“Defining and connecting with your target audience is the single most important business decision you can make as an entrepreneur,” – Saskia Gregory
Sophisticated modern marketing paradigms make it imperative for businesses to identify their audiences, create meaningful brand engagement strategies, and devise the means to stay connected with the target audience. These activities are important for modern businesses because they help the business to generate numbers, mark their territory, and assess the value of brand(s) in competitive markets. Audiences are important for every business because brand audiences are the wellspring that bring forth customers that help a business enterprise to flourish. Therefore, most businesses make it a point to exert themselves in terms of connecting to their audiences because this is one way the business can stay relevant in changing times.
Email continues to present a solid value proposition for businesses that seek to stay connected with their target audience. The serious business enterprise should consider using email as a tool to connect with customers on a regular basis; this action signals the intent that the business is interested in availing the continuing custom of its customer base. For instance, a banking institution can choose to leverage email to maintain a connection with its target audience. The bank can send regular emails apprising customers of the various services and special offers that have been created for the benefit of customers. We must note that these emails should simply state the various features of the new offerings and must include two or three points of connection through which the customer can convey his or her interest. The regularity of such communications can combine with the novelty value of the new services to ignite customer interest in the bank’s latest offerings.
Social media platforms offer significant scope for businesses to connect with their target audience. This especially rings true because almost every young citizen is connected to some form of electronic social media. Ergo, businesses must craft a competent strategy that constantly monitors their handles on social media platforms, while sampling and assessing the flavour of brand interactions with the target audience. Social media enables connected businesses to interact with the audience constantly by fostering new relationships and nurturing current customers. The enabled business also listens and responds to customers’ feedback in its pursuit to build trust and rapport with the target audience. Enterprises and businesses must realise the need to cultivate and create a genuine presence on social media so that this medium can be leveraged meaningfully.
Young, Internet-powered audiences can be finicky and therefore every conversation with brand followers should be tracked and relevant inputs and information must be dispensed at the earliest. In addition, social media can also be the starting point to create opportunities for interesting community activities that invite participation from brand followers. For instance, a certain brand can initiate a social project such as cleaning a park or a local water body; brand followers can be encouraged to join such activities. These instances offer the brand significant opportunities to engage with its following and to stay connected with its target audience. Further, an online quiz or an occasional poll can help the brand to gauge the temperament of its fan following and heighten its profile in the electronic domain.
Offline strategies to connect with the target audience must be seriously pursued by the modern business enterprise. This is significant because audiences respond better to a brand (or business) that offers a human face to its customers. For instance, a hyper local online business information aggregator can instruct its business executives to regularly interact with local businesses in person. This strategy appears old school, but has the potential to create a human face for the business enterprise. The benefits of such a strategy include the cultivation of a deeper connection with the target audience of the said business, developing market insights based on the evolving contours of the small business landscape, and keeping a finger on the pulse of modern business trends, among others. These exercises must be performed consistently and the information culled therein can assist the online aggregator to fashion new products and services for its consumers and thereby boost its engagement strategy with the target audience.
Websites offer much scope for a business to connect with its target audience. The modern business should use the latest available technologies to construct its flagship Internet presence and then initiate strong customer connection strategies through blogs, forums, and special online groups. We may note that this strategy is an extension of the social media technique mentioned above, but the enterprising business can work to create deeper connections with its target audience through the company website. The website-powered interactions between an enterprise and its audience can be imbued with a personal flavour when the business invests significant resources into such interactions. This remains important because the outcome of such interactions will indicate whether the business can attract real-world customers and convert these into long term assets. Further, a business can create cross platform strategies when it connects the website to its social media handles. This connection would enable each platform to reflect developments on the other and this could set the ground for lively customer interactions in the future.
Business cards represent an old fashioned but highly effective tactic to drive connections with the target audience. We must note that the business card is a low cost device that can be innovated to drive efficiency and business gains. For instance, an enterprise may choose to affix a mild adhesive strip to its executives’ business cards. Customers, suppliers, dealers, and other stakeholders can then affix said card in prominent points in their work areas to gain instant access to the said business. We note that this tactic represents an unorthodox approach but it is guaranteed to heighten visibility for the said business. This visibility can translate into newer business opportunities for the enterprise that issued said business cards. We may note that this represents a minor aspect of business innovation but it does enlarge the scope for outsize gains for the issuing business.
We have surveyed some of the means that can be employed by a business to stay connected with its target audience. From a purely utilitarian point of view, we must note that the connection enables the modern business to gain insights into customer behaviour, to mould its products and services in response to emerging customer preferences, to remain relevant to newer generations of customers, and to take the business competition head on. That said, we must note that an ongoing connection with the target audience remains critical because a business does not operate in a vacuum. Every business needs information and data in order to flourish and expand its business operations; the customer connect can be viewed as a prime source of market information that helps the business to stay supple and agile to emerging market requirements. In addition, regular interactions with customers and the target audience represents a certain aspect of best business practices because these exercises help to expand and renew the pool of customers, foster customer trust and goodwill, establish impeccable business credentials, build a winsome business reputation, and build a distinct brand identity.
