Response Marketing is a strategy focused on being the right Answer in the channels where your persona looks for solutions to their questions and problems. No matter which channel your persona uses, the goal is to build a strategy so that you become the right Answer, for the right person, in the right channel.
What do you do when you don't know something?
I don't need to read your mind to know you thought of one of these options:
- Search on Google
- Search on YouTube
- Ask ChatGPT (or your favorite AI)
Search engines and generative AIs have become our everyday companions. Our sources of information and sometimes even of comfort.
And if you run a business, a company, or if you're a professional who wants to be found by people, you know that talent alone and being really good at what you do isn't enough to get found.
What you want is for Google to place you among the first links it returns as the answer to a search.
Or to be the first brand mentioned by ChatGPT. Or maybe the first video on YouTube or TikTok.
What we want is to be the Answer to our persona's pain.
Come along with me to understand how you can become the right answer for your audience.
No matter which channel they use to search or ask!
What Is Response Marketing?
Response Marketing is a set of marketing strategies that consists of identifying the main channels your audience uses to find solutions to their problems and promoting your brand so that it becomes the right Answer, for the right audience.
Response Marketing is the solution for anyone who wants their brand, product, or service to be found by their persona.
Doing Response Marketing means exploring a set of marketing strategies that will make it possible for you to be:
The right answer. For the right person. In the right channel. At the right time.
In other words, it's essential to know your persona and where they go to clear up their doubts. That way, you'll design a strategy so that your brand becomes the right answer to your audience's pain.
You might be thinking: wait, isn't that just SEO?
Response Marketing or SEO?
As if the number of acronyms that have popped up in recent years with AI weren't enough, are we now using a new name for SEO?
Well, not exactly.
SEO, whether for search engines or for AIs (GEO, for those who like acronyms), is without a doubt the main pillar of a Response Marketing strategy.
But the concept here goes a bit further.
The world has changed. And while people used to search and clear up their doubts mostly on search engines, that's not how it works anymore.
If talking about SEO once meant talking about Google, today the range has expanded.
Consider this:
- I look for information on Google and YouTube.
- My wife, on TikTok.
- My cousin, an artist, on Pinterest.
- My brother-in-law uses ChatGPT, Claude, and Reddit.
- My parents, on WhatsApp (just kidding, lol)
- And my kids… well, they actually ask me
But does SEO really cover all of that?
Being the answer in forums? On social media? On Wikipedia?
The idea behind Response Marketing is to go further, to cover what SEO wouldn't cover in a strategy of being the right answer for the right person.
Is What We Call SEO Really SEO?
And are the main strategies we use to show up in AI answers and be considered the best result by Google really search engine "optimizations"?
Think about it: is a strategy of building quality content to attract potential customers and become the solution presented by Google really an "optimization"?
It's marketing! (content marketing, to be more precise)
And what about running a campaign with customers to earn reviews and build success stories that demonstrate your expertise and trustworthiness to people, AIs, and search engines?
Optimization? I'd say marketing.
So Response Marketing is a set of strategies executed with one main goal: to make your brand the right answer, for the right person, in the right channel, at the right time.
I wrote more about this in this article: Who was behind all those rankings?
Beyond Search Engine Optimizations
Besides being a better term for what we call SEO today, which, as I explained, involves far more marketing than "optimizations," Response Marketing covers strategies that an SEO team (or agency) generally won't execute.
A Response Marketing strategy may involve:
- Branding
- Content Marketing
- SEO
- Digital PR (which is much more than just an arm of SEO)
- Influencer Marketing
- Social Media Strategies
- User Generated Content (UGC)
I say "may involve" because each strategy will be designed according to each client's needs.
The idea behind Response Marketing is to see each channel as an end in itself and not merely as a means to optimize your results on Google and AI platforms.
For example, there's a lot of talk about being mentioned on Reddit because it matters to AIs. So the Reddit strategy is focused on being well regarded by AIs.
But what if your potential customer uses Reddit to make the decision and not ChatGPT? Is using the forum as a means to get cited really enough?
That's what Response Marketing is about. It's about understanding your Persona and becoming the right answer, in the right channel.
Now that the concept has been explained, it's time to understand how to build a solid strategy.
How do you do Response Marketing?
A Response Marketing strategy starts with understanding your audience's pain points and questions, and where they look for answers. From there, we design a strategy that usually involves: SEO, Content Marketing, Digital PR, Influencer Marketing and social media strategies.
Every brand exists to solve a problem.
Every brand wants to be the answer/solution to the questions/pain points of its ideal audience.
To achieve this, it is essential to design an efficient strategy that begins with mapping and understanding your persona and ends with reaching them on the main channels they use.
Let's look at the step by step for an efficient Response Marketing strategy.
1\. Know your Persona
The concept of the Persona has already been widely spread by Digital Marketing and is essential to a good Response strategy.
What do you do when you don't know something or need to solve a problem and don't know how?
If I had asked you this question a few years ago, you would definitely have answered: I search on Google!
Right?
But today, search channels have expanded and the way we search has changed.
If before we thought only about Google, today we think about the many channels we use to find Answers.
And more and more, searches are becoming questions.
And to start a Response Marketing strategy you first need to be able to answer:
"Where does my Persona look for the Answers to their doubts and problems?"
