What to do when you are not connecting with your audience
So you are posting on Instagram, and you're not getting much engagement. Your writing content but you’re not getting comments on your blog posts, and the pins you create don’t seem to bring much traffic to your website.
It sounds like you are struggling to make a connection with your audience. And building connections is what it’s all about. From that first time, someone comes across your business, decides to follow you to downloading a freebie and booking that consultation call to see if you could work together. With every step, they get to know you better, like you more and eventually trust you enough to hire you.
Because there is so much riding on your brand building these connections with your audience, it is not something that happens by chance, its something that you need to do intentionally.
You need to know what you are doing, why you are doing it, what you want to get out of it and how to put it in a way that your audience resonated with it. And the overarching plan you put in place to do this is your brand strategy.
I know the term brand strategy can bring up some negative feelings. So if you are not a fan of the word strategy, or if you feel like running every time you hear someone say you need to build a strong foundation you can see it like this; it’s taking more intentional steps to build that connection with your ideal client.
Let’s have a look at what to do when you are not connecting with your audience.
In this blog, you’ll learn:
How your first impression can have an impact on building a connection with your audience
Why you need to look at your overarching strategy when you have a lack of engagement
What elements of your brand strategy you need to review to start improving your connection to your audience
What’s the first thing that can impact the connection with your audience?
Your first impression.
Let’s look at how a potential client can get to know you and your business. It is most likely they will find you through Instagram, Facebook (Page or Group), Pinterest or organic search.
When they find you on social channels and Pinterest the first things they will see is your profile (picture and description), your visual brand (colours and fonts), the topic you are talking about and the way you do this. This first impression that they have about your business is what will make them decide if they want to follow, like, comment or click on the link to your website.
So, let's look at what, within your brand’s strategy, impacts this first impression.
Social media profile
In your social media profile, you have an image and a description of what you do and who you do it for so that when someone lands on your profile they know instantly if you can give them what they are looking for. So what you do here is summarising your brand positioning.
Content topic
For every social media post and blog post that you promote on Pinterest, you need to decide what topic you are talking about. The better you know your audience, what their goals are, what they are struggling with, what is holding them back, what solutions they have tried before and why this has not worked, the better you will be able to adjust your content to what they are looking for. So this is related to your ideal client profile and doing market research.
Brand messaging
It’s not just about the topics that you talk about, but it’s also important to talk to your audience in a certain way. If you put yourself as the hero of your content, your potential clients can get the feeling you don’t care about them. Or if the words that you are using doesn’t resonate with your audience (like using girl boss while your ideal client does not identify themselves with this term) it does not matter what you are talking. They won’t go to that next step. So this is again related to your ideal client. Using the research, you have done to create a brand voice. And messaging that resonates with them.
Visual branding
Your visual branding is something you can only do (or at least do well) once you know what your brand strategy is going to be. As it has to be a continuation of your brand, building an emotional connection with your audience. From colours to fonts, to photography; it has to complement everything else that you are doing. When this is not aligned, you are confusing your audience. And if you confuse them, they won’t take action.
So now you know what elements of your brand strategy you need to look at to improve your first impression. You might want to dive in and change these elements straight away. But if you make changes that are not based on an overarching vision and strategy, you won’t see much difference in your engagement with your audience as you still won’t present a consistent brand. So you need to look at your overarching strategy.
Your brand strategy is not a 1-time thing.
Would it not be amazing to set up all the elements of our business once and just follow that strategy forever?
Well, I hate to burst your bubble if that is what you have been doing so far. Because strategy is not a set-and-forget or plan-and-not-execute kind of thing. Your brand strategy is your roadmap to building your business based on your vision. It’s the base that helps you set your goals for the coming month, quarter, year or the next couple of years so that you can get to that vision.
And unless you run your business in a vacuum your business keeps evolving. This can be through external factors like Covid-19 where you needed to change the way you do business or because you understand the issues of your clients better and need to adjust your messaging. Or while you grow as a business owner and find out what you are good at or what kind of work you prefer and you want to change your services based on this. Or because your personal situation changes and you have less time for 1:1 so you need to start adding passive income to your business. These are obviously only a couple of the things that can change your business, but these changes will happen, whether you like it or not.
Every time you see a shift happening, when you want to make a shift or when you notice something is not working, like turning followers into clients, it’s time to review your overall strategy.
What do you actually review?
Business foundation
This is the core of your business. Think of mission, vision, purpose, values and your goals. Do you still stand behind the vision, you had when you started your business? Maybe something changed in your personal life, and you have less time for your business. Or you feel that you are ready to coach others in the same field that you are in. These changes will change your vision and mission. And it probably means you need to adjust your goals as well (and your positioning, ideal client and messaging).
Don’t be discouraged if nothing has changed and you are still happy to move forward what you have decided in the past. Just because nothing is different at this stage of your review, does not mean you won’t be able to solve your problems with making a connection.
Brand Positioning
After you have (re-)established your brand’s foundation, you need to review your current positioning. Have a quick look at all your social media profiles. Do they all have the same description of what you do? If not, this could be confusing your audience as they are not sure what it is that you do.
Repeat after me: if you confuse your audience, they won’t take action.
If your positioning is already the same across the channels evaluate if this is still how you want to be seen by your audience. More importantly, is this the same as how your audience sees you? Because in the end, this is what positioning is; how your audience sees you. If you don’t feel like your clients are appreciating, your knowledge and experience it is probably, because you are doing something that is not positioning you as the expert. This could be messaging, content topics or visual branding.
Ideal client and market research
if you feel your positioning is already spot on, then the next thing to look at is your ideal client. As mentioned above, the better you know your, ideal client, the better you will be able to create content, voice and messaging that resonates with them. If you feel that this is where you are struggling, you need to spend some time interviewing or surveying your audience. Not only will you learn their struggles, but you will also see which words they are using to describe their struggles. If you can use the this in your messaging, they will feel like you are inside their head, like you completely understand them.
While there are more elements within your brand strategy that can help you connect to your audience like your client journey, the above steps will give you a good starting point.
If you want to know more about the brand strategy elements I mentioned above, check out the Brand Foundation Series, where I talk about all these steps in more detail
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