There’s no such thing as a perfect digital marketing plan — and even if there were, it wouldn’t remain in that state for very long. The world shifts around you, and old tactics lose their impact. It would help if you adapted to keep up. And if you’ve done a great job of reaching your target audience, that doesn’t mean you can relax: it means that it’s time to aim for a bigger audience.
But knowing that your best move is earning new customers doesn’t get you very far. It would help if you made it happen. This requires you to tweak your digital marketing strategy in some profound ways. To make that easier, this post will cover how you can adapt your approach to digital marketing to reach new customers. Let’s get started.
Target your customers’ other interests
Your best resource for reaching new customers is your existing customers, and you don’t even need to achieve this through a referral scheme (though loyalty programs are always worth investing in). You can simply pay close attention to what else interests your regulars, using a combination of surveys (likely incentivized) and brand-mention monitoring. Ask them what other products and services tend to capture their attention. What else do they want or need?
Gleaning this type of insight will help you because it’s reasonable to assume the following. If your customers overlap somewhat with other niches, then the customers in those niches will likely overlap somewhat with yours. By identifying some people who follow potentially viable niches, you can hit upon the smart target for your revised strategy. You can’t adapt your strategy without some idea of which people you want to reach, after all.
Simplify and broaden your copywriting
How complicated is your language? Regardless, it could surely be simpler. Do you use terms that some readers may not understand? Frame things using metaphors and pop-culture references that might not make sense to everyone? If so, one of your easiest options for expanding your reach is making your copy more accessible.
Read through your homepage from the perspective of someone entirely unfamiliar with your brand or the topics being covered. Your introductions and explanations should be sufficiently clear that even beginners can figure things out. Copywriting isn’t just about text, of course: you also need to think about visual design and formatting. Colors imply different things in different areas, making it essential to choose your color palette carefully.
Localize your website for high-value areas
And speaking of different areas, you may want to create localized versions of your website to target potential customers in other countries. Your options will depend on your chosen platform, but support among top platforms for cross-border selling is rising quickly. Shopify, for instance, recently announced a centralized hub model called Shopify Markets. If coupled with a suitable Shopify translation app, it could be vital for taking your store global.
Note that localization requires exhaustive research above all else. The more you know about the culture you’re trying to reach, the more thoroughly you can adapt your strategy: you may need to adopt a milder tone to better suit regional sensibilities, for instance, or focus on different product features in your ads. An unnoticed cultural disparity can completely sabotage your marketing materials and potentially even embarrass you.
Get more experimental on social media
Lastly, an option that’s always at hand but often overlooked is getting more experimental with social media services. Most brands play things safe on social media, despite knowing that it’s crucial to be found and warrants a lot of their energy. They promote their latest products and update people on their activities, but they shy away from anything overly creative because they’re worried about making mistakes and appearing foolish.
In truth, though, you need to take risks if you want to get attention. Things blur together so quickly on social media that only the brands willing to do things differently stand out. So why not mix things up? Produce some different types of content, and start showing some notable elements of personality. If you can catch someone’s eye with a glimpse into the inner workings of your company, you can get them to look at your value proposition — and it may interest them.
Adapting your digital marketing strategy
While you must ensure that you don’t stray far from the things that brought in your existing customers (customer loyalty is a mission-critical concern), you do need to update your marketing strategy from time to time. This is both to keep it feeling fresh and to allow it to reach new people.
This list of suggestions certainly isn’t exhaustive. Still, suppose you can identify new prospects through overlap with your existing customers, simplify your copy, adapt your website for new regions, and take more risks through social media. In that case, you’ll have a greatly improved chance of bringing in new leads. Good luck.
This guest blog article was written by Rodney Laws, an eCommerce platform specialist and online business consultant. You can get his advice for free by visiting Ecommerce Platforms. For more tips and advice, contact Rodney on Twitter @EcomPlatformsio.
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