Online Marketing: After You Get Found

Online Marketing Getting Found

This post is an excerpt from our free 30 Days 30 Ways Online Marketing program.

Engage is all about what happens after you’ve been found by your audience. Its about applying everything you know about your audience and building a relationship with them, as a whole and individually. Engaging is, for the most part, the human side of your online marketing — human connections, participation, collaboration, and investment are the key success factors. Engage is also about learning from your participation. Learning in Engage is about instinct, insight, and wisdom. It’s about hearing the collective and individual voices within the interactions you have with your audience to gain a better understanding. When they grow, you grow. As you become a part of the their community, rather than an intruder, you’ll have unprecedented access that will help you become a better marketer.

And most importantly, Engage is the start of the process to creating your “Blue Ocean.” In the Blue Ocean Strategy, the authors shed light on the idea of creating “uncontested market space” and making your “competition irrelevant.” The theory is one of the foundations of the IMPACT Marketing Formula. The idea here is that when you humanize your business and create IMPACT you begin to elevate above and “eliminate” competition. Engage is the beginning stage of that powerful process. You can NOT create IMPACT in your marketing without Engage.

Something to remember: While much of what we’re talking about sounds complicated and intangible, you are probably already doing it — you just haven’t labeled it or acted purposefully. The IMPACT Marketing Formula is really about helping you get to a point where you can actually understand, execute, measure, and adjust to systemize your efforts. It’s not rocket science, it’s about building your marketing knowledge and learning better ways to manage the whole process so that you can achieve better results.

**Why Engage is Important**

Without Engage, you will always operate in “intruder” mode. You’ll always be that voice in the market that people opt-out of hearing. They will never really hear your message, because all you’ve ever done is target and sell. You’ll spend a lot of money and time, getting in front of your audience, only to find out that they now have the power to shut you out, to ignore you, to choose whether you can even talk to them. Privacy settings are being used and revolts are happening across the Internet as marketers continue to fail at the “make them swallow it” approach. In the end, if you do not invest in the human side of your business, you will do far more harm than good in doing things the old way. It’s the difference between shoving your marketing message down their throat and having a conversation about the solution you provide to a problem… the difference between having thousands of followers who never purchase from you and having raving fans who purchase from you because you’ve built trust and earned their loyalty.

If you’re interested in understanding how things have changed in digital/online marketing and what it really means to deal with the new social customer, check out this series Social Business: Online Marketing for the New Social Customer

As with the rest of IMPACT marketing, without the Engage you will waste time, money, and a host of other resources. Remember, from Day 1 — there is always an opportunity cost of doing one thing over another. This cost is much more devastating for the solopreneurs, one-man-show, or small business with limited resources.

Engage will help you plan your activities at the point of human contact with your audience. It is the most organic part of the Formula. It’s the part that can not be taught in a system or automated. Much like experts can not teach you how to be a good husband, wife, or parent — we can not teach you exactly how to build relationships with your audience. But there are guidelines, strategies, and tactics that you can explore to help you answer the questions you might have about this part of the process…

How can I become a part of the community I serve?
How can my business facilitate the spread of ideas within that community?
What does my audience do and where do they go online and how can I collaborate with them?
Who does my audience follow and who influences them, in the area of my niche?
What can I do to become an influencer and thought leader in my niche?

Obviously, this list is not all inclusive. Nor will all businesses ask the same questions. That’s the beauty of human relationships and communities

Understanding the components of Engage

In every part of the IMPACT Marketing Formula, there is strategy and tactics.

Engage Strategies: The who, when, and where of being a part of the community. Engage Tactics: The how and what of collaborating, facilitating, communicating, and being a community member.

Engage strategies and tactics might look like…

Being a valuable resources on Twitter, sharing resources within the community.
Actively commenting and participating in conversations across the blogosphere.
Participating on LinkedIn Groups or Answers to highlight your expertise and serve the community you are reaching out to.
Participating in related niche communities like those found on Ning, Social Media Today, and Entrepreneur.com.
Sharing viral videos from YouTube with your social media communities.
Publishing how-to and tutorial slide shows on SlideShare.
Promoting a valuable resource published by a colleague or peer via social bookmarking.
Creating a cause-driven Facebook application to build community.
Adding community and social features to your current website/blog.

There are many ways to engage… with no right or wrong answer. Your Target activities will help you know what strategies and tactics to get involved in, as will your expertise and experience in your market.

**What Engage means for your business…**

As your ideal audience moves from Awareness to Engagement the magic begins — your audience will take meaningful action at a level that is much more than just seeing and being “aware” of you. Engagement is much more meaningful and greatly contributes to the sales cycle (good or bad) – ultimately impacting your bottom line results across the board. Engagement will allow your audience to learn more about you in a way that will contribute to their motivation for deeper engagement and ultimately purchase from you. Meaningful engagement will also help you learn more about your audience to know how to build deeper relationships and how to motivate them to go deeper with you or purchase from you. Engagement is a beautiful, necessary part of the IMPACT Marketing Formula. Typical marketing terms that relate to the benefits of Engage, include:

Increased word of mouth referrals that increase leads.
Increased positive branding and awareness levels within your target audience.
Increased feedback and communication with your audience, leading to greater customer insight.
Increased online visibility with benefits across your entire presence, including SEO and beyond.
Increased credibility and authority within your market.

Bottom Line: The Engage will benefit every area of your marketing, when and only when its integrated into how you do business and market to your customer/client.

About the Author...

Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!