By John Stewart
 The session was led by speakers Katie Mares (right), Brand Experiment Expert, and Corey Perlman (left), ImpactSocialMedia.com. |
Today on SEMA360, attendees received practical strategies on how to use digital assets to attract customers and how to earn their loyalty. Because today’s customer journey is a blend of online and offline interactions, it’s important to know how to generate new leads and how to hold on to customers you earn. In the COVID-19 era, you need to create an ad budget and presence more than ever, because you have to stay in touch with your customers. The session was led by speakers Katie Mares, Brand Experiment Expert, and Corey Perlman, ImpactSocialMedia.com.
Among the key points:
Remarketing: Sending an ad to someone who visits your site and shops, but does not buy. Remarketing is a powerful way to stay in touch with a potential customer.
Create a Look-Alike Audience: Facebook, for example, will take a look at your current audience demographics and habits and create a similar audience for you. This is another very powerful way to create a new population of people to market to. That’s why it’s so important to get folks on your digital platforms and social channels in the first place—you must develop an email database. Have a place to collect information about your customers.
Don’t Tell Me, Show Me: Tell your digital story, be authentic. Use video. This gives you the opportunity to build an audience over time, doing episodic, consistent shows over the next few months. Just be you; if you mess up, that’s OK—you’re human. It’s like a video newsletter.
Make Your Customer the Hero: Interview your customers and let them relate their experiences. People trust people, not necessarily what is written. And then, if you have video content, you can re-use it in print.
Connect on a Personal Level: Care about the person, not about getting their business. You must be genuinely interested in your customer. Your customer is the person who keeps the lights on at the shop. If you can’t care about the customer, you’re in the wrong business. People crave actual human interaction right now.
Collect Golden Nuggets: A customer will tell you everything about them if you give them a chance, so collect those nuggets and use them. Vacations, kids, preferred ways to be contacted—use that to tailor the customer experience.
Seamless Brand Promise: Have standards in place for every touchpoint, and make sure everyone on your team is on board to support those standards.
Silent Selling—your drip campaign, your website, etc.