From that answer we will know which channels to prioritize for our actions.
One detail is important here: when we think about Response Marketing we have two types of channels: active and passive.
Active channels
Active channels are the ones where your persona actively searches.
They ask ChatGPT for tips on a medical office, or ask for the most reliable industrial management companies in the local market, or even a comparison of the best laptop for their needs.
AIs and search engines are usually the main sources of active search.
Reddit and TikTok, in many cases, are too.
In specific cases, Marketplaces, Yelp, Booking.
These are channels where people can search directly for a product or service, or to find out how to solve their problem.
Passive channels
We don't only find answers when we are looking for them.
For example, you might open LinkedIn for networking and come across content explaining how someone solved exactly the problem you need to solve.
The other day I published a post teaching how to measure results in AIs:
That's a question many people have, but perhaps have never actually asked.
I brought the answer.
The post allowed me to reach people who weren't following me yet, solved the problem for some of them, and brought me closer to being the solution to their bigger problem: being the answer in AIs.
And almost none of them opened LinkedIn expecting to find that content.
So, identify the channels your persona uses for leisure, to pass the time, or even to study other subjects.
When they least expect it, you can be the Answer to a question they haven't yet dared to ask.
2\. The Response Funnel
The Marketing Funnel becomes more outdated every year.
That journey pattern brought by traditional Digital Marketing a few years ago no longer exists.
A person can jump from the discovery stage directly to purchase because of an organic Instagram post.
However, the Funnel is still quite useful for understanding maturity and the type of content that should be used for a person at each stage.
In Response Marketing this happens too.
The idea is not to lock in a journey that leads the customer linearly to your solution, but to understand what type of Answer each question is looking for.
Often the channel where each question is asked changes completely.
Consider this: you are a travel agency and sell packages throughout Brazil. Your persona:
- Searches for travel tips on TikTok (what to do in a certain place)
- Searches for the best way to use their miles on Google
- Searches for where to get cheap tickets or travel packages
- Asks ChatGPT which is the most reliable travel agency in their city
Your travel agency can be/give the Answer to all these questions.
Undoubtedly, the last one is the most important.
The Response Funnel then helps us map each type of question the person asks, which channels they use to ask them, and how much that answer impacts decision making.
It's worth remembering that, after ChatGPT, the person could still go to Reddit to ask whether anyone has hired that agency, or search on Reclame Aqui.
Let's dig deeper into the Response Funnel.
Top of Funnel: Education Answer, how do I solve my pain point
This is the most common type of search/question.
From an SEO perspective, it's what we call informational search.
The person asks on Google, ChatGPT, Reddit or YouTube:
- How do I increase traffic to my website?
- My dog is scratching nonstop. What could it be?
- What are credit card points for?
And so on.
These questions are usually asked in search engines.
However, discussion Forums are increasingly popular in Brazil. And in them we see questions related to all levels of the Funnel.
Reddit was little known here until recently.
Today it has become a powerful Marketing and Sales channel.
So it's important to identify where your potential customer does this type of search to clear up doubts and solve problems.
Although Google and ChatGPT are the most common, this may vary in your case.
How to be the answer at the Top of the Funnel
The main path to appearing in these answers is with good old quality content production.
This type of informational search still happens mostly on Google.
That's why a good content strategy increases your chances of being the Answer that search engines present to those who are looking.
It's this type of content that serves as a reference for Artificial Intelligences, which helps build your brand authority in their eyes.
In addition to exposing your brand to many people who don't know you yet.
Look at this example from our client Nobre Cestas in Google's AI Overview:
And this happens inside Artificial Intelligences too.
Another client of ours, in the accounting field, was also cited as a reference by Perplexity:
Educational content that serves as an Answer for people and a reference for Artificial Intelligences.
The power of influence
It's also important to highlight that quality content can directly impact which solutions AIs will recommend to people.
In many cases the AI may recommend solutions different from the ones your brand offers.
For example, someone asks ChatGPT what to do to lose weight.
If you sell jump ropes, it's essential that you produce content that leads the Chat to recommend that type of physical activity to people.
It's possible that other lists will only mention running and swimming, which would distance that person from your brand.
Quality content written by an expert on the subject has the potential to make an AI answer exactly what you need your potential customer to hear.
Regardless of the Funnel stage they are in.
Middle of Funnel: In depth Answer
If at the top of the funnel questions are more generic, here we begin to see the quality and conversion potential of a person.
The person already knows the basics about a subject, but wants to go deeper and decide which path to take.
- How do I create an SEO strategy?
- Is it worth outsourcing my SEO?
- Is it worth selling the miles I've accumulated with my credit card?
- Actual profit or presumed profit, which is the ideal option?
- What are the best benefits to offer employees?
Here we already have questions that make intentions clearer.
People with more specific doubts, looking to solve specific problems. There is real awareness of the pain point.
It looks like the traditional marketing funnel, but the idea here is to understand:
- Where does the person ask these questions?
- Where can these answers reach them?
Maybe the question is asked on TikTok, on Google, in AIs or on Reddit (or another Forum).
So your brand needs to be present in those answers.
In some cases, you'll produce your own content. In others, you'll need people answering for you.
That's where the importance of Influencer Marketing and UGC (User Generated Content) comes in.
