Connect with Your Customers by Sharing What You Love
Customers who feel emotionally connected to a brand are more likely to maintain loyalty to said brand. Building that connection can be difficult for a business, but let’s remember that your business was built by you, a human. In a time where every company is vying for attention, you can use your hobbies and passions to gain the attention of your consumers.
Social media simultaneously provides more opportunities to connect with your customers than ever before while providing a great platform to humanize your brand and build trust with consumers.
The down side: your competitors know this to be true, as well! You need to stand out from the crowd and apart from your competition, while actively communicating to your target audience that you know their pain and you have the solution to their shared problem. How? By sharing what you love.
I don’t mean telling them your favorite flavor of ice cream. I’m talking about sharing your passions, hobbies and interests.
Emotions are a huge part of decision making, as much as we love to deny it. Your customers make emotional decisions every single time they interact with your brand. It doesn’t mean they’re having some kind of epiphany every time they make a purchase, but they buy a product or service based on their connection to your brand. They also feel the anticipation of happiness when they decide to buy.
Hobbies Play a Vital Role
Authenticity – People are incredibly good at spotting fake enthusiasm. You can’t fake happiness when you’re talking about something you love. If you share your passion in a video on social media or write about it in a blog post, your genuine enthusiasm will show. It’s real and being real humanizes your otherwise cold and unfeeling brand.
Trust – Your customers will gain insight into who you are and what drives your brand. This insight will help you connect with your customers, building more brand trust. By nerding out about your hobbies, you’re not selling them anything. You’re simply sharing a little bit about who you are.
Relatability – Almost every single person has a hobby. Even if it’s not the same as yours, people will know the feeling of being completely absorbed in a pastime. We all have that one thing we could talk about for hours and hours. Your customers will be able to relate to you through this.
Conversation starter – In the same vein of relatability, sharing your hobbies is a great conversation starter; a way to encourage your customers to interact on social media. Just like you could talk at length about your own hobby, your customers will be only too happy to share their own passions, taking pride as if they are “in the know”. This allows them the opportunity to feel valued beyond what they contribute to your bottom line.
In closing, if you connect with your customers it plays a HUGE role in strengthening consumer loyalty, generating FREE word-of-mouth advertising, building brand credibility, and helping you stand out from the competition. When consumers feel they have a story to share, they will be only too willing to spread the word about you and your brand to anyone and everyone. It’s a win-win!
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Grow Your Email List Through Blogging
Content marketing and blog posts are an excellent source for increasing website traffic and expanding your company’s email list. Instagram and TikTok might be all the rage, but they’re no substitute for the written word. Furthermore, no blog post will ever require expensive equipment such as video cameras and live recording devices in order to communicate valuable information to your consumer audience. The truth is that when your posts deliver coveted answers to consumer questions regarding your brand, the search engines take notice. With a little SEO work and some optimization, your blog content can rank highly in SERPs (search engine results pages), attracting visitors to your website. In fact, companies which blog eleven or more times each month average three times the website traffic than businesses which blog once a month (or not at all).
Your blog posts establish your brand’s credibility, positioning your business as an authority on a subject. However, failure to include a next step for readers is a common, costly mistake.
Here’s what you SHOULD be doing with your blog posts in order to grow your customer database:
Offer opt-ins. While 95% of users have a functioning email address, they can’t sign up for your newsletter if they don’t know you have one. Incorporate links to sign up for your email list throughout your entire blog as well as the individual posts. Opt-ins can be a form in which readers input their email addresses or a link to a sign-up page. You can incorporate opt-in forms on your website header, footer, sidebar, as a pop-up or at the end of each post. You want to place them where readers will notice.
Incorporate personalized CTAs (Call to Action). A personalized CTA which offers something to your customers will compel them to stop and fill in their email info. Be sure your CTAs stand out and are noticeable among the existing content. CTAs should be visually appealing while matching the rest of your website. In addition, be sure to use direct, interesting copy to describe your CTA so that customers will want to click on it.
Lead magnets are crucial to a thriving email list. Lead magnets are offers which attract consumers to your email list. A good lead magnet is the entire reason a consumer will want to receive email from you, so you need to think carefully about what it is you’d like to offer! Readers will want to know what kind of email they are signing up for and whether or not it will be of value to them. Imagine being invited to a restaurant without having the ability to choose what you will be served. I doubt you’d go.
Clarity is key and you need to offer your readers relevant content and info in order to get them to subscribe. AND, while this might seem obvious, don’t forget to connect your CTA with your preferred email platform. Your landing page sign-up form, should you choose to have one, will connect new subscribers with your email list so they are signed up to receive your next email.
Email is one of the most important tools in your brand’s arsenal. In fact, email list building should definitely be incorporated into your marketing strategy! Afterall, 80% of online users say that email is their preferred marketing method.
