In this age of electronic awakening – through the bombardments of emails, beckons of billboards, and barrages of phone calls – the consumer has become someone who is very knowledgeable about the different types of products and services available to them (and more so, being directed at them).
With companies and nonprofits alike tracking and analyzing information on the latest marketing trends, many organizations seem to be overly worried about what they are pushing on to their customer base rather than the interactions they are having with them. Being able to produce and introduce good products or services into the market is definitely a big factor in how successful a company is in building and maintaining a client or consumer base. Overall, however, what is being done to strengthen the relationship between both parties in the contemporary business-to-consumer (B2C) scene?
The easiest place to look for the answer to what is being done in the realm of B2C relationship building is right in front of your face: the internet. Focusing exclusively for the time being on B2C, the most obvious places for answers to this question can be found on the social media sites of Facebook and Twitter. When it comes to brand pages or accounts alone, forty-three percent of online consumers identify themselves as social media fans or followers. In a recent Mashable study,fifty-six percent of consumers stated that they are more likely to recommend a brand after “liking” them on Facebook. Sounds good, right? However, when it comes to actual engagement on behalf of brands, ninety-five percent of consumer wall posts are not answered. What is wrong with this picture?
At Incept, the concept is basic when it comes to Conversational Marketing™. We are not talking at our customers or our donors but rather with them. We don’t simply post on the company Facebook page or on a client’s page, we interact, educate, and drive positive engagement between everyone involved. Content marketing is something corporations are spending millions on when it comes to putting out good content, but they are often lackluster in attending to the reactions they garnish.
It is time to wake up, as a new marketing age continues to evolve. People don’t want to deal with corporations, they want to deal with people. Any company can push advertisements to a targeted demographic and hope for the best. Any organization out there can set up a Facebook page and Twitter profile and schedule posts through third-party software all day long. What many businesses are missing is a call to be real with the people they want to do business with most.
How does this change? How can your organization go from old school to enlightened?
Capitalize on the engagement of your content. What is content marketing anyways besides using quality content to attract the donor? Make content that encourages interaction between your business and customers. Where there is interaction, there is conversation; and when conversation is present the opportunity to build a relationship also flourishes.