In the current endemic era, how can marketers efficiently scale their audience to generate enough quality leads while optimizing their strategies with constantly-changing regulatory and customer dynamics? Jay Kulkarni, Founder and CEO, Theorem, provides three tips to create high-quality leads.
During the current endemic era, creating authentic relationships between brands and their audience is not only encouraged, but it’s also expected. In fact, recent research by eMarketerOpens a new window found that generating quality leads has been the main goal this year for 79% of marketers surveyed.
The challenge many marketers currently face is how to efficiently scale their audience to generate enough quality leads while optimizing their strategies to align with the demise of the third-party cookie. And that is not taking into account the constant pivots they are making as a direct result of the ever-evolving data privacy regulations and modern consumer demands for more transparent marketing practices.
Here are three tips for generating high-quality leads in the endemic era while keeping key principles top of mind. Marketing isn’t just a numbers game: it’s a relationship business.
1. Prioritize Customer Feedback for Brand Transparency
Brands that focus on helping their customers create long-term success in terms of customer retention and customer lifetime value. By taking the extra step to make customers feel seen and supported, brands build trust that leads to conversions and establishes loyalty that extends the lifetime value of their customers. Remember that marketing isn’t just a numbers game; it’s about maintaining consumer trust in your brand through transparent exchanges and creating loyalty that keeps customers coming back.
- Securing high-quality leads often directly correlates to a company’s sincere efforts to create authentic relationships between its brand and its audience.
- Transparency is the most authentic way a brand can demonstrate its prioritization of consumer trust. Brands that listen to their customers’ wants and needs through tactics such as online reviews, surveys and engagements are more likely to develop a strong customer engagement and loyalty strategy that ensures long-term success. Knowing that many customers don’t leave feedback because they feel the business does not care emphasizes the importance of feedback loops, ensuring that customers feel appreciated and heard.
- When customers feel heard by a brand, audience retention and loyalty increase across the board.
Establishing feedback loops is a primary way to create a transparent marketing strategy between your brand and consumers. Brand teams can promote transparency by establishing a well-rounded methodology to request, receive, analyze and implement customer feedback regularly. Developing an open line of communication between brand and consumer is an important foundational element to building trust with an engaged and loyal customer base.
2. Personalization in Marketing Isn’t a Trend; It’s an Expectation
The pandemic pushed many brands to think outside of their marketing comfort zones. A prime example is the implementation of deeper personalization within social media and ecommerce strategies. As a result, many brands’ social media strategies showed exponential growth in personalization tactics to better engage the endemic consumer. According to AccentureOpens a new window , about 91% of shoppers are more likely to buy from brands that provide personalized offers and recommendations, and 66% agree that encountering content that isn’t relevant to their interests would prevent them from making a purchase.
It is clear that the hot spot of marketing during this modern endemic era revolves around consumer-brand relationships and how to create deeper connections through personalization and engagement strategies. Social media feeds are filled with customized content to better connect with consumers on multiple levels. Personalized endemic-era marketing messaging can hit topics from relatability and empathy to sustainability to diversity and inclusion. One thing is prevalent, endemic-era consumers expect and demand messaging that speaks to them personally.
The vast majority of brand competitors are already stepping ahead in creating distinctive content that speaks to their consumers. Savvy teams know that their brand must deliver an experience that offers customers a personal touch, making them feel understood and recognized while also maintaining conversions and ultimately sales. In fact, according to SmarterHQOpens a new window , 72% of consumers say that they now only engage with marketing messages that are personalized and tailored to their interests. But remember, all personalization efforts must be backed by actionable insights based on accurate consumer data and research. Strong research and robust data are the foundations of successful marketing strategies.
3. Maintain a Human Element in Your Marketing Methods or Lose Customers
The rise of innovative modern technology has changed the way consumers interact with brands online. Tech marketing strategies involve elements such as AI and automation to connect with customers faster and more accurately than ever before. It is because of this rise in technology-driven initiatives that it is easy for brands to forget the human element factor when implementing the latest marketing technologies.
However, maintaining a strong throughline of the human element within their marketing is how brands can triumph in consumer relationships. Brands that focus only on profiting off their customers will see consumer loyalties dissolve as they turn to other brands who prioritize their needs and personalize their content to appeal to them. The strongest marketing methods are the methods that keep the customers’ trust at the forefront. Although consumers expect personalized messaging from brands, the modern, loyal consumer also demands messaging to hit them on a deeper level. Brands must foster their relationships with their target audiences to keep a consistent brand following when and where their customers spend their time.
Many brands are looking to video to build relationships and maintain a human element in their marketing. Whether short and sweet product demos and reviews on social media or longer-form content like live streams or gated webinars, implementing more video into the marketing mix is just one way for brands to maintain that human relationship with their audience. Fostering these strategic relationships between the brand and its consumers is critical, especially during this digital, endemic era. Marketing continues to center around establishing trust and loyalty between consumers and brands to create long-term, equally beneficial relationships.
Although consumers are constantly inundated with personalized messaging and information, more than ever before, endemic customers are leading the way in controlling their digital footprint. Marketing teams must acknowledge and understand the importance of the consumer’s influence on their brand’s success. If there is not a mutual relationship based on transparency and loyalty between the two, customers will quickly jump ship to a competitor that can provide them with the connection they desire. Brands must focus on building and maintaining trust between customers through valuable and transparent interactions, making their consumers feel uniquely seen and understood. Fostering relationships in both the marketing world and beyond will take brands far, especially during this pivotal time of digital disruption.
