Have you changed your focus?

Look back 50 years and marketing was a very different beast. Products had longevity, people invested in long life items, rather than the disposable society we are fast speeding towards. Audiences were naïve to what went on ‘behind the scenes’ and adverts were often viewed with trust and respect. The use of mass media was the only way to reach your target audience, but it worked. The brand was in charge of the relationship and the marketer sat in the driving seat.

Fast forward to 2018 and people expect more, much more. The consumer has taken charge. The focus has made an unusual shift, away from the product, and now lands firmly on the consumer and its interactions with the brand, both online and offline. Brands’ definition of success now encompasses the interactions and conversations taking place with users, and even between users themselves. Companies are striving for better engagement, which leads to a better understanding of its target audience, which comes round to improve the engagement further. It is a constantly evolving cycle, with the aim of building long-term sustainable relationships.

To achieve this engagement, communication with your target audience needs to be regular and consistent. It needs to reach them where they are, online or offline, and it needs to be truly interactive. One way messages pumped out to mass audiences are no longer going to win the brand race. Even with the best messaging and a great product, users want to get to know the brand in this interactive social environment before they invest their time or money.

As users increasingly interact with brands, and each other, online, it is becoming more difficult to control the image of your brand.  User-generated content, reviews, forums, social posts all have the power to add to or to subtract from your brand. The number of areas that users now expect a brand to deliver on is constantly expanding. To truly be a success a brand needs to have a strong online presence, be cost and time efficient, use an integrated approach to marketing, engage with its users, and that’s not to mention the principles and values that are now considered so important for a company to demonstrate.

With so many variables it can feel at times like it is an insurmountable task. This is just the new marketing normal. If you haven’t already now is the time to shift your focus externally, no longer is just about your product, its about your users and how you encourage them to build a long term sustainable relationship with you. And if you can pick up some advocates, and even super fans, along the way then you are on the path to success. It is time to align better with your target audiences core values and really become a customer-focussed business. How do you do that? This is where the marketer steps back into the driving seat. Don’t have a marketer? This is where you contact us!

 

Out of House Marketing Department

Here we go…

After months of deliberation and planning we have taken the plunge and launched HIIT the Market. Was it scary? Yes. Are we excited? More than you could possibly imagine. It is a dream being fulfilled and a future being created.

So why have we entered the world of marketing? In short, because we love it. Being able to create great content makes us happy. Helping a brand succeed gets us excited. And yeah, we get to spend quite a lot of time hanging out on social media. What’s not to love?

Having worked for some of the UKs leading media owners we felt it was time to use our expertise to help the smaller companies and start ups that keep our economy growing but don’t have the financial or time benefits of larger corporates. After all, that includes us now so we have lots of work to do, lucky we know what we are doing. So here we are, raring to go! And that was the biggest challenge, starting! We are small and new, but we are passionate and full of creative vibes.

It’s Monday morning and as we sit here writing this blog and drinking several cups of, now rather cold, coffee, we could not be more excited about what is to come. We are at the start of a great adventure and feeling pumped to takes those first steps on our way to the top. Even more so we are excited to help our customers take those first steps and look forward to enjoying our small part in their journey.

For those that we are working with already we say thank you, and for those that are yet to arrive we are here and waiting to get started. We hope to see you soon!

For more information on the services we provide and a little more about who we are check our website out! And of course, follow us across social!