We'll go deeper into both further ahead.
And there are also passive opportunities. People who already have that doubt, are looking for a solution, but may find it where they least expect.
You may be browsing TikTok for leisure or LinkedIn for networking and come across the solution to a problem.
In this example, a business owner naturally browses the feed and may come across the very question that has been troubling their business.
Types of content that work well for In depth Answers:
- How to guides
- In depth FAQs
- Solution comparisons (e.g., outsource or hire?)
- Problem solving on social, blog, YouTube
- Podcasts with problem solving
- Newsletters
The goal is to bring deep answers to real problems, actively and passively, on the channels where your customer may be.
Bottom of Funnel: Decision Answer (Conversion)
This is the Answer every company wants to be.
The final and most important question that leads the person to make their decision and choose whether to hire or buy your product/service.
- Reliable SEO agency in Belo Horizonte
- Nike or Adidas, which is the best running shoe
- Reliable site to sell my miles
- Accounting firm specialized in actual profit
- Is Netlinks reliable?
- How does the Vertuo coffee machine work
It's more challenging to identify which channel the person uses to clear up their final doubt.
This is the most important step, because your blog post, your market influencer, your YouTube video may have led your persona to determine that the solution you offer is the best.
But that doesn't mean you're the best one to deliver it.
This is the most important doubt: knowing who will solve my problem.
Knowing whether that brand/professional is trustworthy or not.
And there are several channels that can be decisive for that decision.
UGC channels
A person may decide whether or not to buy from you based on your Reclame Aqui rating or by asking on Reddit if anyone has hired your service.
Google Business Profile reviews also directly impact many people's buying decisions.
Identify which User Generated Content channels are relevant to your persona and create a strategy to be the Answer on those channels.
Product videos, reviews and comparisons
You can create comparisons demonstrating your differential against competitors.
Both Google and AIs like this type of content.
However, it's even better when they are produced by third parties.
Get good influencers.
Google and AIs
Two of the most common channels, and ones directly impacted by all the others already mentioned.
I left both for last for this reason.
Your reviews, ratings, appearances in lists and comparisons will directly impact whether Google and AIs trust your brand enough to deliver it as an Answer.
Here it's essential to map the right questions with purchase intent and identify whether you already appear or not.
If not, identify the sources Google and the AI are using and you'll have two options:
- either you become the main source (if it's a product page or a blog post)
- Or you win your space in the source used for the Answer (if it's Reddit, a comparison by an influencer or neutral brand, etc.)
Types of content for Decision Answers:
- Product or service comparisons (Acer or Dell; iPhone or Android)
- Best of lists (important content for PR, Influencer Marketing)
- Discreet answers in forums
- Influencer product reviews
- Reviews on your own page, on Google Business Profile, Reclame Aqui and the like
3\. SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a set of techniques and strategies to help sites and blogs rank better on search engine pages, such as Google, and in the answers of Artificial Intelligences, such as ChatGPT. The goal is always to become the best possible answer for readers.
The foundation of a good Response Marketing strategy is SEO.
Here, I include both traditional SEO and SEO for AIs (GEO).
The two main channels where people look for Answers: Google (search engines) and Artificial Intelligences.
For this reason, of all the tactics used to succeed in Response Marketing, SEO is the most impactful.
Generally speaking, everything we do in an SEO strategy is Response Marketing.
Unlike Influencer Marketing, Social Media, Digital PR and UGC, where you need to define specific actions focused on being the answer, in SEO this is already the default mindset.
First we identify our persona's questions and pain points.
Then we create the best possible site, page or content to answer that pain point.
Let's go a little deeper into this process:
Keyword research
Keywords are how a person expresses their question to a search engine.
It's based on them that Google delivers the pages it considers best to solve the pain point that led the person to search.
In the case of AIs, the conversation happens a bit differently, with usually more detailed prompts.
The first step to efficient SEO is understanding which questions your brand needs to be the Answer to.
For this, we conduct Keyword research to map and identify the best opportunities to educate your persona and lead them to buy your product or service.
How to choose a Keyword
To define the best terms for creating optimized content and pages, we need to take some factors into consideration:
Objectives (traffic, conversion, sales objection)
- Search volume
- Persona maturity (do they already know your solution? Do they need to be educated? Are they ready to buy?)
- Buying journey
- Domain Authority (stronger brands can compete for relevant and generic terms, smaller brands need to start with more specific terms)
- Competition (finding less disputed opportunities)
Good keyword tools provide metrics for you to make your decision, such as search volume, the authority of the domains already appearing for that KW, and the difficulty metric, which is based on competition.
Best free Keyword tools:
- Google Keyword Planner
- Keyword Dominator (excellent for e-commerce)
- Answer The Public
- Keyword Everywhere (browser extension, pretty cool)
- Keyword Shitter (lol)
- Google Autocomplete (already mentioned)
Best paid tools:
- SEMrush
- Moz Keyword Explorer (Free trial)
- Ahrefs
- Ubersuggest (some free searches)
- QuestionDB (some free searches) (very good in the AI era)
And for AIs?
The way people ask AIs varies a lot.
So, even if you find prompt volumes, they are unreliable metrics on which to base a strategy.
We can use search volumes from KW tools to understand demand.
