Truly effective advertising requires that you make a great connection with your audience. And making a real connection with your audience requires that you know who they are, what they need, and how to provide it.
- Conduct Industry Research – Understand how your industry works. It’s imperative to know the norms of different aspects of your industry such as typical conversion rates, who your competition is, and other information like that. The more you know about the industry, the better you can understand what will connect you with your audience more.
- * Find Out What Customers Think – Use various communication channels to find out exactly what your customers think about your business and offerings. Survey them after each purchase on any issue you want to know more about. This information can be used to improve sales pages, case studies, testimonials and more.
- Know Your Products – If you created your products yourself, you likely know a lot about them. But if you outsource, it’s still important to know the products and services, as well as how they benefit your customers. If you know that on page 10 of your information product it answers a question your customer asked, you can better direct them to the right information.
- Understand Your Customers’ Buying Cycle – Every industry and customer has a process by which they make buying decisions. The cycle is the same, but how your customers act within that cycle may be different based on industry and the segment you’re targeting. Awareness, consideration, and purchase happen for all customers, but you can affect it by your messaging during each stage of the buying cycle.
- Show Proof – One thing to do to help your customers feel “aha” moments is to change your messaging by connecting with them in different ways through each stage of the buying cycle. For example, you can offer a free checklist to get someone on your list, then send them a white paper that shows the different offerings that solve their problems, including yours.
- Use Many Forms of Content – Use text content, video content, blog posts, email messages, video, images, infographics and everything you can get your hands on to communicate with your audience. Each audience member may learn and “get” something differently depending upon how the information is communicated.
- Set Up Accrued Benefits – The more information you can get from your audience, the better. But, asking for too much information up front can turn people off. Instead, once you have gathered some information about your customer, find ways to get more information via surveys, membership areas, and more.
- Improve Personalization – One way to create a real connection with your audience is to get more personal. As you find out more information, segment your audience differently so that you can address those special things about the customer in a new way.
The most important aspect of creating “aha” moments for your customers is that you know who they are, understand your products or services, and send the right messaging at the right time during your customers’ buying cycle.