A modality refers to the way in which information is presented or conveyed, such as through speech, writing, or images. In the field of medicine, it refers to the method or technique used to diagnose or treat a medical condition. In linguistics, it refers to the grammatical category of verbs indicating the mode of action, such as possibility, necessity, ability, or permission. It is also used in art and design to refer to the visual or expressive quality of a work.
In marketing, modality refers to the way in which information is manipulated and conveyed to a target user in order to influence or discourage a particular action or feeling. In order to be effective in achieving a specific goal for a commercial or non-commercial operation, one must understand the modalities or variables (for the sake of simplicity) that go into influencing the entire experience or journey in which information is transmuted across mediums.
Strategy
The first part of establishing a good marketing strategy is to identify your target demographic. Who do you envision would be interested in purchasing what you have to sell or offer?
From there, it’s important to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Businesses need to know what those in their target demographic need and want, and what problems they have that can be solved by what that business has to offer. From there, the answers to those questions will guide an effective marketing strategy.
Marketing strategies evolve and change as the customer’s needs do, so it’s important to continually monitor and make changes when necessary.
Branding
What is branding? Put simply, branding is your business’s identity. It helps your consumer understand your business’s objectives, your purpose, and what you have to offer.
Branding is an invaluable way to build (and help retain) a loyal customer base. If your branding is effective, it builds a connection to your consumer market and keeps you fresh in their mind should they need something you have to offer.
Strategic marketing includes building an effective brand and using it to reach your target demographic. As competition grows and sales decline, solid branding is a strong way to gain your consumer’s attention.
Channels
What is a channel? The term “channel” used in the context of marketing is the medium by which your brand will engage with potential customers or by which your customers will engage with your brand. Twitter is a channel. Instagram shopping is a channel. The “Yelllow pages” was a channel. Your neighborhood newspaper is a channel. Your webinar is a channel. The Billboards across your city represent a channel. Channels can be unique or similar, dynamic or static. It’s important to asses all your available marketing channels and test their effectiveness for your industry, product, or service. One of those channels will be your X-Factor and drive the majority of your leads, sales, or results.
Awareness
When you think of ‘fast food’, what images pop into your head? If some of those images were logos or specific restaurants, you have a perfect example of brand awareness.
Brand awareness is a tactic that businesses use to help customers recognize and remember their brand. An effective brand strategy strives to gain brand awareness by continually placing the company in front of its target demographics along its buyer journey.
When a consumer has awareness of your brand, they’re likely to recall your brand when put in a situation where your products or services become relevant to them. This awareness generation makes brands a first choice for those customers and thus helps accomplishes acquisition and retention.
Analytics
When do consumers visit your site? What pages do they gravitate to? When do they click away? How often are they purchasing? These kinds of questions are called analytics, and they’re great tools for learning about your website visitors, prospects, customers, and how they behave.
When you have a good understanding of your consumer base, you can discover and remove bottlenecks that influence prospects and customers to leave the funnel. This is called optimization.
Analytics also help with providing a clear image of what works and what doesn’t for the business during A/B testing. If you run a promotion and it doesn’t get the desired results, the analytics are solid data that help you understand what went wrong so that you can do better next time.
Optimization
Like analytics, CRO helps paint a picture of what your visitors are doing on your website. However, unlike analytics, CRO helps clarify what stops those visitors from making a purchase. While analytics focus on what happened, CRO helps to rectify the problems and improve the site’s efficacy through various strategies.
CRO and analytics work together to provide valuable data about important questions business owners have, instead of leaving them to rely on their opinions and feelings about what works and what doesn’t.
Nurturing
The unfortunate reality of marketing is that even if somebody is in love with your product and really wants it, they may not be ready to buy for a variety of reasons. Lead nurturing helps to address that problem by trying to retain that person as a customer so that they may buy in the future.
Lead nurturing works by sharing interesting information both about the product and related to it, by building trust, and by creating a relationship between you and your brand and the future customer. When this relationship is forged and maintained, it becomes highly likely that when the time is right, that person will make a purchase from you. When used on a large scale, lead nurturing has massive effects on sales and profits.
Nurturing also applies to current customers. It is easier and much more likely to get a repeat sale from a current customer who had a positive experience than it is to get a sale from a prospective customer. That is a no-brainer. So, if you make it a priority to nurture current customers and align with their needs, you can reduce your churn rate and scale your operation exponentially.
Addressing and pursuing each modality individually, diligently, and consistently will improve the results of your campaign and your customer experience overall.