What is intent marketing?
In plain terms, intent marketing is marketing with a clear intention; it’s all about knowing your end goal rather than just creating or sending something for the sake of it.
So, how should you use intent marketing as part of your social media marketing mix?
Keeping it relevant
When it comes to content, the content you create and share should be helpful to your customers, not just something you find interesting. While funny videos, animated GIFs, polls and games are all great sources of content, if they are not relevant in any way to your brand, then you are not helping your audience.
This is particularly true when it comes to social media. People follow your brand for a reason and that reason isn’t usually to see amusing but irrelevant content. It’s a known fact that the majority of people follow brands either to get discounts on products and services or to receive the latest information, updates and new releases on products.
More often than not, customers know what they want to buy and they know who they want to buy it from, intent marketing is about fuelling this and encouraging them to purchase from you.
Content should still be interesting but if you have a product or service to sell, everything you should be sharing with your fans/followers/subscribers should be relevant and shared for a reason to offer advice, discounts and relevant information.
What is your intent?
The first step in intent marketing is to find your intent. Ask yourself why you are planning to share something, is it important, relevant, timely and interesting? Next you should ask yourself what it is that you should be sharing, there are many different content types, images, text, video or maybe an infographic? Think about not just what you do but why you do it, then create content around that.
It’s important to remember:
Your customers are highly selective
People simply don’t have the time to read, watch or listen to every piece of content out there. Your content needs to have a hook to get their attention.
Competition is continuously increasing
With the amount of content being created and shared across social media more than doubling each year, while the number of social media users remaining the same, you need to create content that is relevant and content that really stands out from the crowd in the cluttered space.
Your content should answer a question
Customers don’t follow your company to see entertaining posts, they can see these from their friends. Your content should reflect this. Customers follow you to have their questions answered or to help them in some way with their own job, your content should showcase your expertise, offer helpful advice or in a retail environment should offer new product updates or discounts.
Your content should say something
So, if you haven’t got anything interesting to say, don’t say it. The last thing you want to do is post something boring and irrelevant and cause your audience to unfollow you.
By Michelle Hughes, a digital consultant working with Miromedia.co.uk, a specialist digital agency helping companies increase their sales through a strong digital presence using social media, content marketing and the search engines.