If that search is made on Google, it's a pain point of your persona. And regardless of how they express that pain point in a prompt, we've already identified the pain they need to solve.
A very useful tool is Answer The Public.
It shows several variations of a generic KW applied to different search tools.
For AIs it mainly brings them in question form. This greatly helps with the type of prompt we should map.
Search Intent
The most important factor for SEO success is understanding what the person wants/needs to find when they perform a search.
Google's goal is always to present the best possible result.
Ours needs to be the same.
My page/content needs to be the best answer, the one that solves the person's problem completely and definitively, without the need for more searches or visiting other sites.
For example, if you search Google for "cute little puppies", look at the result:
It presents images and short videos, because the search engine understands what the person wants to find.
So, when choosing a Keyword you need to find out what the person wants to find when searching for it.
How to identify what the person wants to find?
First, you need to understand why Google presents the results it currently presents.
I like to break it into two questions: "What do they have that I don't?"
Visit those pages and identify their strengths. Observe in all of them:
- Which topics are covered
- What is the content format
- Which themes are most recurring
- What are the strengths of these pages
- What language is used
- What is the differential of the first place result
- Which media do they use (videos, photos, infographics, checklists)
Now to the second question, the most important one: "What do I have that they don't?"
That will be your great differential.
Many Google results pages (SERPs) present results so similar that it makes no difference whether you read the first or the fifth place.
Put into your pages and content the expertise and experiences that only you have.
And beyond that, see what's missing from their page that you can offer:
- Media: images, videos, infographics, checklists
- Practical everyday examples
- Success cases
- Humor, creativity
EEAT (Experience - Expertise - Authoritativeness - Trustworthiness)
To present a reliable Answer, Google and AIs highly value brands, sites and people who are specialists in that subject.
That's why the concept of EEAT is so important nowadays.
Because these are factors that show Google and AIs that your brand and your content are good enough to be an Answer.
- Who are you to talk about this subject?
- Is your brand truly reliable enough to be mentioned?
- Do you have real success cases?
This type of question determines whether a brand/site will be an Answer.
Let's understand each of these factors:
Experience
It consists of demonstrating that you have done or currently do in practice what you propose to teach.
For example, I write this text and I have several success cases in turning brands into Answers on Google and in AIs.
Look at this example of ChatGPT citing Tray as the best e-commerce platform:
Expertise
If you propose to talk about a topic, for Google, it's essential that you are a specialist in it.
Even if medical content gets the concept right, if it isn't signed by a doctor, it won't have credibility with a reader or the search engine.
It's important that the text (or video) demonstrates this knowledge, which must go beyond generic internet content.
In addition, blending in practical experience is essential to truly prove the author isn't just an avatar with a name.
Authoritativeness
Authority is built.
You can prove you have expertise in a subject, but that doesn't give you authority.
Look at this example with two doctors:
Both are doctors, but you trust the one you've seen on television and know is a national reference on the subject.
Consistency and quality are the main elements in building your authority.
Trustworthiness
A page that demonstrates experience, expertise and authority may still not be trustworthy.
For example, a financial pyramid scheme created by great investment specialists. People with expertise and authority, running a scheme to deceive people.
It's essential that your site conveys credibility to the public and to search engines, and for that some elements are essential.
- About Us page
- Security certificate (HTTPS)
- Security seals (especially for online sales)
- Positive reviews on Reclame Aqui
- Few or no negative mentions online (if you have any, work to reverse them)
- Compliance with the LGPD
- Have a positive perception on forums and social media
- Have a physical address (not mandatory, but recommended)
I like to say that good SEO starts with a good product or service.
If people like what you have to offer, you're halfway there to securing your credibility online.
On Page SEO
In SEO we have two pillars: On Page and Off Page.
On Page is everything we do inside our site to achieve better rankings and chances of appearing in AIs.
Off Page consists of the external elements that boost these results. Its main pillar is Link Building.
To be the Answer people are looking for, you need to have a good site.
For that, some optimizations are essential.
I'll highlight the main On Page factors for a successful site:
- Quality content
- Attractive titles
- Quality Meta Descriptions
- Optimized URLs (short and simple)
- Well executed and strategic Internal Linking
- Optimized images
- Optimized videos
I won't go deep into each of these, but you can check the details in our SEO guide.
Off Page SEO
Having a good site is essential to rank at the top, but some external factors have a huge impact.
Branding, engagement and mentions on social media, comments and reviews, direct brand searches, Influencer Marketing and so on.
The stronger your brand, the more chances you have of ranking well.
Some of these factors go far beyond SEO, but they strengthen the brand and have a direct impact.
The main factor when we think about Google and AIs, and that concerns SEO, is Link Building.
Link Building consists of an authority building strategy based on acquiring backlinks on relevant domains (sites).
Each external backlink passes authority and trustworthiness to the site that receives it.
How to do Link Building
To build an efficient backlink acquisition strategy, you first need a site that deserves to receive links.
If your site isn't good and your content is generic, even if you acquire links, they won't look natural.
After that you need to know how to identify what a good backlink is.
Some factors help evaluate the value of a link:
1\. Domain/page authority
2\. Natural link: one that makes sense in the context of the page. A digital marketing site mentions SEO and links to your text about SEO.
3\. Anchor text: the text used for the link. It should indicate what the linked page presents.
