6 Strategies Businesses Use to Connect With Consumers

Businesses that establish a strong connection with their customer base will almost inevitably experience success as a result. While that may be true across the board, there are many ways to go about connecting with a professional audience. Indeed, different companies interact with different types of customers, and, unsurprisingly, they engage with them using different strategies. Given that fact, today we’re going to examine six ways the best businesses engage with consumers, and we’ll compare and contrast these methodologies.

The Old-School Approach

While there are plenty of benefits to digital marketing and outreach, a good number of entrepreneurs still utilize an old-school approach when it comes to attracting leads for their business. And there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that face-to-face, in-person meetings are more meaningful and impactful for customers. After all, speaking with an actual human in the flesh is simply more memorable and engaging than most digital marketing efforts. There are some drawbacks to generating customers solely through personal interactions, though. For one, it may not be feasible for business owners or salespeople to travel to every conference, seminar, or general “meeting of the minds” within an industry. Furthermore, this tactic limits the pool of consumers a business can draw from. It may take a business owner days or even weeks to court one lead successfully; an email campaign, conversely, can reach thousands of potential customers in moments.

Success Stories

People are more willing to purchase a product if they recognize that others have found it useful before them. As such, many businesses opt for a “success-story” oriented strategy when marketing online. These businesses typically produce case studies revolving around specific companies or customers they’ve partnered with in the past. Additionally, some businesses decide also to focus on the triumphs of individual employees as well. Again, it doesn’t hurt to let your audience know that your staff is comprised of capable and ambitious professionals.

Personal Brand Promotion

For better or worse, some individuals are intrinsically linked with their brand and their business. Think Richard Branson and Virgin, or Bill Gates and Microsoft. However, plenty of small business owners use their personal brand to promote their businesses too. Note, this sort of cross-promotion isn’t always overt. By simply developing a following as a result of speeches they’ve given or content they’ve written, business owners can parlay that trust they’ve won as an industry expert to send interested consumers to their company’s brand as well.

Dense Content

Some businesses do not require dense, informative content on their site. In fact, few B2C businesses truly need to educate their customer base as to what their product or service is or what it does. Yet plenty of B2B organizations do have to play the role of teacher online. By creating a rich content library and generating useful pillar pages and white papers, these businesses can attract consumers who desire specific knowledge about a product or service. And it’s worth remembering that some B2C brands may also benefit from creating educational content for their consumer base. You can visit samedaystdtesting.com for an example of a B2C business that uses educational content to great effect.

Ultra Transparency

Consumer trust is vital to business success. When the public loses faith in a business’s viability, or its ethics, they’ll avoid that brand. In order to combat this threat, many companies are becoming more and more transparent in their digital marketing techniques. It’s no longer unusual for CEOs and other executives to take to Reddit or other platforms to directly engage with customers and answer questions. However, activities like Reddit AMAs (ask-me-anything) can also be risky for professionals who aren’t willing or able to answer tough questions. If a business is perceived to “duck” certain issues, they can actually lose cred with important consumers.

Change and Rebranding

Though it may seem a drastic step to some, a successful rebrand can have tremendous positive effects for a business struggling to connect with a customer base. What’s more, rebrands allow businesses to hit the reset button and provide them with the ability to organically expand into new markets. This, when done well, should enable a company to attract more website visitors and, in theory, close more sales. Of course, making big changes at a company or choosing to implement a total rebrand will be costly. So business owners should first weigh the estimated costs against the potential rewards before going forward with a rebrand.

Final Thoughts

These varying approaches may seem totally unrelated at first blush, but the reality is that many business owners use a combination of the above techniques to form a unique marketing strategy. At the end of the day, no two business –– and no two customer bases –– are exactly identical. Therefore, it makes sense for marketers to create specific marketing plans to reflect the needs of their business. It may seem like common sense, but this idea is actually quite revolutionary to some businesses!