How great marketing builds bridges between brands and audiences

Any marketer with a decent budget can achieve brand or product awareness. There are countless digital ad platforms that will accept a bid to present a message to an audience on behalf of just about anybody – if the price is right.

The cost, relevance, and value of such performance marketing strategies, however, depends on the use case. As such, “it’s important that any strategy begins with clarifying the target audience, the value you can deliver toward their motivations or needs, and what action toward that value is reasonable for them to take,” says Amanda Yesionowski, director of marketing at Tech in Asia. “Once the ‘who,’ ‘what,’ and ‘why’ are clear, the campaign ‘when’ and ‘where’ can be shaped to elicit meaningful audience engagement.”

Amanda Yesionowski, director of marketing at Tech in Asia / Photo credit: Amanda Yesionowski

Marketers who work at agencies or service clients in-house pull the double duty of ensuring their strategies fulfill the needs of their clients as well as those of the clients’ audiences.

In an industry as fast-evolving as tech and in a market as large and nuanced as Asia, the permutations of audiences, channels, and campaign objectives can be dizzying.

Despite these challenges, Yesionowski points out that good marketing simply aligns relevant motivations and opportunities. “So whether the marketing team is servicing Tech in Asia, our audiences, or our clients, the steps toward success are fairly similar,” she adds.

Hitting the bullseye

A common pitfall in marketing is the “spray and pray” approach, in which marketers may spend large amounts to put their brand in front of eyeballs on third-party platforms for impressions. Channels’ definitions of what counts as an impression vary slightly but this generally indicates that content was displayed to a user. However, this is not a guarantee that the user noticed, understood, or valued what was displayed to them.

“For the Coca-Colas of the world, that approach to just stay top of mind could be totally fine. But until your brand becomes a household name and your offering is ubiquitous, marketing may need to help build credibility, consideration, and conversion instead,” says Yesionowski.

Over its 10 years of operations, Tech in Asia has remained focused on building the quality and quantity of its subscribers, supporting all stakeholders of the region’s tech industry through its news content. “The gradual and organic growth of readership has additionally transformed our earned and owned media into powerful platforms to leverage for any number of engagement goals,” Yesionowski points out.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Businesses as niche and long-standing as Tech in Asia have an advantage – impressions on its channels are valuable and not just vanity metrics because the company has historically only promoted content designed for regional tech stakeholders. Audiences follow these channels because they have long since recognized and appreciate their value proposition.

“The impressions we get come from audiences who already understand and value the Tech in Asia brand,” explains Yesionowski. “So as long as we continue to find new and improved ways of delivering value of this kind to this audience, an impression is a great way for us to measure relevant visibility.”

But building processes to achieve deeper forms of engagement – such as conversions in personalized and scalable ways – are more recent developments. “By establishing a customer relationship management (CRM) process and continuously optimizing contact management processes across channels, the marketing team paints rich pictures of the nuances within Tech in Asia’s growing community, discerns their needs and motivations, identifies and develops offers of relevance, and ultimately engages them in personalized and authentic ways,” adds Yesionowski.

Give the people what they need