Why your digital marketing efforts need to be all about building relationships

Building relationships with your target audience should be a number one priority if you are busy with any digital marketing campaign. By building relationships you are gaining their trust and later on they are more likely to buy from you.

Traditional old school marketing makes it easier to build trust and relationships because the customer is able to see you in person, see your emotions, and hear your voice. Digital marketing is a little bit trickier and it allows you to get more creative with your marketing campaigns to build good relationships online.

Search engine optimization, social media marketing, and affiliate marketing is a numbers game for many, but are you actually building relationships online or just links with your target audience? Do you have a LinkedIn profile? Do you have any relationships with your LinkedIn connections? Rather than just building links and playing the numbers gain (traffic, followers, connections, etc), focus on building good relationships with your target market. Trust me. It does pay off. Here are two tips you can use to start building relationships online.

Social media

This might be a very obvious reason, but not a lot of people (including social media “experts”) understand the true value of this medium. If you want to connect with someone or a business, the first step should be to connect with them on the social web. Look for their profiles on all the big social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. Look at what they are posting on their profiles as their channels can give you a lot of information on who they actually are and it will help you establish common ground with them.

Once you have research on who they are, you will have a very good idea on what content is needed to begin a conversation with them and to start building a foundation. Share their content, respect their views and acknowledge them. In the world of social media, sharing is caring. Add these people to a “following” list and look what conversations they are part of or started. Can you contribute to these conversations?

Golden rule of social media “Never start promoting any products or services before you have developed any connections with others”. If you are doing this, you are most likely ignored and labelled as the pesky salesman no one wants to talk to. Be transparent, and be yourself. It will pay off.

Get personal

Social media is a great medium, but it really doesn’t always allow you to connect with a personal touch. Your relationships with your target audience can be made stronger with a personal note, email, or message. If you want to show off that you are really innovative, send your customers personal video messages with Vine. All you have to do is a create a short and sweet message for them. They will appreciate it.

Building relationships with your digital marketing campaign is an absolute must if you want to succeed online.