Entrepreneurs must come up with novel ways of marketing their businesses in order to stay ahead of the competition. One way of doing so is by leveraging the star power of a high profile figure such as a sportsperson, media personality, or pop celebrity.
Here is how your business can exploit such a relationship without offending your consumer base or being dragged into controversies.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Start by determining your business’s target audience. Examples of common customer demographics include millennials, homeowners, drivers, sports fans and blue-collar workers. This step is particularly important because it will help you identify a high profile personality who resonates with your target audience. For instance, a sports star is more likely to resonate with sports fans than a motivational speaker.
Some of the key factors to consider when identifying your audience include the size of your business, audience activation goals, and engagement platform (offline, online, traditional print/electronic media, or a combination of both). According to data from the Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the median household disposable income in Australia currently stands at about $998 per week. This means you should ideally look for a star who appeals to the average Australian household.
2. Marketing/Brand Exposure Goal
Look for a high profile figure who best personifies your marketing/brand exposure goals. For instance, a high-end clothing store should go for a personality who is known for projecting an image of sophistication and an aura of exclusivity by the target audience. At the same time, find out how much the star you intend to hire charges for such engagements. Luckily, most high profile figures maintain publicists or personal assistants who can give you all the information you need.
3. Consumer Engagement Modalities
After identifying the right celebrity, develop a strategy for customer engagement. This is important because some celebrities refuse to endorse products/services that do not align with their personal, religious, political, or environmental beliefs. In addition, you should agree on the platforms and nature of content that you intend to use to engage your target market. For instance, video, text, audio, or image content published on social networking sites or blogging platforms.
4. Influence
Ideally, you should go for a star with considerable reach within the consumer demographic you are targeting. For example, you should look for a person with a large social media following if you intend to reach consumers via social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. Such a person would be able to influence his/her followers to try a particular product/service.
5. Gamification
To boost engagement metrics and audience reach, consider integrating gamification into the consumer reach efforts led by well-known figures. For instance, visitors to Westend Plumbing WA’s website http://westendplumbingwa.com.au could be directed to a landing page where they can manipulate an interactive image of an Australian celebrity.
According to PwC Australia, gamification is important because it captures the imagination of consumers leading to higher/better engagement metrics. However, make sure an experienced and qualified gamification expert leads this effort.
6. Guard Creative Freedom
Be careful not to cede too much creative freedom to the celebrity you engage. This is because the celebrity may stretch the creative freedom granted and end up antagonizing your audience, instead of appeasing it. To avoid this problem, you should review any content developed by the celebrity you hire before publishing it online or offline. In addition, monitor all consumer-facing communications and address issues that could turn into public relations disasters immediately.
Conclusion
Businesses of all sizes could employ celebrity endorsement marketing strategy to boost their brand reach and revenues substantially. To get the most out of this strategy, you should identify your target audience, guard creative freedom (in terms of content), integrate gamification, iron out consumer engagement modalities and evaluate your marketing/brand exposure goals.