In 1940s, there was a shop called Tim's Burgers in one of the alley of the city of New York. Tim Crompton was the sole owner of the shop and made delicious and juicy burgers which was loved by all of his customers. The burgers are so delicious that it was mouth watering to see them come in a nice small plate as you sit inside the small but cozy place.
The customers were all known to him and nobody from outside his usual customer base were his regular visitors. Because of literally no marketing, and no new customers coming into his shop as time goes by, the burger shop died a slow death even though it was more tastier than the established McDonalds and KFCs.
Reasons for no New customers
New customers gain entry in to brick & mortar stores based on foot volume and mindshare of the shops' advertisements that are available over the locality. The marketing materials that you publish outside the store has to be prominent for customers to notice and get them registered in their minds. Thus, if there is enough advertisements that can be noticed by enough people, the store will get more volume of customers coming in through the door.
What about the digital marketing landscape? The same concept applies to the digital channels as well. The more you market yourself, the more people will walk into your channels and engage with content there. Let's see what reasons could be there for people not to get converted into your customers.
- There is no proper or easily identifiable funnel for people to convert to customers/subscribers
- Channel doesn't have instant gratification for the displayed CTA
- No inherent value for the content published in the channels
What is Channel based Marketing?
Channels are the mediums through which the marketing works. For example, facebook could be a channel and twitter could be another channel. Here, we define the channels as the set of users who belong to a particular system and know how to use the same system.
Channel based marketing thrives on the fact that each channel is different and the people's behavior is different in each of its channel. Each channel has its own structure and you cannot apply the same principles to the different channels because one technique that worked in a single channel may not work in the other channel. So the idea is to customize your strategy for different channels differently.
What each Channel should aim for?
Even though the channels could be different, there is a common goal on which you could make some assumptions. The common goal is
CONVERT STRANGERS TO YOUR LOYAL SUBSCRIBERS
The strangers who are just visiting your media channel (either facebook, twitter, website etc), can see your website, read some content and move on to the next eye catching channel. This could happen multiple times and you would lose out on the users who could become your subscribers by default. The subscribers are the footloose visitors who become gradual customers in a brick & mortar store. Thus, if you have the ability to make strangers your pals, they will become your customers eventually. And, that should be our goal for sure!
Converting the stranger into a Subscriber? Is it hard?
Not really. More volume of people coming in combined with relevant content, will make majority of your users a subscribers. So there are two problems to solve:
- Get more users to visit your media channel
- Give relevant content to them
To solve the first problem, you will have generate areas where your intended customers are sitting and move your channel's focus towards that. And get more visitors to come to your websites and reach out to the CTAs. There are multiple tools that does this for you. You can try to get more likes and followers for your channel and get more people to see your content.
So what are you waiting for? Get your social media marketing up and running, and get more customers as you desire.
