There is nothing innovative about understanding the need to increase your online presence for a more successful marketing campaign. Where the innovation lies, however, is in the methods you use to engage your audience and drive traffic to your business’ website.
Sure, a social media presence and SEO are a given for online visibility, but to break the mold and actively engage your audience you’ll need to do more.
A typical marketing faux pas is to be using stale marketing. It will get your online visibility and engagement nowhere and wastes money and time. Wouldn’t you want to invest your hard work and budget into something that’s going to pay off? If you are concerned this is going to happen to you, you need to get innovative when it comes to your marketing campaign, increasing online engagement, and driving traffic to your business’ website.
Experiential Marketing
Often, it is what your business does offline that drives potential customers to look for you online. While experiential marketing isn’t directly aimed at increasing online engagement, you will see more people visiting your business website. Experiential, or engagement marketing, uses real-world events that encourage customers to participate—actively engaging them with your brand.
A great example of engagement marketing was Red Bull’s Stratos mission, in which they participated in and sponsored a live YouTube stream with Felix Baumgartner. Eight million people all over the globe watched Baumgartner freefall 128,000 feet to earth. It is not hard to imagine that with 8 million people watching, and Red Bull’s branding everywhere, that this provided massive exposure and sales for Red Bull.
There is a reason that Maryville University names experiential marketing as one of the four trends changing the marketing landscape. And, while you don’t have to send a representative of your business into the stratosphere, you can undertake elements of experiential marketing for your business. Your business can conduct classes, sponsor giveaways, hold product testings, or sponsor live events such as a live concert or street art—all while promoting your brand. Experiential marketing can be an inexpensive yet highly effective way to increase your online engagement, and will be worth your return on investment.
Innovative Social Media Engagement
Only posting on social media platforms to maintain a social media presence is not enough anymore. How many of your customers do you think scroll past a sea of marketing posts every day? It helps to engage your audience and customers through your social media platforms.
Through social media, especially Facebook, you can hold contests for giveaways, make quizzes, stream some behind-the-scenes content of your business, and ask questions in real-time for better engagement of your audience. Simply posting every day may increase your social media presence, but if you engage in conversation with your audience, they will spend more time with your brand. Don’t think surveys and social media quizzes work? Just take a look at BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed quizzes are very popular, and people visit the site just to fill them in.
Making an engaging online quiz is not difficult, and doing so will increase your online engagement.
Social media is essential to your business. However, people can become numb to posts that don’t encourage them to participate. Have them stop at your fun and engaging posts—linking back to your business website—and it’ll see a surge in traffic.
Unique Packaging
Your product packaging is more important than you might think. If you are using the traditional brown box packaging, you are missing out on many branding opportunities. Taking the time to design unique packaging for your products can make the difference between a customer purchasing from your website once and a customer coming back to your site because you made a memorable experience for them.
A unique packaging design should, of course, include your brand logo. Additionally, you can incorporate a color scheme that appeals to your target audience. According to USC’s applied psychology studies, “understanding the psychology of color is essential for developing winning marketing campaigns and creating persuasive brands.” How you choose to implement color into your packaging holds a strong influence on your customers and can impact your branding significantly. You can also implement eco-friendly and recyclable packaging that will be appreciated by almost any audience.
Unique product packaging is a way for you to set your brand apart from others. Your logo on a package will increase your brand recognition — prompting customers to remember your product and brand the next time they are shopping. A unique product packaging design does not have to be expensive, and your increase in online engagement and sales will certainly be positively impacted.
It can be easy to continue methods you are comfortable with for your marketing campaign. Although you may be having some success, you could be having even more success with the simple inclusion of one or more of the techniques above. In marketing, it helps to cover all your bases for an all-encompassing marketing campaign. This includes not only branding techniques, but also methods to increase your online engagement. In many instances, they are one and the same and will be well worth your return on investment.
