12 September Identifying and Locating Your Client Base with Omnichannel Marketing September 12, 2023 By sma Marketing, Social Media digital marketing, email marketing, Facebook 0 IDENTIFYING AND LOCATING YOUR CLIENT BASE WITH OMNICHANNEL MARKETING September 12, 2023 | Marketing, Social Media | Facebook, email marketing, digital marketing By Stepha Vesper, NPI, Inc.'s Senior Marketing Communications Strategist Running a successful small business takes plenty of effort and know-how, which naturally develops with time and experience. In order to grow, business owners want to learn how to get their brands in front of the people that are the most in need of their services. The problem is that finding who that ideal client is and where they are isn’t always so easy. Jumping into the weeds of industry jargon, business researchers at places like McKinsey & Company preach the importance of “omnichannel” marketing over “multichannel.” With the omnichannel approach to marketing, businesses recognize the importance of placing their brand and services in front of their ideal client as often as possible. While multichannel marketing will spread these marketing efforts with as broad a net as possible, omnichannel marketing calls for honing in on the most important client base niche as much as possible. As one might expect, omnichannel marketing approaches are meant to cut down on that overall ad spend while maximizing conversions. While this style of marketing should seem appealing to most small business owners, employing it can take some effort. To set your marketing mindset in a new direction, consider these steps to get started! Who is Your Client Base as a Home Inspector? The first step in developing an intentional omnichannel marketing approach is to define the ideal client. For maximum conversion rates, business owners should take a look at the demographic makeup of their most common clients with the thought that the average client is the type of person most in need of your services, or most receptive to your current marketing strategy. Some valuable things to track might include: Age Bracket Occupation Gender Location Income Level For property inspectors, some of this information is well-known, since a large amount of repeat business is likely to come from relationships with other real estate professionals. One particularly valuable detail that might vary from market to market is age bracket, since this can drastically influence communication preferences and time spent online. Using these various details to construct the current average client can greatly inform the best way to market moving forward. Besides the existing average client, marketing managers can move into defining the ideal client, which is a business owner’s preferred customer. While small business owners should appreciate all the business they can get (especially when first starting off), everyone has a type of person that they enjoy working with the most. Perhaps your ideal client is someone who is more likely to include a particular add-on service, or maybe brokers seem easier to work with. With an omnichannel marketing approach, business owners can target both the average successful conversion and the ideal conversion to actively grow their business with intentionality. Employing An “Omnichannel” Marketing Approach 1. Identify where clients and customers are With the target client base in mind, online marketing will only be effective if your business’ brand is present on the platforms where your clients spend time. For most real estate agents, this means prioritizing Facebook social media posts, driving interactive, engaging content, and maybe exploring in Facebook ads. Note: videos are great forms of content to integrate into audience-building social media posts. Check out our best tips for using videos online! In markets where younger agents are becoming more active, exploring channels like Instagram, or even TikTok or Snapchat, might be useful. One benefit that home inspectors have is that in so many ways, their company’s brand is closely tied to them as a person–their face, their personality, and their name. Because of this branding, clients will be more comfortable engaging with home inspectors on social media platforms that are usually reserved for personal interactions rather than brand traffic. Wherever a business’ client base frequents, it’s important to have a presence in that space for effective marketing. 2. Determine how they want to be contacted Locating an audience is just part of the omnichannel marketing equation, as different audiences prefer different sorts of interactions. For some, social media posts are the best way to make an impact, but for others (especially millennials) email marketing campaigns are the most effective form of brand-client interaction. The important thing to note with this point is that, although a client base might spend a lot of time on a platform, they might not be as willing to engage with branded content in that context. Although agents and brokers might not spend as much time reading their emails as they spend scrolling through Facebook, campaigns like email newsletters still tend to draw impressive returns. Marketing efforts with the highest number of conversions per impressions should be prioritized and might benefit from specific time investment for further optimization. For example, did you know that most home inspection industry emails are still viewed while on desktop by a wide margin, despite the prevalence of smartphones? With this in mind, spending too much time on optimizing an email for mobile might not be the best use of time (though these trends could easily change in the near future). 3. Experiment to find cost-effective advertising With these details and approaches in mind, effective omnichannel marketers should have the confidence to put their theories into practice and try new types of content on new platforms. Some campaigns might not be as successful as predicted, while others could end up being a new go-to marketing strategy. Taking the time to reflect on the reasons for these successes or failures and tracking the overall trends of a particular market is what makes business owners innovators and leaders of their industry. Bringing appealing content straight to a client base is the main goal of the omnichannel marketing approach. As a final note, always be sure to maintain a consistent brand identity throughout the various channels and platforms, even though some areas online can feel more casual than others. Presenting a brand with consistent professionalism is the first step for staying top-of-mind for your client base. Interested in upgrading your online marketing strategy? Contact your corporate NPI marketing team to brainstorm your next virtual campaign! Want to learn more about the benefits of starting your own home inspection franchise? Speak with our recruiting coordinators or grab a free info packet today! About the Author Stepha Vesper, Senior Marketing Communications Strategist Stepha holds two advanced writing degrees and has more than nine years’ experience creating blog articles, PR pitches, emails, website copy, print mailers, social media posts, newsletters, and taglines. Stepha also specializes in marketing training, strategy, and consultation, particularly in the areas of social media and email marketing. Her favorite part of her job at NPI is assisting franchisees with their digital marketing strategies so they reach their goals faster. Comments are closed.