If you run a small business, you can grow your customer base by coming up with a digital marketing campaign. There are many options open to you, from email marketing to inbound marketing.
But remember that the success of your campaign depends on the internet habits of your customer. If you focus on email marketing but your customer is sending all promotional emails to spam, then your campaign isn’t going to have any effect. And unfortunately, this is the case with a number of outbound marketing methods nowadays; they’re just not having the same effect that they used to.
This doesn’t mean that you should stop email marketing or other forms of outbound marketing altogether. But you can also start using inbound marketing which is more subtle in its approach. It involves understanding your customer’s needs and fulfilling them in order to make a sale. This can be done by forming a customer profile and following the customer journey.
Why Inbound Marketing Works
Inbound marketing works because it involves understanding the customer’s psyche. You’re not forcing anyone to buy anything. You’re not trying to coerce them either with promises that you won’t be able to fulfill. This is true of many outbound methods which promise greater, immediate beauty, success and happiness. Many TV and print advertisements tend to go over the top in this way. But inbound marketing is more informative and less persuasive.
Understanding Your Customer Profile
What exactly is a customer profile? If you’ve ever seen a crime show on TV, you might be familiar with the idea of a criminal profile. A customer profile isn’t that different. You may not be looking for one particular customer the way the FBI are trying to catch one particular criminal. But there is one type of customer that you’re trying to target.
Here are some of the questions you can start with:
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- What is the age of your typical customer?
- Are most of your customers male or female?
- Do they live in a certain geographic area?
- Do they usually belong to a certain social status?
- Is your typical customer college-educated?
- What are their interests?
- What are the things that matter to them?
You probably know your customer better than you think already. The idea is to just consider all these things consciously so that you can figure out how to target your customer through inbound marketing. Once you know who you’re dealing with, you’ll be able to accurately guess how to get through to them.
Tailoring Your Online Presence
Once you know your customer inside out and have an accurate customer profile, you need to tailor your website, blog and social media pages in such a way that they’ll speak to your customer. You need to know the things that matter to your customer—is it their family, their kids, their appearance, their financial situation or their career? Look at other websites that your typical customer tends to frequent and see what they post there. This can be a good starting point for your website and social media pages.
But don’t be afraid to develop on the themes that you see. For example, if your customer is interested in family, feel free to write about all the topics that could possibly interest them—safe neighborhoods, good schools, family dinners, dealing with teenagers etc. The wider the range of topics that you write about, the more likely you are to hit upon something that will actually appeal to your customer.
And once you’ve found something like this, keep writing about it. For example, if you find that your blog post about family dinners is a big hit with your customers, then write more about the importance of family meals, give your customers new recipes to try or write a blog post about getting all members of the family interested in helping out in the kitchen.
To learn more about how to improve your marketing strategies, give us a call at 661-702-1310!
