Are You Advertising or Engaging?
The traditional view of advertising is a bit of a one-way street. You create a marketing strategy that is designed to deliver a particular message to your target audience. This can be used to tell customers how your product is better than others, how it’s more affordable, or how it’s different than anything they’ve seen before.
The problem with all of this is not what it does, but how it does it. The internet has changed society in countless ways. One of the most relevant to marketing is that people now expect some sort of interaction. Your audience wants to do more than just read something, they want to discuss it…with you, even!
Learning to market in a way that engages your audience will increase the effectiveness of everything you do. Let’s take a look at a few common engagement strategies and how they benefit marketers.
Nearly every website will have a comments section. Visitors stop by to read an article and then stick around to discuss it. The same is true on social media sites such as Facebook. This sort of engagement is so popular, in fact, that websites such as Reddit are designed to do nothing else but hot these kinds of discussions.
Encouraging discussion benefits marketers by creating buzz. Something that gets talked about is something that gets a lot of attention—and people remember it. Since people love sharing their opinions, this is a great way to engage your audience....continue reading