Many business owners are confused with the vocabulary of business. One particular sticky point is related to “marketing channels” and in particular, how a company can create brand awareness with a prospect. As I discussed in How to Drive Growth by Correctly Targeting Web Traffic at its highest level, brand awareness can be divided into traffic that you attract, rent, or own. Contacts you attract, rent or own each have their own set of marketing channels.
Since I always find it helpful to review a list of options, today I’d like to focus on marketing channels that will help businesses attract eyeballs in a quest to create brand awareness for their business. In subsequent posts, we’ll look at marketing channels that a business can rent and what to do when they own the contacts information. When it comes to marketing channels designed to attract prospects to a company’s brand, they are performing what most people refer to as content marketing. Essentially, the business is creating content that prospects will find via some form of a search. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) therefore essentially creates a kind of gravity to attract prospects to a business.
I recommend that when it comes to anything in the “attract” category of content marketing, the business does not try to sell directly but rather focus on demonstrating its expertise and/or market leadership in their specific industry.
When it comes to contacts you attract, here is the list of content marketing channels that will help you attract eyeballs.
Blogs
Blogs and their video equivalent Vlogs are generally platforms to establish your credibility and to build trust with the prospect.
Articles
Many online and paper-based magazines will accept articles from guest writers. This is a great way to place your content on the publication’s platform and get access to their readers for free. Most allow you to include a bio with a backlink to your site. Here is just one list of publications that either pay you to write an article or will accept guest articles. There are of course many others so this is just a partial list.
Press Release
A press release can come in the form of an official statement issued to a PR site like PRLog.org, or it can be a stunt that will garner media attention.
YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google. In addition to YouTube, sites like Vimeo and Facebook also host videos. When people are searching on a video site, they are often looking for a demonstration, review, or some form of how to videos. Videos are a great place to demonstrate your expertise and link the content to a real person they can see.
Seminars/webinars
In-person seminars or training courses or their online equivalent webinars are a great way to educate your audience and to build up network deposits.
Chatbots – Artificial Intelligence (AI) has given rise to chatbots that appear to be human but are in fact a robot responding to your queries. Often is it hard for the prospect to know if they actually communicating with an AI-enabled website or a real person on a help desk. Either way, they deliver quick and meaningful responses that meet the customers need and act to enhance the business’s customer service.
Website
When someone is considering doing business with you, they will often visit your website to get to know your business better. While you can never guarantee where on the site they will land, it is always a good idea to include some form of Call To Action on each page so they can enter your sales funnel.
Review sites
Sites like Google/business, Yelp, Foursquare, and even Facebook offer the opportunity to your customers to rate your business. Ratings and testimonials from existing customers can go a long way towards convincing potential customers that you have the goods. This channel does not include paid reviews.
Social Media
The big gorilla these days is, of course, social media. When it comes to social media, as part of the contacts you attract category, we are talking about the bi-directional nature of social media. By communicating with your prospects, you help to build trust and help prove you are human and not just a company. This channel also includes communication via forums and messages boards that engage in bi-directional communications such as platforms like Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn groups.
Beacons
When you have a mobile device with Bluetooth enabled and pass roughly within the range of a football field of a beacon, it can interact with a mobile app installed on the phone. Retailers can use the beacon and the app installed on the prospects phone to encourage the prospect to share their location with friends or to make them a special offer. This channel also includes Near Field Communications (NFC).
How can you incorporate more of the nine marketing channels to attract more prospects to your business and make the most of contacts you attract?
