Raising the relevance and value of your brand is not a goal that can be achieved overnight. However, there is no better time to start investing in brand building. As social media evolves and takes an even bigger chunk of people’s lives, (with sizable investments already going into the development of a metaverse) the brands that have built a strong social relevance will be the brands people trust enough to keep going back to.