How to setup a good online engagement platform

 

Audience engagement is a critical piece of the digital marketing puzzle.

It is in this step that you will give your prospective client a glimpse of you or your product!

 

Too many people jump the gun and try to sell straight out of the blocks. While going about things this way may well result in making a sale, the all-important hit ratio might just leave a bad taste in your mouth.

So how do you approach the end objective, which let’s face it, is the sale.

 

As described in an earlier blog post, precise audience targeting is the first ingredient to making your digital marketing a success.

Once you have set the target, you really want to gradually introduce yourself and give them the assurance that they have come to the right place! This is the engagement process.

 

The central aim of successful engagement is educating your client on your field of expertise. A good approach is to put yourself in the shoes of a layman. Explain in detail what the problem or pain is that your solution is addressing.

Give them information on rules, restrictions and regulations that you are adhering to and which they should be on the lookout for in competing offerings. Give them the inside info on what you have to offer and be certain that they get the sense that you know what you are talking about.

 

So how do you go about this you ask? By generating and publishing organic content.

There are many digital platforms which give you a free stage raise your voice. Be it by way of a post on Facebook, a video on YouTube or an article on your website blog, you can create a repository of information to educate your clients without it having an additional cost to you.

 

It is important to continuously remind yourself that you are not trying to sell anything during engagement. It may very well be that you encounter a sale, but that is a bonus.

The only aim is to educate and establish yourself as an authority, which will set the stage beautifully to convert your audience during the next phase of the marketing journey.

 

How to target clients Online

 

The first step in online marketing is to define your target audience.

The biggest mistake most people make is to define their audience vaguely, in an attempt to include as many audience members as possible. While this is an instinctive action, the opposite is what works best and here’s why.

 

Let’s say you want to tell a story, and that story is really intended for children. Now let’s say you want to tell the story to an audience of mixed ages ranging from five-year-olds to people in their sixties.

How on earth are you going to set up your delivery to entertain and captivate everyone? Quite impossible!

If you tell it to the five year old, with animated voices and silly gestures the adults will think it’s silly and ridiculous, while presenting it concisely and factual will make the children’s minds wandering faster than you can say “Ladies and gentlemen…”

 

The same goes for marketing. When you have identified a very specific audience, you have the power in talking to only the person you want to speak too. This means you can really address their needs and fears and really have a swaying impact.

Now it seems rather obvious why narrowing your audience will result in a far better success rate compared to a “let’s load the shotgun and see what happens” approach.

 

With traditional marketing methods such as newspaper-and-magazine adverts or pamphlets, filtering your audience is fairly difficult. Ultimately there is no certain way of knowing who will be on the receiving end of your advert.

On the other hand, if you do follow your digital marketing setup with the correct approach, you can define your target audience with great specificity based on demographic, geographic and psycho–graphic parameters.

 

As explained this means you can tailor your message for that specific client you have in mind, while getting the most bang for your buck by talking to the people that want to hear from you!