Marketers talk a lot about the importance of creating original content. But that content is relatively worthless if no one is watching/reading/listening. The bigger the audience, the bigger the return on your content strategy dollar. The real question, though, is how do you expand your audience?
Guy Kawasaki’s folksy-sounding, common-sense marketing aphorism, “If you don’t toot your own horn, don’t complain that there’s no music,” is just as true today as it ever was. But, when everyone in the world seems to be tooting their horns at the same time, getting heard above the dissonance appears almost impossible. To stand out, it seems that brands only have one choice: get louder.
Ultimately, getting louder doesn’t mean saying more or saying it bigger. Amplifying your content is more about what you’re saying and who you’re saying it to.
Everything Starts with the Customer
Successful brands know marketing is more than selling customers on their product or service. It’s about providing an experience for customers. And, as a marketer, your job is to deliver on that experience throughout the entire buyer journey, starting with your content.
That’s why savvy marketers don’t try to find an audience for their existing content, they assess their target audience and then create and deliver the content that audience is looking for.
This approach to message amplification allows marketers to leverage what they know about how their target customers consume content to meet them where they’re at rather than trying to create new habits.
When an existing audience is targeted it is much easier to answer important questions about your audience:
- Where do they get their information?
- Who are the influencers that potential customers already trust and respect?
- What form of content is most effective? Visual? Video? Audio? Written?
- What is the audience’s attention span? Do they prefer long-form content or short-form content?
- What are their engagement expectations and behaviors?
By tailoring brand messages to your audience based on what you already know about them, you are simplifying your job enormously. It’s the difference between entering an existing market and creating a new one. There may be more competition, but there’s also more opportunity.
Tap Into Influencers
Most market niches have established influencers who already have strong followings. Establishing trusting relationships with these influencers can be an effective amplification tactic. Brands that can find ways to create and deliver value to influencers without making waves or creating conflicts of interest will discover unprecedented opportunities for amplification by leveraging the influencer’s existing relationships.
Many influencers are natural storytellers; this is one attribute that attracts followers. If a strong brand can tap the natural storytelling abilities of a niche influencers, it can be a powerful combination.
To identify influencers in a niche, look for industry celebrities, journalists, bloggers, active social media personalities, and even loyal customers who have a strong presence in industry circles. These are the people your own brand ambassadors and executives should reach out and develop relationships with.
This type of relationship building takes time and the consistent delivery of genuinely valuable content. Marketers should only start down this path if they are willing to deliver this content and maintain realistic expectations.
Don’t Stop Talking After the Conversion
Brands understand the very practical and metrics-based perspective that it is much more effective to keep a customer than it is to acquire new customers. They know that cultivating and nurturing a relationship with a new customer can, not only drive future sales, but it can also turn that customer into a brand advocate.
Tailoring and delivering content to these potential brand advocates is amplification at it’s finest. They already trust your brand and have shown interest in what you have to say. By delivering content that resonates with an already warmed up audience, you increase the chance that it will be consumed and passed along to others who may be interested in your brand.
There are many other ways to approach amplification, including paid advertising, targeted and promoted social media posts, and even content amplification agencies. Regardless of which option for content amplification your brand embraces, it can both simplify and enhance marketing efforts. As it turns out, amplification doesn’t necessarily mean being louder to be heard. It may simply mean whispering the right words in the right ears.
