When you start a business, it’s important to know who your target audience is. You have to identify who you are talking to and what your unique niche is in order to best describe your business and create a relatable voice for your brand. Who will relate most to the product or service you are trying to sell? Which group of people will identify with the value you are delivering? It’s important to know who your target audience is, but it’s also just as important to engage with them. Engaging with your target audience creatively can raise awareness of your brand, create customer loyalty, and grow your business significantly.

Spending time creating content and crafting your message is critical for your customers to gain an understanding of what you offer, but just talking to your audience isn’t enough. Putting out content in the form of a blog, video, or social media post will not make your business as successful as it could be if you also spent time connecting with your target audience.

Just talking to your customers isn’t enough. Take social media for example. Social media is about building a community – hence the “social” part. No one wants to get social with a person who is just using their platform as a megaphone.

Think about it this way: it is better to show your audience that you care about them, instead of trying to convince them that they should care about you. By authentically interacting with your target audience, building relationships, and creating a community around your brand, you will be able to strengthen the connection you have with your current customers and your potential customers.

“Consumer loyalty is difficult to build when you’re not actually speaking to the consumer, just spamming them.”

Taking the time to interact with your audience shows that you care about the people interacting with your products/services, and begins to develop customer loyalty. If you are wondering where to get started,

Here’s 5 Creative Ways to Engage With Your Target Audience: 

1. Share Your (Instagram) Story

Show people what’s going on behind the scenes of your business through pictures and video on Instagram Stories, Snapchat, or if you’re feeling brave, YouTube. Grabbing coffee at a cool cafe for a business meeting? Traveling to a new city for an event? Hit a major milestone? Share it all, and share the face (or faces!) behind your brand. Customers know there has to be a person working on, and sharing an update here and there about the people behind it makes your brand more relatable, no matter what kind of product you sell.

If you don’t have a lot of time, simply focus on creating an Instagram story. Why? Because when you add content to your Instagram story, your brand name and picture will show up at the top of your followers’ Instagram feeds. This means more visibility for your business in front of your target audience.

Tip: Ask questions to your audience and interact with them! People tend to listen when you ask them to take action. Ask questions in your content, see who answers, and take the time to respond and have conversations with your audience.

2. Go Live

Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all have live streaming capabilities that allow you to engage with your audience in real time. Why is this so awesome? Because with live video, you can’t help but be authentic. A real time talk will help your customers get to know you, and help you get to know them. Look at live videos as an opportunity to deliver value to your audience and show them how passionate you are about what you do at the same time.

Go live to give tips to your customers on a topic that is relevant to them, or talk about a new product you are launching/one of the services you offer. Engaging with your target audience through live videos and giving them helpful information/updates can lead to sales!

If the thought of going live on social media makes you want to run and hide under a rock, that’s ok. Going live for the first time is like ripping off a bandaid. It can be daunting, but once you do it once you will feel much better after seeing firsthand the potential going live has to engage your target audience.

To make the process less painful, keep it short and simple. Hold a live video for 5-10 minutes and give viewers a tour of your office/store, a glimpse of an event you are at for your business, or a quick update about what’s new with your company. Pick a topic that is easy and natural for you to talk about, and set expectations around your live video in advance. Let your audience know the time you will go live and the topic you plan to talk about.

3. Hold a Giveaway

Giveaways are a great way to engage with and give back to your audience that also, when held on social media, can boost your brand big time because of their viral nature.

A giveaway that’s simple yet strategic allows you to give back to your followers, promote your blog/business, develop relationships with other brands, and grow your audience. Make sure to keep it simple, strategic, and fun, and design your giveaway so that it aligns with your business goals.

Learn more about how to hold a giveaway for your business here.

4. Time for a Challenge

Think about the values your brand shares with your audience, and design a challenge to encourage collective improvement on something that is important to your audience and also aligns with your brand. Boss Babe Acadamy, a subscription-based online resource for millennial business women, offers a 7-Day Personal Branding Challenge. Throughout a series of emails, they provide a bunch of tips and worksheets to help people build out their personal brand, helping their audience improve on something they care about and providing them with valuable content.

Yes Supply Co’s Good Morning Beautiful emails are also a great example of how you can incorporate a challenge into your content and engage with your audience. These daily emails help subscribers build better morning habits by helping them set their intention for the day. The emails include tips on how to stay motivated, advice from successful entrepreneurs, creatives, and influencers, and a pep talk that reminds you that you are #flawless everyday.

Both of these examples hold challenges through email, but you can also experiment with holding a challenge through any platform.

5. Host an Event

There are lots of opportunities to engage with your target audience online, but being able to meet with like-minded individuals in person never gets old. Hosting an in-person event for your business can switch things up and allow you to interact with your local community. Try hosting an event with a theme related to your brand, or … to your beliefs.

Think about your company’s values, identify the cause you care most about, and team up with a non-profit to hold a fundraising event to raise awareness about an issue and work together with your target audience to make an impact.

Creatively engaging with your target audience, developing relationships, and creating a sense of community deepens the value you offer to your customers, allowing you to grow your business. What will you do today to engage with your target audience?