Finding Customers Where They Are: Online
Technology is everywhere now-a-days.It’s in everyone’s pockets and at the tips of everyone’s fingers.
People are constantly connected to technology. Therefore, companies have realized technology is the key to being constantly connected with fans and consumers. Companies seem to have the option of joining in or being left in the dust. The company I am working for is an outside agency to help small companies keep up with the demands of social media marketing. There are three main ways my company uses technology to further market our clientele brands: to connect emotionally with fans, to generate new customers, and to create new content to drive interest and educate customers.
The main technological tool used to connect emotionally to fans is Facebook. My company does not recommend spending money or time in other social media outlets, as we prefer measurable results. With Facebook, a company can create a community among its fans. The posts we are trained to create are not usually sales focused. They are meant to make fans want to interact with the company, so the company can interact back. This allows for consumers to create more of the content, and for an actual connection to be maintained. Furthermore, the more interaction one can generate the more friends of friends will see the post. This concept leads into the next way in which technology helps market our clientele brands, by generating new customers.
On top of the low cost of Facebook advertising and free visibility created by interacting customers, our company uses several different tools to connect to new customers. The first tool is optimized blogs. By utilizing Google Adword’s keyword tool, we find a key word with low competition and a medium level of local searches. If the competition of search number is too high, a blog written with one of these keywords is less likely to come up first in a Google search. A topic is chosen which a target consumer may be interested. For example, a hair salon would target those obviously interested in hair. Therefore, I could write a blog in how to fishtail braid. I would use keyword as many times as possible so that my blog comes up first when someone searched this. The target customer would then be directed to the blog on the client’s website, getting this potential consumer exposed to the business. The second way we utilize technology to connect to new customers is through creating informational articles called whitepapers. A white paper is an article on a topic written by an expert. It must give enough value to a reader to be worth filling out their information before being directed to the paper. Generally, we get the inside scoop on a topic from a client. Then, we formulate the paper. The same keyword concepts apply, but only the landing page rather than the entire document. This generates new connections to new customer by not only getting them exposed to a company’s website, but by gathering information to create mailing lists to further pursue potential customers.
Each of the three main ways our company utilizes technology to market brands overlaps in the tasks performed to yield results, however the most overlapping task is creating new content to drive interest and educate customers. As previously discussed blogs, whitepapers, and Facebook posts are all part of the content we create. On top of that our company builds the sites, creates the graphics, films and edits to create videos, produces press releases, and runs competitions. Technology is utilized in each activity for the purpose of making the brand as visible and interacting as possible.
I expected to be using technology a lot on my internship, but I did not realize how valuable understanding how to use technology properly can benefit a company. It is no longer enough to be a small company or restaurant which people stumble upon through a sign or by simply passing by. It is now necessary to actively pursue customers where they seem to be the most, online.