In today's world, starting and growing a business is becoming more and more challenging. With the increasing number of companies competing to provide similar offerings, if you want to thrive, having a great product or service is simply not enough.
According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the average person is exposed to approximately 1,500 advertisements per day. Surprisingly, with this amount of saturation through TV and social media, the human attention span has decreased to 8 seconds. That's less than the attention span of a goldfish, which is 9 seconds!
So what can you do to stay afloat in today's world?
To find out, I recently sat down with Travis Lawson, who has had the opportunity of working internationally with some of the largest brands in the world: American Airlines, Chrysler, Louis Vuitton, MTV, and Sirius XM. Today he is the Co-Founder of PXsquared.
One of the top Brand Strategy & Content Creation agencies in Australia, helping leading and emerging companies build meaningful and long lasting brand connections with their audiences across print, digital, video and interior spaces.
Travis believes that before you start spending money on advertisement and distribution, it's important to get your communications right. Below he shares six strategies you can use to get the best results out of your marketing budget:
1. Establish your Persona Map
Before anything, you must know your target audience. It's very important to be specific. The more specific you are, the better you can form your communications. Better-defined communication yields better results. If you haven't done this, don't spend a dime on marketing. Take some time out of your day to paint a solid picture of who your ideal client is and what are their qualities.
2. Build Meaningful Connections
Building connections is not just about how many people you have added in your LinkedIn or other social media profiles. It's about building relationships with your connections and discovering ways you can benefit each other.
Whether in person or through any content or marketing material you release, your material should target your connection individually. No one wants information shoved down their throat.
3. Be Visual - (Use Strong Photography and Effective Videos)
We all know the phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words". Did you know that a minute of video is worth 1.8 million?
Your brain processes visual information 100x faster than written information. Visual information can reach emotional brain regions faster than logical ones, and given short time people spend on seeing products, messages underlying brands should be delivered quickly.
Using strong visuals is the absolute fastest way to connect with the human instinct. When a video is crafted correctly, with emotionally engaging imagery, you are able to not only connect with your audience, but also are able to paint a tangible picture of your product or service.
4. Educate Emotionally and Logically
One of the best ways to build trust over time is to educate your audience. Although we respond to intuition and emotion, there has to be a logical understanding of what's being presented. In a way, you create a cycle that engages the emotional and logical brain. This is when the opportunity of influence is the strongest.
5. Provide Valuable Bite Sized Communication
If you want your company to have solid relationships, you have to develop the mindset that you can't just provide your audience with a product or service. You have to create an experience with constant dialogue that continues to add value to your audience and make them feel they are the center of attention.
This process is your start to developing not just customers but raving fans, that will help spread the word about who you are and what you do.
6. Get Feedback.
Just like any personal relationship, there are always ups and downs. Sometimes the downs are misunderstandings or mistakes that have been caused from one party or another. However, the commitment to any relationship is communication and having an open mind to feedback. After engaging with your audience and even after having a few sales, measure your efforts and find ways to measure how effective your brand experience is.