4\. Link type: Follow (passes authority) or Nofollow (doesn't pass authority, but has its importance)
5\. Link position on the page: the closer to the top, the better
6\. New domain: receiving links from domains you hadn't received from yet is better than always receiving from the same sites. More people trust you.
Mentions and citations on the web
Link Building is very important for AIs too, but the way they evaluate and compose their answers is a bit different.
Here, mentions, even without links, are essential.
Getting trustworthy sites to cite yours has a big impact.
In addition, building relevant stories to place your brand in relevant news outlets is essential for building your online relevance.
The more mentioned, praised and cited in news you are, the more relevance your brand has.
Consequently, both Google and Artificial Intelligences will be more likely to cite your brand and recommend your product/service.
Look at this example from our client CLM Controller, cited by Valor Econômico:
A brand specialist being mentioned as a market reference, whose opinion is relevant enough for the outlet to request it.
That's authority. It requires building and time.
SEO is the foundation of Response Marketing. AIs and Google are its main channel.
If you'd like to go deeper, check out our complete SEO guide and design your strategy based on real cases and dominate Google and AIs.
4\. Content Marketing
Content Marketing is the strategy focused on producing quality content centered on your persona's pain points, with the goal of guiding them through the buying journey naturally. This content can be created in various formats, from blog posts to long ebooks and webinars.
If SEO is the foundation of Response Marketing, Content Marketing is its main fuel.
You can be the Answer to people's pain points on various channels and in various different ways.
Some brands are so strong that even without producing content, people already recognize their brand as the solution to their problems.
For the overwhelming majority, that's not the case.
Content production has three main objectives:
- Educate your market
- Build a relationship with your persona
- Guide the persona through the buying journey
Let's understand how to create a Content Marketing strategy.
How to do Content Marketing
Content Marketing is not just producing content randomly.
Some steps are essential for content that generates real results:
- Strategic Planning
- Persona, pain points, keywords, distribution channels, content formats, metrics
- Creation of unique content
- Create unique and useful content for the audience according to the formats they consume
- Distribution
- Promote the content on the right channels to reach the right people
- Measurement
- Track results and let the numbers drive adjustments to the strategy
It's important to reinforce how essential it is for you to understand the type and format of content that works best with your persona.
Content Marketing isn't limited to blog posts for SEO. Various formats can be used:
- Videos for YouTube
- Videos for Social Media
- Podcasts
- Ebooks
- Blueprints
- Webinars/Live Classes
- Courses and Mini Courses
- Newsletters
This content can be distributed for free, or you can create a subscription plan, communities and so on.
Not all content fits into a Response Marketing strategy.
But the essence of Content Marketing is to solve the persona's pain points and problems, to be the solution, the Answer they need.
Therefore, within a Response Marketing strategy, producing quality content is essential to win over your persona.
When we're dealing with a complete Response Marketing strategy, we go beyond content generated only by us.
That's why it's very important to go beyond SEO and Content Marketing.
5\. Social Media
You probably already have a social media strategy running.
But not every Social Media strategy is focused on being the Answer for your potential customer.
My goal here is not to teach how to design a Social Media strategy, but rather how to use your channels in a Response Marketing strategy.
With the exception of TikTok, which is widely used as a search engine, generally speaking people don't use Social Media to ask questions.
Unlike search engines and AIs, which are tools designed to solve pain points and answer questions.
But that doesn't mean it isn't there that they'll find their Answers.
1\. How your persona uses Social Media
Understanding this is the main path to a good strategy.
You need to be able to answer the following questions:
- Which social networks do they use?
- Do they use them only for leisure?
- Does the content they consume impact their decision making?
- Which profiles do they follow and trust?
For each market and each persona this tends to change drastically.
If your brand is in fashion, the tendency is that your audience makes decisions based on good clothing content, tips on how to dress for events and seasons.
And so on.
It's important that you...
2\. Focus on the pain point that would lead someone to buy your brand
The fact that a question isn't asked doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You rarely start using a social network with a doubt in mind, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
The pain point already exists and even if social media isn't the channel used to look for that Answer, it may be exactly where the person will find it.
That's why producing content related to a pain point can have a greater impact than just focusing on your brand and behind the scenes.
Blend into your engagement and relationship strategy actions focused on giving the right Answer to your potential customer's pain points and doubts.
Look, for example, at this content from Be Confident, an app that helps people speak English.
Notice how they work with content focused on everyday difficulties and pain points in a humorous way that connects with the persona.
The person didn't open the social network thinking about improving their English, although that pain point is tucked away in their mind.
The profile then brings the Answer to that pain point, even though the question was never asked.
Imagine a shop owner who is browsing Instagram just to pass the time.
See how Bagy (an E-commerce Platform) connects with them:
Post World Cup inventory may be a pain point and a doubt this shop owner has, but they weren't there looking for that Answer.
But they found it!
Selling 24 hours a day? What shop owner doesn't want that?
However, selling to the 50+ generation may be a question that never crossed this person's mind.
Bagy helped the person ask the right question, to look at a pain point they didn't even know they had.
A well executed Response Marketing strategy on social media needs to bring these Answers.
- For the questions your Persona asks
- For the questions hidden away for another moment
- For the questions they don't even know they should ask
3\. Tell stories your brand helped build
Another important way to be the Answer for your potential customer is by sharing stories.
