What is “connection” between brand and audience?
Because we have products or services from them, or somehow we do identify ourselves with their purpose or style, or just because we would love to have a product or service from them.
This means we have an emotional connection with that brand.
It all started with awareness and we kept following it because it provides value, security, pride, joy, or identity…
Why is it so important to build and maintain connections?
In these digital times how hard it is to make your audience stop and listen to you?
Or even more simple, how to make them stop scrolling and pay attention?
this has been a challenge…The time dedicated to each element of social feeds is getting shorter, which increases pressure on businesses that want to share their message to the audience.
With that in mind, what you share online, when, and where must push you further into building a relationship or connection with your clients, or future clients.
Once a brand gains the audience’s attention, it becomes easier to spread messages, intentions, and products, because the curiosity is already there and it is a subject relevant that will make users stop scrolling and pay attention.
Keep them interested and surprised!!
Why?
The concept of brand fidelity is even more narrow in the current days.
If you don’t provide, somebody else will.
Remember, your customer ( or potential customer) has a need, a dream. And your competition has the same goal as you, grab their attention.
So now you can imagine what happens if you stop feeding the relationship that you have with your audience. Your competition will take your place, or the audience will lose interest in you and switch to the next new thing.
Connecting from Business to Customer
From business to customer, the emotional side must be more present because that’s what will spark the will of interaction, the curiosity of knowing more.. and make the emotional decision of going with your brand.
As brands are dealing with different knowledge backgrounds, dreams, needs, expectations, it opens the opportunity to create more options of content that will respond to different avatars of customers.
The communication is more “in your face”, sometimes flashy, short, with complements that would drive attention, and spark the intention of following or buying.
Connecting Business to Business
On Business to business, things can be more complex, why? because you’re not searching for a one-time purchase, but to build a long-time relationship.. to have the trust of a business to help them, for new projects or maintenance of current state of things. So the approach is different… it’s like comparing a sprint to a long-distance run.
In this case, the way we communicate is soberer, focused on solving and not on selling. As we are dealing with a person or group of people that will decide to pursue with the partnership or not, is better
to show the impact on the business after the implementation, and what their world will look like.
How to start creating connection
Digital tools such as blogs, video blogs, and social media are the “must go to ” tools to start building awareness.
But bear in mind that these are just tools. It requires a strategy or architecture in order to get results from these tools.
Respond to search
Every customer has doughs a problem to solve, and one of the things they do is to search for how to fix it. To collect more info about the problem itself, how could be solved, and who can provide the solution.
Note: obviously this approach changes a bit depending on the business area (for example fashion could be new trends for the year or new fabrics more friendly to the environment).
If you can position yourself in a way that when they search for solutions, your business comes with an explanation and solution, it is already ahead of your competitors and the client is aware of you. This could be done with articles and/or videos.
This content must be on the relevant platforms, and with the correct language that your audience will understand.
( it’s different to talk with teenagers or with people around 50 years old).
Show what you stand for
Social media is a great tool to start presenting your brand, and what you stand for.
More than the product or service, how you provide and the values implicit in your actions do count a lot to your audience.
You can show that through videos and posts with different approaches. It could be entertainment, educational, informative, or a perspective on something.
Take advantage of trending topics and news about you or the market, share customer or public experiences with your brand. It will create curiosity and empathy within the audience, as it is easier to validate the experience as authentic when you see others like you expressing a positive message about the brand/product or service.
Be consistent when you post and add variety to your content, it will be easier to keep the engagement.
Make them talk and share
You realize that something is biting when there’s a reaction from your audience. When we say audience, close friends and relatives do not count.
Likes, shares, and comments, provide you with the feedback required to start validating your effort.
The goal is to generate a buzz around your topic. “Make them talk”. It will generate questions that will feed your next topics, and give you and of the concerns that your audience has about you or what you provide. Engage responsibly.
Keep in mind that you should be creating content that would allow and motivate the audience to comment and share.