According to the Harvard Business Review, the rising volume of marketing messages that companies are sending out is causing customers to switch off.  Many marketing strategies focus on staying connected and continually communicating with customers through email marketing, direct mail and social media campaigns. However, this rising volume is causing customers to feel overwhelmed.   

Inundating your audience with multiple messages at inconvenient times could be damaging your brand. Therefore, it’s important to know when and how to engage with consumers so you build valuable relationships and not annoy them in any way. Some tips include:

1. Address your customer needs
When developing your marketing strategy think quality over quantity; really think about what your customer needs are and how you can address them. You don’t want to push material that is irrelevant otherwise your customers may ignore your messages and go to your competitors. 

Also think about the most common questions you get asked during your sales presentations and answer them through your marketing channels. Analyse your customer data including email and website activity to learn about your customer’s interests. 

Create content that addresses a particular need rather than touch on broad topics, try to hone in on specific subject matter that hasn’t been covered before. Then look at offering actionable steps that your customers can take that solves their problem. 

2. Watch the length of your copy
Your customers are very busy and it’s important to not inundate them with miles and miles of heavy text. It’s important to educate your customers but don’t overload them. Most customers will look at your marketing material and ask ‘how long will this take to read? Usually they are juggling many tasks so we need to get straight to the point. 

Ensure that your copy is tight and you directly highlight your customer’s pain points while also offering them a solution that they can easily take action on. To keep your customer’s attention leave out unnecessary information and just focus on straightforward content that has a solution. 

3. Ask questions  
Send out timely content that fits your customer’s current needs and addresses their challenges by asking questions. Questions serve as a prime opportunity to pick the brains of your customers. Ask probing questions through your sales presentations or use your social media channels. 
By paying attention to the feedback you get you are able to address your customer’s current concerns to build your engagement. The responses that you receive will form the basis of what content to focus on and push out through your marketing channels. 

Examples of questions you could ask include; 

• What are your biggest challenges right now?
• What products and services do you wish existed?
• What tips would they give to others in their industry?

4. Don’t be pushy
Don’t bombard your customers with content everywhere and anywhere, especially if your marketing content is promotional as this can be overwhelming and can get annoying really fast. Sending too many emails or posts that scream “me, me, me!” will just make consumers want to run away.

To build a strong community of followers and a loyal customer base, you need to find the best way of using your content and social media to bring value to your target audience instead of simply promoting your services and products. Instead focus on content that solves problems.

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