How you were the Answer and/or solution for someone.
People connect with good stories and see themselves in other people's stories.
Using Bagy's page again, see how they work with good shop owner stories to inspire and teach people who share the same dream.
These stories are usually shared by the person themselves, impacting their follower network as well.
You put your customer in the spotlight and reach new people who will automatically trust your brand.
This type of content also works for more complex themes and cases.
Look at this example from Planning, our client operating in the industrial management sector.
A theme that probably wouldn't work on Instagram, but performs very well on LinkedIn.
A more complex theme, but one that directly impacts business owners and professionals in the sector.
Stories of how industries saved millions with Planning's help.
These stories build the brand's authority on the internet, boost SEO and GEO and, above all, are the Answer for those who need to solve that pain point.
Social media isn't just an SEO channel to boost your chances of appearing in AIs.
They are a channel where people find Answers.
And you: customers!
6\. Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is a strategy focused on mapping and creating partnerships with influencers who have the potential to impact your audience and lead them to find the resolution of their problems with your brand.
Being an Influencer has become a profession.
People like to follow influencers on the subjects they most enjoy.
They are opinion makers and, more than that, they directly impact people's purchase intent.
Generally speaking, they become influencers by being specialists in some subject.
People care about their opinion.
An investment influencer has a big impact on the choices a follower makes. Whether they'll opt for a consortium, invest in trading or in bitcoin.
An influencer can have an impact on all 3 parts of the Response Funnel.
That's why having a strategy is so important.
How to create an Influencer Marketing strategy
The most important thing is finding the right influencers.
Our tendency is to think about the number of followers, but that's far from the most important thing.
That's because some niche influencers have a much greater impact on people's decisions.
Plus they're cheaper too.
More niche influencers tend to have a stronger "relationship" with their audience.
If your main goal is to sell, to promote your brand or your product/service, this may be the best path.
However, if you have a good budget and want to make your brand better known, it makes sense to use big influencers.
The conversion volume may be the same, but the Branding impact is extremely high.
What to take into consideration:
- Campaign objective (branding, conversion, education)
- Budget
- The Influencer's relationship with your audience (sometimes someone from the same niche speaks to a quite different audience)
- The Social Network where they stand out
- Engagement
- That influencer's impact on their followers' decision making
- Connection between your product/service and brand and the Influencer's daily life
In House Influencer Marketing
Hiring influencers to impact opinion and educate your audience is an essential strategy.
Boosting employees and founders of your brand as market influencers is even better.
First, because your brand gains more strength and more credibility. After all, one of the best in the market is right there.
People start associating their expertise with the brand's expertise.
You want the brand because the best are there. Because the person you learn from is part of that brand.
The team is good. The delivery must be reliable.
Ideally it should be someone in a position of trust or, especially, a brand founder.
People who will be there for the long term.
One of the great advantages of this strategy is that regular influencers will promote your brand only for as long as you pay.
The following month they may be promoting another brand.
The internal influencer doesn't carry that risk. Especially if they're a founder.
Beyond influencers, it's essential to get ordinary people to talk about your brand.
That's why it's essential to talk about UGC.
7\. User Generated Content (UGC)
How many times have you decided to buy a product or hire a service thanks to someone's recommendation?
People care about other people's opinions!
Both Google and ChatGPT (and other AIs) know this.
It's no coincidence that product reviews have such an impact on whether a brand appears in search engines and AIs.
And it's no accident that AIs cite Reddit, LinkedIn and YouTube so much.
Look at the extremely high number of views in this search for the best Boxing gloves.
People seek the opinion of others and of specialists before making their choice.
Or see how many threads on Reddit discuss which is the best Whey Protein.
Winning your brand's presence and having a strategy for these channels is essential.
As I mentioned above, the SEO community has treated these channels merely as a means to appear in AI Answers.
But often these channels are an end in themselves.
That's because many people make their decisions based on YouTube videos and opinions on Reddit.
So it's essential that you are mentioned, endorsed and praised on these channels.
1\. Reddit (and other forums)
Reddit has always been huge in the US and now it's gaining a lot of traction in Brazil.
See how many searches people have been adding "Reddit" to in order to find their answers:
People prefer Reddit's answers over the results that Google would naturally present.
And those same people chose to use Reddit and not ChatGPT.
Do you see how Reddit isn't a means to appear in AIs? But an extremely important Marketing channel?
That's why I take the opportunity to reinforce: Response Marketing goes far beyond SEO.
Reddit directly impacts people's purchase intent.
However, don't think it's simply about entering discussion forums and speaking well of your brand.
Just like Wikipedia, Reddit is very well moderated.
It has a good algorithm, good volunteer moderators, and the community itself already knows how to detect wise guys.
And at any sign of manipulation your account will be promptly exterminated.
(Volume of deleted content on Reddit, taken from Backlinko.com)
Build credibility and earn Karma
When we analyze Reddit only from an SEO perspective and not from a Response Marketing one, we often lose sight of its true value.
More than hacks to get links or mentions.
That's thinking way too small.
What really matters is: credibility and influence.
For that, you don't need Marketing tricks.
You need to become part of the Community.
Let's go step by step:
1\. Create a natural and spontaneous profile
Avoid the temptation to over customize your profile.
