For your business to be successful, it’s essential to build trust with your target audience. And this is where social media comes in: these channels allow you to communicate interactively and directly with your prospective clients and customers.
Yet, somehow, most companies seem to forget about this, and come up with completely empty slogans, with clichéd communication and almost zero interaction.
But what is the recipe for success? How to connect and communicate with your target audience?
We promise to answer all your questions in this article.
#1 Define your target audience
Often they get lost at the first step and do not identify exactly who they are trying to communicate with on the channels. This leads to generic, clichéd posts that appear regularly in company communications (although there are some refreshing exceptions).
Defining the target group is therefore the first and perhaps one of the most important steps. Talk to them, get to know them, understand their needs and desires, and tailor your content (both written and visual) to them.
There’s no point in using clever-sounding jargon if the target audience simply doesn’t understand it, it will be completely meaningless. Find a common voice that fits your brand and your target audience. Define clear messages, address issues that are of interest to your target audience.
Here’s an example.
There are three online shops selling face care products:
- one of them sells clean products
- others are vegan, cruelty-free creams,
- and the third is traditional facial products.
Seemingly identical shops, seemingly with the same target group (women aged 20-60), yet you have to communicate with the target audience in a completely different way.
The target audience of a webshop selling free face lotions cares what they put on their face. What matters to them is what ingredients the creams contain.
More importantly for the vegan, cruelty-free target group, the cream is not tested on animals and does not contain any ingredients of animal origin (such as honey). Probably also more important from their point of view is how sustainably sourced the ingredients are and that the packaging is biodegradable.
For those looking for a traditional face cream, none of the above is important, they just want a good value for money face cream that will leave their skin glowing and youthful.
You can feel the difference, can’t you?
#2 Build emotional connection
It seems like a convenient solution to provide your target audience with irrelevant information, such as the fact that you have closed your thousandth deal. That’s all well and good, but no one else cares (unless you add a promotion or game).
However, it is much more difficult and time-consuming to develop an emotional connection with your frog, which is why many people don’t consider it important. Give your company a face (even a real one, such as a colleague or you) that your target audience can identify with. Inspire them with a personal story, but only one that they can relate to and that helps build your brand.
These will be the things that differentiate you from your competitors, and make you stand out from the stagnant water of boring, one-sided communication.
#3 Value creation
You can communicate with your audience in many different ways, and always keep in mind that you are creating value.
Of course, this sounds a bit elusive at first, so let’s see what it’s all about.
Value creation in this context means giving potential customers information that will make their lives better or answer an important question.
Before you click on the “Publish this post” button, ask yourself: why am I posting this? How will it benefit anyone who reads it? What value, extra information will it give?
If you cannot determine this, do not press the button. Don’t post something just because it’s expected, you’ll just be joining the queue.
#4 Involve your colleagues
There is nothing more obnoxious than a CEO who puts himself in the spotlight and everyone else in the background. Especially when the key to success is not (only) him, but also the colleagues who go in every day and work to make the company more successful.
So make them brand ambassadors too, if they want to. Those who really feel successful in the company are happy to share the success and post content about the company.
Some practical advice
Now, after the more general guidelines, let’s look at some practical advice.
#1 Reply to customer messages
Many people make the mistake of ignoring their customers’ messages and comments.
It’s a good idea to reply to messages within a few hours at most, and it’s a good idea to browse comments daily. Negative comments should also be left and replied to, so that other commenters can see that you are transparent, straightforward and have nothing to hide. (Of course, comments that are unprintable can be hidden.)
Your target audience needs to see and feel the care and concern.
#2 Create a relevant Facebook group
You can also create a relevant group on Facebook. If you remember the example above, three different facial care webshops could create three different groups.
- One of them, for example, is called “Clean Cosmetics”.
- The other is called “Cruelty-free, vegan cosmetics”.
- And the third is to find a niche, a market niche through which you can appeal to the widest audience and attract a relevant amount of people. For example “Cosmetics for over 50s”.
#3 Share as many videos as possible
Video content makes even the most engaged audiences pause: people are much more likely to click on or watch it than written content.
Be it product videos, customer videos, how-to videos – anything that might be relevant to your target audience. Of course, it’s worth tracking, UTM-parametrising and monitoring analytics.
#4 Study the analytics
To know which content is working and which isn’t, you need to watch the numbers and tailor your content based on the reactions. This is called A/B testing.
For example, if content A performs better than content B, I’ll build a higher-budgeted campaign on top of content A.
- Also note that the under-20 target audience is most easily reached on TikTok,
- the target audience of 20-30 year olds on Instagram,
- and you can reach the 30+ target group on Facebook.
If you want to attract B2B customers, LinkedIn will be your platform and you should focus your resources there.
#5 Share insider, exclusive info
You can surprise your followers by posting exclusive content and insider info. For example, if there’s a workshop, you can ask your followers to join your group, as the event will only be available to group members, in limited numbers.
This adds some exclusivity to the event and also increases the FOMO factor (Fear of Missing out).
Of course, it doesn’t have to be an event, it could be a specific sale, coupon code, new product launch or anything that you feel would reinforce the factors mentioned above.
Of course, all this is a lot of time and work…
Of course, we know that this takes a lot of time, effort and energy, but if you want to use social media channels effectively, you need to do it.
If you don’t have the capacity and can’t manage social media marketing in-house, outsource the work. Interested in more articles on social media? Read our detailed guide on how you can create your own company social media profiles!