Targeting Your Audience: How to Market to the Remote Workforce
Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, many businesses were forced to adjust their internal work structure and quickly shift to a remote working policy. For plenty of businesses, this was a tough adjustment because they lacked the infrastructure to make it happen quickly enough to mitigate losses. But the truth is, before lockdowns and mandatory quarantines, remote working was on the rise.
As remote work became a valuable commodity—even more favored than salary increases in some cases—many businesses across a myriad of industries incorporated it into their policies. It didn’t just offer employees with a perk, but it also benefited businesses. Remote work programs cost less, improve autonomy and productivity, and can even improve work culture.
As remote work continues to balloon to unprecedented proportions, businesses are now facing an increasingly unique task: how can they market to them? This is a bigger question for B2B companies who must address the needs of other businesses. And with so many businesses going the remote route, there’s no doubt that companies need to shift their messaging to accommodating. You can also expect new businesses to blossom and cater to the remote workforce.
Brainstorm Use Cases
Like any business, you’ve got to know how your product or service can serve different use cases. According to digital marketing agency Exults, conducting market researching and honing in on your audience segments is an important foundation for building out your use cases (learn more here: https://www.exults.com/). By brainstorming different use cases, you can appeal to different niches in your market. For example, Trello identifies different use cases for its project management software by creating boards that illustrate how different projects could be managed for different industries.
The point of use cases is to describe how different people could benefit them, or how a particular product could have various use cases. You’d be surprised at the various use cases you can come up with when you take a moment to think about how people in different industries could benefit.
Unique Pro-Remote Identifiers
Think about the aspects of your product that could be identified as pro-remote. Sometimes, they can be very simple features, and that’s okay. With a little copywriting and design magic, you can leverage even the most simple of characteristics as remote-friendly.
For some products, like SaaS products, this is fairly straightforward, as your product is inherently designed to be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. For others, you might have to be a little creative. For example, as an IT company, you might want to tout the benefits of hiring a third party IT service that understands the security risks associated with remote work.
In some cases, you might find that you have to go to the drawing board and incorporate attributes into your product or service that will appeal to this quickly growing remote workforce. Don’t be deterred by this. Some of the greatest businesses have been born as a result of a pivot. And every good brand evolves with time, adjusting to the trends around them. Take a look at how some other companies are responding to COVID-19, as well as how they’re reacting to the rise of remote work in general.
Join Communities
No matter where you are in the United States, chances are there’s a meetup or organization that brings together independent contractors, freelancers, and remote workers. Start by searching Meetup.com for local meetups dedicated to the art of remote work. You should also search for communities dedicated specifically to your industry. This way, you’ll be able to meet new people who align with your target market.
Work Where They Work
There’s an old saying that in order to understand your customer, you’ve got to put yourself in their shoes. And that’s exactly what you can do by going remote yourself—even if it’s just temporarily. Signing up for a coworking spot gets you a front row seat to a space where remote workers are in and out frequently, each one working for a potential client your business could help.
But this doesn’t mean should go around to each person soliciting your services. Rather, this is an opportunity to network, learn more about your market and their needs, and gain valuable insight into the coworking world. Many coworking locations also offer events where you could get the opportunity to showcase what your company does and how they can benefit remote workers and their teams specifically.
