It often feels as though marketing in the modern world comes down to simply using whichever technological or digital platform is most effective. It’s easy to grow disillusioned with the new options if you feel as though they’re coming too quickly, making it all the more tempting to simply stick with what you already know.
However, is there a distinct advantage for your business from these different platforms? You might be happy enough to stick to social media and what that can offer you, but is it worth your time to expand your horizons and make the effort required to master these alternative forms of marketing?
Different Platforms, Different Purposes
The purpose of jumping to new platforms might not simply be because they provide ‘better’ results, as success in this regard is a more subjective matter with any number of variables. However, considering the different purposes that each platform can serve might have you understand the appeal that they hold to businesses like yours. For example, while each social media platform might help to provide you access to a different audience, something like Twitch will not do that, but being active on it will allow you to host streams that can help you to engage with your audiences in a way that might strengthen the relationship that you’re trying to cultivate with them.
Alternatively, you might not think of SMS marketing as ideal for being your sole means of raising brand awareness, but it can allow you to launch direct fundraising campaigns through services like Tatango.com. Understanding each potential option’s role means that you can be much more selective with which ones you spend your time on.
The Accumulative Effect
The flip side to this is understanding the accumulative effect that your multiple marketing methods can have when working in tandem. Of course, if you’re active on a wide variety of social media platforms, you’re going to find that you’re reaching a greater variety of audiences – but it can go deeper than that. Having an awareness of yourself and understanding what you stand for as a brand is not the same thing, but the latter can potentially be gained without any direct engagement if you’re active enough across the entire digital spectrum.
Perhaps one way of understanding this is to imagine that your website and your social media pages are all well-established and regularly maintained. An average internet user who is not overly familiar with your brand might have no reason to look into you, but if you’re dipping your toes into the world of video marketing and having the resulting content shared throughout a variety of feeds and platforms, such as YouTube or dispersed in banner ads – the result might look quite different. This increased exposure to your brand can give them an idea of what you do, and what you stand for, and that might be enough to keep you in their thoughts.
New Approaches
Part of the reason for exploring all these exciting new platforms isn’t just to find new ways of what you were already doing but to embrace new ways of marketing. Through the internet, audiences have an enormous amount of exposure to business and the various tried-and-true business tactics that they regularly use to draw attention to themselves, and with this increased exposure may well come a level of fatigue. That’s not to say that all these more typical approaches will now be rendered ineffective, just that by examining a different approach you might provide your audiences with a breath of fresh air which in turn makes you stand out in a sea of familiarity.
When trying to think about what form this new approach should take, you might think back to your core values as a company, and how sticking true to them might help to align you more closely to a broader world issue that can get people on board. It’s not unusual to see businesses proclaim their commitment to fighting something like climate change, but it might be a case of actions speaking louder than words when it comes to proving to audiences why you’re worth their time.
