Build Your Audience: Why It Is the Next Big Thing to Build Your Audiences to Build Your Brand

In today’s highly competitive world if you want to stand out then it’s must for you to have your own audience base. If your business has a loyal customer base then it is like a cherry on the ice cream.

If you manage to nurture them in the right way they will pay you back by becoming promoters of your brand.

That’s why building your audience & owning them is one of the important marketing strategy of 21st century. Because it gives you total control & freedom over your audience.

Obsess about customers, not competitors

Jeff Bezos

Here is the interesting fact, Do you know Loyal customers spend 67% more on products and services than new customers. And due to the 80/20 principle, your most loyal customers only make up 20% of your audience, but the surprising thing is they provide up to 80% of your revenue.

So without further ado let’s jump into the article. In this post, you’ll get to know the benefits of owning your audience & how you can build one for your business.

What Is the Meaning Owned Audience?

Did you ever live in a rented apartment? If yes then surely you know the pain & struggle to live according to the expectation of your landlord. You can’t have the freedom to live on your terms. Because your landlord has more control over the property than you.

Owned audience is the users who have given their contact details willingly on your website by submitting a form, so that you can easily contact them regarding new offers & news about your business. This means you have a direct connection with them without relying on any third-party platform to connect & nurture them.

Why It Is Important to Build Your Audience?

Let’s suppose you have an audience on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and on video hosting platform like Youtube.

And the fact is on these platforms you’re bound with their new algorithm updates. Just imagine if you have 1 million followers on platforms like Facebook and suddenly they change their rules or go out of the market. You will lose the relationship with your followers overnight.

Below I listed other major factors, which clarifies why it’s important to build your audience.

Advertising Is Becoming Harder & Less Effective

Let’s face the truth everyone out there in the market is concerned about making a profit. Whether it’s Google, Facebook, or others. These tech giants hugely rely on advertisement for their profit.

That’s why they constantly try to make it harder to grow organically (unpaid) on their platforms. And the other option is, you have to pay them a big amount of money to run an ad which is very costly you can’t make it long term strategy.

Third-Party Cookies Are Starting To Disappear

Due to the fast-paced online world, the security of the customer’s data is one of the major challenges. 

In 2020 new privacy regulations increased the pressure from consumers to provide more protections for online data, Google announced that it would phase out third-party cookies on its Chrome browser by 2022.

This isn’t new it’s is already strictly implemented by European Union, GDPR law to protect their citizen data. So according to my speculation targeting customers with personalized messages is going to be harder & harder. The only way to tackle this challenge is b owning your audience

Ad Blockers Are On The Rise

Ad blockers are software programs that are built to block display, video, and other ads from appearing on a webpage. Just accept the truth people don’t live annoying ads when they consume content on the internet. 

Due to heavy exposure to online ads users developed the ability to ignore them. It will be surprised you that 27% of internet users in 2021 are using ad blockers to avoid unwanted messages & ads.

That’s a big number and it’s increasing day by day. What this data say’s is people don’t want to sell things forcefully, they want to buy things by making those decisions themselves. 

Helps Generate Leads

By capturing the emails addresses of your website visitors through opt-in forms you can nurture them with custom emails  & turn them into paying customers. 

According to the Research, over 48% of marketers believe that email marketing is the most effective strategy for generating leads online.

Why it works, the reason is you are targeting the audience who already showed interest in your product or services. 

That’s why Inbound email marketing has a return on investment (ROI) of $42 for every $1 spent.

Dive Deeper: Email Marketing: Budding Trends Busted

You Won’t Lose Your Audience Overnight

If you build your own audience then you don’t need to worry about losing them because they strongly associate with your brand. The trust you will build by offering valuable products & services helps you in a long run. These loyal customers will bring more word-of-mouth referrals. It’s a deep desire to belong to a certain group of people.

You Can Easily Engage With Your Audience 

Customer engagement is a way of marketing where you provide personalized content where users can interact with it. It can help you to understand whether you’re moving in the right direction or not & optimize your marketing strategy accordingly.

By targeting a highly relevant audience you can hook their attention easily, which will help in strengthening the emotional connection with customers

Helps In Stronger Brand Association

A strong brand association turns your usual customers into the fan of your product or service. It’s a psychologically positive representation of the brand in people’s minds.

As per the law of simplicity strong brand associations can help you drive sales and get an edge over your competitors.

Dive Deeper: How Can SEO Help You Build Your Brand in 2020?

How To Build Your Own Audience

Be Clear With Your Target Audience

A target audience is a specific group of people whom you target through your content. If you try to target everyone then surely you’ll fail because the fact is, everyone isn’t really interested in your product or service. That’s why you need to be very specific while defining your target audience.

Create Content Consistently

No matter what, you have to create content if you want to stay in the game. Do you know 70% of marketers are actively investing in content marketing?

It’s doesn’t matter how many times you publish a blog it can be 1 post per day or week. The important thing is for you to stick to a strict schedule. Have a streamlined content creation process that fuels your marketing goals to accomplish.

Email Marketing Still Works

Email Marketing is one of the best ways to build your audience, the only thing you need is a great landing page with a compelling lead magnet, and a strategic lead nurturing process.

For better results, you need to write a personalized copy that increases the possibility of email opening.

Having a strong database of your loyal customers gives you the ultimate freedom to communicate, promote & turn them into paying customers on your own terms.

Take Advantage Of Influencers 

There are many popular influencers on social media, influencers with large followings in their field can help you to reach a very specific audience.

You can take advantage of popular influencers to engage with your target audience. They are very cost-effective.

Endorsing your company or sharing your content via influencers allows your content to be seen by potential customers who are already interested in your niche.

Another benefit of influencer marketing is that you don’t have to spend additional time, money to find & target them.

Build An Emotional Connection

Emotions play a very major role in our day-to-day decision-making. Emotional marketing is a way of persuading people by triggering their emotional responses. It can be achieved by targeting specific emotions such as fear, anger, joy, that can influence decision making & buying behavior.

Here is the Youtube video on a new marketing trend known as neuromarketing.

This will make your content shareable because telling the story around your content help people to relate it with their life.

People will forget what you said. They will forget what you did. But they will never forget how you made them feel

Maya Angelou

Provide Them Netflix-Like Experience

Do you want to know the secret of Netflix’s success? It is giving what the customers want, at the same time making sure that they have a great experience. For that, you need to always update your marketing strategy with new trends.

Here is a great Youtube video on the difference between customer service vs customer experience. This will give you a more deep understanding of the topic.

Incorporate More Video Content

Video content is on the rise because people love to watch than read it’s proven by data as well because 72% of customers prefer learning about a product or service through a video and 88% of Users spend 88% more time browsing on websites that have video.

Another benefit of effective video marketing is that it helps you to rank in Google search results.

Be Honest Towards Your Customers

Honesty is the best policy we all heard this cliche a lot. But knowing something is one thing & living that truth is another. For that, you need to have a clear implementation strategy. For that, you need to align your business with your core values. This will help you to develop a lasting relationship with your customers.

Measure Your Efforts

If you can’t measure it you can’t improve it. It’s very important to know whether you’re making an effort in the right direction or not. For this you should have clear KPI’s, this will help you to optimize your marketing efforts & achieve your goals. This will create a culture of accountability in your organization that will leave no space for mediocrity & sets you on the path of continuous growth.

Conclusion

In the end, I would suggest you if you want to stay ahead in the marketing then your whole effort needs to be focused on your target audience. Because it’s not about what you can offer, it’s more about what people want and how you can give them.