Building Customer Engagement with Brand Promotion

Brand promotion is all about getting the word out there.  At the basic level, customers can’t buy something they don’t know exists, so building awareness of your company and its products and services is vital.  People also increasingly want to “get to know” you before they purchase your product or service, so communicating what your company stands for is important. Repetition is a key component in this process – the average person needs to encounter your company message at least five times before they remember it.  This means your brand promotion efforts should be spaced chronologically and across multiple platforms and forums to reach and engage the optimal audience.

Social media and blogging, video marketing, and content marketing are all great ways to connect with your target audience.  Not only do these strategies target places your customers frequent, they increase your internet footprint so customers can find you.

Making your company stand out online is just as important as it standing out offline. Companies can use branded company websites, blogs, and social media accounts to build customer engagement.  Creating a consistent online identity through formatting, relevant key words, and other means is important to brand promotion campaigns.  Your company’s Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, as well as blog and video should “look” and “feel” like you.  Organic search engine optimization is a key way to stand out, and online strategies affect SEO. Be consistent.

The best companies integrate and leverage channels and keep brand messages consistent.  Take the marketing guru Starbucks, for example.  Starbucks’s Facebook and Twitter pages are highly recognizable.  They have active online communities where consumers give feedback about products and changes they’d like to see made.  Starbucks YouTube channel provides video on their community service efforts, new music, how-to videos, and more.  Videos also feature on Facebook and the company website and link to other channels.

Sephora recently had great success increasing brand engagement and driving traffic to their website via social media with their 15 Days of Beauty Thrills sweepstakes.  People could receive thrills (small gifts, shopping sprees, etc.) by participating on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.  Users were prompted to “like” Sephora’s Facebook brand page to learn of the following day’s thrill at midnight.  The successful campaign grew Sephora’s fan base at six times the normal rate, increased website traffic, and more sales were linked to Facebook than ever before.

Another successful marketing campaign was Tenfour’s Tweet-a-Beer application.  The company partnered with Waggener Edstrom to create awareness and buzz for their tech capabilities. The app enabled people to send beers via Tweets (using their Twitter and PayPal accounts).  Twitter users embraced the idea, and the ingenious concept sparked coverage on local news, blogs, and eventually CNN.  All the coverage led to Tweet-a-Beer becoming a top trending story on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Mashable, as well as doubling traffic to their websites and prompting an influx of business and sponsorship opportunities (according to Tenfour’s website).

Video marketing is also a highly effective way to engage your audience.  Melboure, Australia’s public transit authority rolled out a viral campaign in early 2012 with the release of a cute animated song “Dumb Ways to Die” that highlighted safety tips for the transportation system.  At the end of 2012, the video registered over 34 million views on YouTube.  The transit authority also utilized multiple platforms; the song could be downloaded on SoundCloud, and a separate Tumblr and interactive site were launched.

The important take-away: effectively leveraging social media not only builds customer engagement, but drives website traffic and sales. And for more tips on how to enhance your marketing using social media, check out our free ebook below. 

About Small Screen Producer

Small Screen Producer is a full service, marketing firm located in Houston, Texas that specializes in online digital media marketing through a 4-step process. Step 1: WE PLAN a custom web presence strategy for your business through website design and development, mobile development, social media account creation and branding. STEP 2: We then POSITION your brand through Pay-Per-Click advertising and search engine optimize tactics that include on-page and off-page SEO that are Google and Bing approved. STEP 3: We then PROMOTE your brand using an Inbound marketing strategy or a content marketing strategy to help you accomplish your marketing goals. We do this through blogging, video production, infographics, call-to-actions, landing pages, and free educational offers. We help you build trust and rapport with your customer base. STEP 4: We then PROTECT your brand’s web presence with a reputation management program that monitors social media and on line reviews. Get started today with a free online marketing assessment of your company’s web presence. Your company deserves it.