How has COVID changed your audience?
This webinar is produced and sponsored by Kane Communications Group, a longtime partner of Clocktower Advisors.
On Sept. 18 at Noon CT I was a panelist on a free webinar with Kane Communications, “How Has COVID Changed Your Audience?”
Carolynn Buser, OnMilwaukee.com’s Editorial and Social Media Director, Bridget Kraus, CPSM, Walbec Group’s Marketing Director and Todd Nilson, Kane’s Senior Digital Strategy Advisor, discuss the importance of social listening, innovative tools and best practices to better identify, understand and find your audience.
Morgan Burns, Kane’s Director of Marketing and Brand Strategy, moderated the discussion.
If you haven’t already, I invite you to read my long blog post, How social media listening programs enhance your PR strategy, on the Kane Communications website.
I was so proud to be a part of this webinar in partnership with The Society for Marketing Professional Services Wisconsin chapter. See below for my commentary on the webinar.
Commentary and highlights from the webinar
The following topics came up during the webinar. For those of you who prefer to read about them, I’m summarizing them below but I’d also encourage you to play the video for further context and depth of detail.
How has the pandemic changed your understanding of audience?
I was particularly struck by how Carolynn spoke about engaging audiences at the times they are online, which has changed due to more people working from home and having freer access to social media. I also felt that her response about posting based on how people think or feel right now was an important idea to emphasize.
At Onmilwaukee.com, their message of living your best life right now is a powerful one that many organizations should be taking advantage of.
Which tool(s) do you use to analyze your target audience?
Analysis should most properly begin with defining the group of people you are trying to reach. Can you articulate why you want to reach them? And, if you are able to reach them, what action do you want them to take?
This effort requires considerably more than listing the basic demographics in an audience persona exercise. You need to know in some qualitative depth where the people you want to reach are likely to interact with your brand and you must think through what action you’ll want them to take once they do.
The tool choices are considerably simpler by comparison. Once you know where your audiences will interact with you, you can choose a platform that is good at tracking that source. You can find a more comprehensive discussion of my thoughts about social media listening platforms on the Kane Communications Group’s website.
How do you build more trust with the people you are trying to reach online?
Building trust is, for me, the heart of the question whether we are in a pandemic year or not. So much marketing communication is based upon magical thinking that pushing out your message to enough people frequently will somehow result in more engagement and sales for your brand. This brute force method of marketing is a sure way to annoy and offend potential customers and needs to end.
Trust comes from a demonstration of your intent to be helpful and to understand the needs of those you are trying to reach. Trust comes from interacting directly with one person at a time and from acting with empathy and humanity. Trust comes from offering help and creating behaviors of reciprocity by acting before someone asks for a resource.
It may seem counterintuitive but these efforts do scale over time. If you can influence five, ten or even fifty people in this way, you are on your way to building a trusted brand.
How do AI and chatbots play a part in reaching audiences?
In the video, I note how chatbots have the potential to help scale necessary 1:1 interactions that are highly repetitive and time intensive. Instead of repeatedly answering questions from your Frequently Asked Questions section, your chatbot can recognize and provide the link to needed help, or even provide overviews of help that give quick answers to those in need.
For more detailed ideas about the value of chatbots and conversational design, listen to my interview with Alex Radu.
There’s a danger to AI-based products, including chatbots. They learn based upon the algorithms used to program them which are frequently written by programmers who are white and male and therefore often lacking a more comprehensive understanding of how their assumptions have an impact on how an algorithm can be biased in terms of culture, race, ethnicity and other critical factors.
How do you get leaders to understand the value of digital outreach?
Most of the executives I talk to understand that digital marketing has value. Many of the digital marketers I talk to struggle to connect the results of their efforts to business results those executives are looking for.
While it’s difficult to draw a direct causality between marketing and business results, showing correlations is usually possible, which is enough for a rational business leader to continue to fund marketing programs.
Digital marketers need to take the time to listen closely to what executive leaders say they want in terms of results and learn how to speak to them using the terms they prefer. Bridging the gap between what you may feel is a successful marketing effort and what they see as a valuable business activity will mean the difference between a well-funded program and being shown the door.
In COVID times, this need to communicate has become both more crucial and more possible. Since most of the white collar workforce has become by necessity a remote workforce, you may find that your leadership team is more available than ever via Zoom calls or even 1:1 conferences. Use this opportunity to reach out and engage them directly about their expectations for your marketing efforts. Educate them and help them to understand how the pandemic has changed your own outreach efforts so that they don’t have to chase you for that answer once it occurs to them.
A Retrospective and Closing Thoughts
As 2020 comes to a close (thank goodness) and vaccines hold out the promise of a return to more face-to-face interactions in 2021, the situation still hasn’t changed by much.
Marketers still need to meet customers where and when they prefer to spend their time online.
Social listening tools should be selected based on a more-than-passing understanding of your target audience
Marketers should be taking this opportunity to directly engage with executive leaders and learn to use their language to relate the business success of campaigns.
AI can and will play a more important role in 2021 but technology innovations must be approached with caution and an eye to diversity and inclusion
Are you considering the purchase of a new social listening platform? Are you thinking about a chatbot strategy? Are you communicating effectively with your executive leaders about your digital marketing campaigns? Set up a time with me to talk about your efforts.