That gives the impression you're there to get something. And not to contribute.
- Leave the Bio blank
- Don't link to your site or social networks
- Don't think too much about aesthetics, be natural and spontaneous
- Have an engagement history that speaks for itself
Your reputation is built naturally. By contributing and being relevant on the topics you have something to say about.
Expert Tips
Create a profile with a very forgettable name. Don't try to draw attention. Use a dog's name, a superhero's, or a band you like plus a few numbers.
The less memorable, the better.
2\. Learn Redditese before you start talking
Reddit has its own language. If you try to speak before understanding it.
BAN!
In the first weeks, don't post. Hold back. Just observe.
Get to know the language, the expressions, the sense of humor, the style.
To understand how the Community works, start by reading the Reddiquette (I told you it has its own language)
It works as the Community's code of conduct.
Basically it's Reddit's Google Quality Raters Guidelines.
And keep visiting and reading various subreddits, reading the rules of each one. Observe and learn how the community works organically.
3\. Karma and Votes
Karma is Reddit's scoring system.
You can see it on your profile, on the right.
Karma works as a reputation system. It affects where you can post and how your profile is perceived by people and moderation.
You improve yours through upvotes on your posts and comments.
4\. Participate in the right subreddits and be relevant
While building a natural profile, explore subreddits with themes you have an affinity for and that relate to your brand.
Don't be annoying.
Contribute in a valid way without worrying about doing marketing.
The more natural and respected you are, the more people will respect your opinion when they ask for brand or supplier recommendations.
The path isn't short. It requires patience.
But people trust communities a lot, so placing your brand strategically after helping and being relevant has a big impact.
And as a consequence, you may become the answer in AIs and on Google.
But remember, Reddit isn't a means to improve your SEO.
It's a marketing and sales channel.
2\. Reviews on Google and other channels
How many times have you hesitated, or even given up on making a purchase, because of bad reviews?
Some channels are essential to monitor closely:
- Google Business Profile reviews
- Reclame Aqui
- Market channels and Marketplaces (Yelp, Booking, Decolar, Get Ninjas, App Store, Mercado Livre, Capterra, G2)
- Within your own site (online store)
People use these channels directly for their decision making.
And beyond that, search engines and AIs also base themselves on these reviews to present the best Answers.
Look at this example: I asked for the best accounting firms in São Paulo and ChatGPT presented me a ranking based on Google Reviews:
Look at this other example when I asked whether the Tray brand is reliable.
ChatGPT brought data from Reclame Aqui:
For almost every company you ask about, the Chat cites its reputation on Reclame Aqui or issues an alert saying the company isn't yet verified on the platform.
So, identify the most important channels for your market and earn good reviews.
How to get good reviews
I taught you how to create a strategy on Reddit to handle your Marketing there.
However, for reviews on sites and tools, you might even manage to fake some, but it's essential that you earn real and natural reviews.
The first step is obvious: have a good product and a good service.
And besides that, complaints happen to the best companies and they will happen to yours. Knowing how to handle these complaints and solve these problems is essential.
The second step is simple, but many people hesitate to do it.
Ask.
Simple. Ask your customers to review your product/service.
Offer something in return too. A discount, a gift, a promotion.
Go the extra mile in the delivery or packaging in the case of a product.
Have a strategy to get spontaneous likes and reviews.
See how, when I asked the Chat about a candy brand from a friend in Belo Horizonte, it brought ratings from iFood and spontaneous reviews from Instagram and TikTok:
Word of mouth remains the best form of advertising.
Today a simple user review can be a powerful sales tool for your business.
UGC is a major pillar of Response Marketing and it boosts all the other channels. If people speak well of you online:
- You perform better on SEO channels
- You're cited and mentioned by AIs
- Your Social Media profiles gain followers and visits from curious people
- You have more chances of being cited by sites and news outlets
- Your brand is exposed to more and more people
A Response Marketing strategy will only be complete with a consistent plan to get real people talking about your brand.
Response Marketing Metrics
There is no point in building an excellent strategy to be the right Answer if you cannot measure your success.
As we have seen, Response Marketing is a strategy that requires understanding how to use search channels, social networks, UGC and press to turn your company into the Answer people are looking for.
Therefore, to track success you will use metrics that are already familiar from each of these channels and marketing tactics.
The most important thing is knowing what to look at and how to look at it.
SEO Metrics
Since SEO is already an essentially Answer-driven strategy, the usual metrics used in SEO will be the same ones used to track your success in Response Marketing.
- Organic traffic and traffic originating from AIs
- Keyword rankings
- Domain authority growth
- Site health and performance (there is no point in being the best Answer if it does not load in time)
- Organic conversions
- Content metrics (time on page, pages per visit, bounce rate) help validate the quality of the Answers
- Mentions and citations in AIs
I would like to emphasize how important it is to map your main keywords according to the Response Funnel.
You must first identify whether they are ranking well, selecting the main keywords for each stage of the Funnel.
From there, you need to understand whether they are fulfilling their main objective.
Education Answer
The main objective of educational content is to educate your audience and the AIs and to become a market reference.
When educating, the goal is to present your product/service as the best possible solution for a pain point.
To identify your success, answer these questions:
Are people reading and sharing your content?
