Making the best product or offering top-notch service isn’t always enough to ensure your brand gets the recognition it deserves (and needs to survive). And a big budget doesn’t guarantee your brand will generate the most consumer interest either.
By understanding how the digital era has changed brand awareness, you can use every tool at your disposal to your best advantage. For one thing, consumers no longer want to be bombarded with irrelevant content. They demand personalized, relevant products and services at the touch of a button.
That’s where inbound marketing comes in! Here are innovative ways you can raise brand awareness with a methodology that brings customers to your business, even in this hyper-personalized world:
Maximize the SEO benefits of content. Blogging, pillar pages, social posts… Content is king! The more relevant your content, the better your chances of being found online. Optimizing your content helps ensure the right audiences find each piece at the right stage of their buying journey — cementing your position in their minds as a relevant, helpful brand.
Embrace email marketing. Email may no longer be the de facto channel for personal communication between friends and family, but it’s still personalized. With the right approach, such as a segmented database that’s used to send relevant communication at the right time, you can build meaningful relationships with your customers in a cost-effective way.
Paid media advertising. This provides myriad options to healthcare marketers looking to raise awareness about a client’s products and services. Big data and machine learning are a part of what backs this powerful marketing channel, allowing you to find, target and reach your intended audience. Paid media channels also provide analytics insights that you can use to refine your next campaign. Tip: For your efforts to pay off, you’ll first need to discover your audience’s preferred platform, and focus your efforts there. After all, there’s no point advertising on Facebook, if your target market spends most of their time on LinkedIn!
Influencer marketing. Your success at introducing an influencer’s established audience to your brand boils down to how effectively you develop your relationship with them. Influencer campaigns work best when their enthusiasm for your brand is genuine — building a meaningful relationship can work wonders when it translates into an endorsement of your brand that can’t simply be bought. And you don’t need to wait to connect with a big name either — micro-influencers, with followers of 1,000–5,000 people may have higher rates of engagement compared to those with 100,000+ followers because they’re more engaged at a personal level with their niche audience.
Experiential marketing. Maya Angelou is attributed to saying “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Experiential marketing, or “engagement marketing,” is the key to people linking your brand to their feeling great by demonstrating what the company stands for. It’s also a great way to gather data about participants that can inform your future strategy. Wonder how it’s done? In 2009, Volkswagen turned a subway staircase in Stockholm into a giant piano to highlight their own drive towards environmentally friendly choices and to inspire a playful shift towards healthier behaviors in others. According to this HubSpot article, 66% more people chose the stairs over the escalator in that subway tunnel!
Brand awareness is a subtler game these days than simply being the loudest voice in the marketplace. Today, it’s about connecting authentically with your customers and forging personal relationships that build brand advocacy and long-term support. At KBK Communications, we’ve understood this from the beginning, and have thrown our 50+ years of collective experience behind healthcare digital marketing that consistently delivers results and raises brand awareness for our valued clients. And we’d love to pass on these hard-won lessons to you.
An effective inbound marketing strategy is the foundation to any efforts to establish meaningful relationships with your target audience, and we can help you master the basics. Our Digital Marketing Strategy course arms you with the knowledge needed to see demonstrable return on your lead generation efforts. The on-demand coursework modules cover how to:
- Target your ideal customer
- Set achievable and measurable sales and marketing goals
- Develop a digital strategy
- Oversee execution, or “build out” of your strategy
- Approach social media marketing
- Develop a lead nurturing strategy
Complete the digital marketing course with KBK, and draw on this knowledge to move your business forward. Learn how to navigate the world of digital marketing for short- and long-term business growth through a targeted inbound approach. Sign up for the course here.
