I’ve been in marketing for a while now and one thing that I’ve learnt is that people no longer want to just be sold to. Unless you get that magical person who just so happens to be in the market for the product/service you’re offering, at exactly the right time, you need to hook them in to keep them interested.
One way historically to do that was with promotional offers but that just devalues your offering and you’ll soon find yourself in a perpetual circle of having to discount to get sales in every time.
So what to do?
- Educate them
This works especially well in the B2B space where people are constantly looking for new ways to improve their activity, get more leads and retain their customers. Create some guides (everyone loves a download), write ‘how to’ articles, provide stat heavy infographics. Not to be ignored for the B2C space however, some of the most popular videos on YouTube are instructional and videos are getting easier to share with smartphones and tablets getting more powerful.
- Make them laugh
You generally find that brands you remember have either really annoyed you or made you laugh – think GoCompare vs Compare the market (meerkat). This doesn’t have to be using a TV ad, you can do some pretty entertaining content simply with a handy cam and a short video clip or being entertaining in a presentation or even a blog/article is totally doable on a small budget.
- Relate to them
Nothing brings people together like a shared opinion, experience or profession. You know your audience (well you should anyway), so you know those little nuances that make them tick. I love the old Revels campaign where they knew people disliked their coffee flavour so they made a play on a Russian roulette competition to avoid it. On your site you could run polls and then share the opinions or ask them to suggest topics for you to cover so they feel included and then really relate to your content.
Once you’ve got your content then make sure you’re encouraging people to share it. Just because you think it’s great and maybe they do as well – that doesn’t mean they’ll automatically start spreading the word. Each article should have share links to Twitter/Facebook/Stumble Upon – wherever you know they hang out. Don’t forget email – it’s easy to share via email and everyone has it. And don’t hide a few icons at the bottom of the page – give them a call to action and tell them to share it if they liked it, better yet give them an incentive. Even a line saying ‘Like this and want to wow your mates? Then share it on your Facebook page!’ provides a form of incentive with vanity.
So go and review your content, see if it’s just promotional and if it is then start working through some of these. And then get sharing…