Do they take a next step? Do they download a resource, click on a more in-depth post? Do they click on any CTA?
Is your educational content a source of information for the leading AIs?
In-Depth Answers
These will be your main point of contact with a potential customer who is looking for the ideal solution to their pain point.
Conversion Answers
These are the decision Answers.
That moment when a person chooses to buy a solution.
Here your main objective will be to measure conversion.
Conversion Answers are also the most important ones for showing up in Artificial Intelligences.
There is no point in educating the market about the right solution if they end up getting that solution from your competitor.
The questions you need to answer with your data:
- Is my brand cited as a purchase option by the AIs?
- Are my bottom-of-funnel keywords receiving visits? Do they convert?
- Does traffic to my sales pages come from organic search, internal pages and AI mentions?
- Are branded searches increasing?
- Do I rank well for sales keywords?
Social Media Metrics
In a standard social media strategy you already measure important metrics such as:
- Engagement
- Reach
- Impressions
- Followers
- Mentions
- Link clicks
When we think about metrics focused on a Response Marketing strategy, we will explore these metrics in a specific way.
Each social network will play a distinct role within a Response Marketing strategy.
TikTok, for example, works like a search engine. People actively look for answers on the platform.
On Instagram, this kind of search is not very common.
So we will look at different metrics according to how we use each network within the strategy.
On Instagram, an Answer strategy will be mostly passive, since the network is rarely used as a search engine.
It is important to produce content focused on responding to your audience's pain points.
These can be informative content, educational carousels and humorous posts that deliver the solution to a problem.
With this type of post, you need to measure engagement and the number of new followers it brings in.
It is worth remembering that not every follower knows your solution/product. They may have started following you for another reason.
The main Instagram metrics for tracking the success of an Answer strategy will be:
- Engagement on Answer posts
- Reach of Answer posts
- New followers
- Clicks on story and bio links (here it is always worth filtering the days with educational and solution-oriented posts to see whether Answer content is moving the needle).
TikTok
Because it works like a search engine, TikTok will have metrics similar to Google's.
It is still not possible to measure how you rank for each specific search term.
But you can identify your:
- Search traffic
- Appearances in the search bar
These metrics help you see whether your content is a good Answer to what people are searching for.
In addition, you can also measure the performance of posts whose objective is ranking:
- Completion rate
- Average view time
- Retention in the first seconds
- Saves
- New followers per video
To measure commercial intent, you can track link clicks.
On LinkedIn we are also looking at a mostly passive production channel, but with one difference.
Although people are not actively searching on LinkedIn, they tend to follow people and companies that can add something to them.
In a way, they are looking to learn.
That said, the most relevant metrics are:
- Impressions
- Reach
- Click-through rate
- Interactions
- Follower growth (by period)
- Profile views
All of these metrics show whether your content is high quality and whether you have been the Answer to the pain points of your followers and of the general audience.
The most important metric for all social networks, at the end of the day, will not be measured on them, but on your own website.
It will be the referral traffic coming from each specific network.
This will help you understand the success of your strategy.
Influencer Marketing Metrics
One of the main ways to be an Answer for people is through someone they trust.
To measure your success with digital influencers, the idea is to use the standard metrics of a strategy.
- Reach
- Impressions
- Cost per Thousand (CPM): indicates how much you paid for every 1,000 views of the influencer's content
- Growth of your channels: did the campaign bring followers to your owned channels?
- Engagement per post
- Sends/shares
- Sentiment analysis: were reactions positive or negative?
- Link clicks
- Use of campaign coupons
- CPA
- ROI
In general, an Influencer Marketing strategy aims to turn a brand into the Answer to a pain point.
These metrics will help you understand whether you are choosing the right influencers and whether the investment is paying off.
Remember that each campaign has an objective. If it was reach and follower growth, those metrics should carry more weight.
If it was business generation, CPA, ROI, clicks and coupon usage will be the most relevant metrics.
UGC Metrics
As we have seen, people's opinions are one of the most powerful sales weapons.
Therefore, it is very important to be able to measure a UGC strategy.
It is not just about getting people to talk about you, but about tracking and understanding the audience's overall sentiment:
- Volume of mentions and tags
- Performance of content that praises your brand
- Engagement
- Shares
- Use of the brand hashtag
- Sentiment signals
- From the customer: is the UGC complimentary or critical?
- From the audience: do the comments agree? Praise? Criticize?
- Use of referral coupons
You can also measure the percentage of customers who purchased and posted content mentioning your brand.
It is a way to validate whether your incentives for reviews and content are delivering results.
How to get started with Response Marketing
If you have realized you need to be the Answer for your audience but are still not doing enough, it is time to start your strategy.
This post gives you the foundation you need to learn how to be the next Answer.
If you need a specialized company to design your strategy and execute it for the best results, we are at your disposal.
Netlinks pioneered the proposition of this new category, Response Marketing, and the development of what it means to run a strategy that delivers real results.
Today everyone wants to be the Answer people are looking for and, although several strategies delivered that partially, what was missing was a category focused exclusively on being the right Answer, for the right person, on the right channel.
Netlinks identified this gap and offers the creation of a complete strategy so you can be the next Answer.
Interested? Talk to us and take the first steps toward becoming the Answer to your next customers' questions.
