Category: marketing

reach isn’t the goal

Reach — the ability with which you can address people — alone is not enough. Working day in and day out to build a following on numerous networks and social media sites is not a goal in and by itself.

Why pursue an extensive reach? So that, when you talk to people, preferably as many as possible, they listen.

Being able to reach ten million people is potentially valuable. Still, without your crowd engaging with your message, the value of that particular audience rapidly declines.

How to build an audience for your business? Optimize (individual) relationships and scale them up, one by one. The other way around, chasing big numbers first might look nice on paper, however, a large crowd refusing to take a desired action, isn’t worth all that much.

the last of the organics

Organic is dead. Both audience building and reach. Reaching an audience is mostly contingent upon the ability to address a preexisting audience. New brands will have an increasingly harder time getting started and putting themselves on the map.

Not bad for consumers. Advertisers will have a more challenging time reaching prospects. When they eventually do, the targetting and offer itself will have to be significantly better than most spam received today.

Below are three things you can do to combat declining organic reach.

Find your personal or start-up’s collective voice. Make sure it’s authentic and unique, which is perhaps more straightforward than you think. Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, once famously said: “We have a strategic plan — it’s called doing things.” Create (content) first, strategize later.

Niches will become increasingly “narrow,” hence more specialized. If you can’t find an ultra-niche, create one.

Leveraging other people’s audiences will further solidify its position and importance as a growth principle. Paying influencers will see a decline due to consumers seeing right through the smoke curtain. However, using an individual or company’s audience — in a mutually beneficial way — will continue to grow in importance.

honest hotel

On average, it’s about six and a half times more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to keep one. However, in some industries, the ratio is less meaningful due to people seeking new, unique experiences anyway. Out of two bakeries in your vicinity, equally distant, which one will you end up revisiting? Chances are the one with superior products and service. Repeat business is crucial for bakeries.

For businesses active in the so-called experience economy, repeat business may be significantly less critical. Consumers looking for thrills prefer new experiences anyway. In this case, referral — the number of additional customers one customer provides — becomes even more critical.

Let’s take a hotel (chain). While exploring online, the rooms look marvelous. Stylized, modern, and quirky. The tricky part is presenting the essential aspects of a hotel room that aren’t necessarily visual, such as quietness. A room with walls as thin as paper in a narrow street with no sound isolation makes for a suboptimal stay. Guess where you won’t be staying again?

On a micro level, this may not cause a problem for that particular hotel. Still, if it’s a chain, it’s actually a big problem. Let’s say the chain has seven hotels in seven countries. That’s slightly more chances missed than the above retention equation.

Promote your hotel, or any other business for that matter, honestly. If you can’t, you have a problem. Not so much with promotion but with the actual company or product.