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The ‘Ugly’ Truth About Creating Amazing Content That Most Companies Don’t Want to Hear

head-1137275_1280Most companies start blogging and creating social media content for one reason: They are ready to sell their products and services.  So they create content that sells their products and services.

The problem is, most people aren’t ready to buy.  So when you try to sell to someone that isn’t in the market for your product, your sales message becomes a nuisance.  And by association, your brand becomes a nuisance.  The reality is that your content can be amazing, but if it isn’t aimed at your customer and their specific point in the buying process, then it will not work.

Period.

Now, let’s back up and see what type of content customers find trustworthy.  Research from Forrester into what type of content customers find trustworthy found that 70% of respondents found product recommendations from friends and family to be trustworthy.  Only 32% found content on a company website or blog to be trustworthy.  At first glance, it would be easy to understand why the average customer trusts their friends and family far more often than they trust the content from a company they don’t know.  But there’s also another factor at play that greatly influences trustworthiness.

Relevance.  Since your friends and family know you, they can apply that knowledge to give you more relevant information, and you are more likely to trust information that’s relevant to you.  If they know I’m in the market for a used sedan, they don’t bother telling me about the great deals the local Chevy dealer has on new trucks, because they know that’s not what I’m looking for.

The bottom line is that amazing content is relevant content.  Relevant content is amazing content.  If you give me the content I need, in the form I need, and the precise moment I need it, that’s relevance for me.

Too many companies use content as a way to convert customers when they should be trying to create customers.  You can’t convert customers until you have them, and when you push content that sells into the face of someone that isn’t ready to buy, you ensure that your content gets ignored.

For example, many companies are attracted to blogging because it can be a wonderful way to raise awareness for your business. But you have to incorporate that into your content creation.  If you are trying to raise awareness for your business, then that makes you are trying to connect with new customers that don’t know who you are and don’t know why they would want to do business with you.

ContentAuditSo if you create content that sells directly to new customers, it’s going to be a disconnect.  Since new customers aren’t yet aware of your business and products, then you need to focus your content on topics that relate to your products.  Here’s some examples…

If you sell athletic wear, create content focused on the activities customers would engage in while wearing your athletic wear.

If you sell cameras, create content focused on the experiences and events people would photograph with your camera.  I blogged about this last week.

If you sell  carseats, create content focused on how parents can be safer drivers.

Make Your Content Like the PBS Pledge Drive 

But let’s say you’re stubborn, and you are determined to SELL in your content.  That’s fine, you can absolutely promote your products and services in your content.   In fact, if you create useful content for your readers, you SHOULD use that content to sell to your readers.  Always keep in mind that if you have created useful content for your readers, then you have earned the right to promote yourself to your readers.  In fact, your best content SHOULD include a call to action for your readers.

Case in point, PBS is currently in the middle of its latest pledge drive.  Tonight, it will show a special concert from 1990 with The Highwaymen; Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson.   This is a unique and special concert that PBS usually doesn’t show.  Since PBS understands that this is content that its viewers will love, it uses this concert to promote its pledge drive.  During the concert, PBS will have scheduled breaks where it will ask viewers for donations by offering them the concert DVD in exchange for a donation.  PBS earned the right to ask for the donation by providing excellent content that was valuable to its viewers.

As a content creator, you can do the exact same thing. Notice I did this above by inserting a banner for my Content Strategy Audit directly into the post. I didn’t do that with my previous post because it wasn’t as in-depth as this post.  This post does a deeper dive into content creation, so as a result I feel more comfortable inserting a Call to Action directly into the post.  But also notice that particular Call to Action is also relevant to the content of this post.  A thorough post about content creation and strategy included a relevant Call to Action for my Content Strategy Audit.  It’s not that you can’t sell and promote with your content, it’s that you need to do so smartly.  Think about this as you are creating your content, if you’re writing a blog post that does a deep dive into a particular topic associated with your business, then it could make sense to promote your white paper that you did on a similar topic.  If I’m interested in the topic of the post, I might be interested in reading your white paper about a complimentary topic.

Let’s look at a slightly different example.  LawnStarter is a startup that provides lawncare services such as mowing and trimming in select cities across the US.  On its blog, the Austin startup does a great job of creating posts that are focused on lawncare and travel in the cities it serves.  But it’s hit upon viral sensations with its posts on the most beautiful college and high school campuses around the country.  Here’s one example:

LawnStarter

There’s two very interesting elements to note about this post.  First, it’s gotten over 40,000 Likes on Facebook!  The second, note that just to the right of the post, is a very clear Call to Action letting you get $10 off your lawn mowing service.  What LawnStarter has done is create content that is somewhat (perhaps even loosely) related to its core business.  But that content has gone viral, which means people are reading the post, and when they do, they are being exposed to a clear offer to get $10 off a lawn mowing service.

If LawnStarter had written a post just about getting $10 off its lawn mowing service, would it have gotten over 40,000 Likes on Facebook?  Of course not, it wouldn’t have gotten 40 Likes without being boosted.  But by changing the focus of the content away from its services (lawn mowing) onto something related to its services (beautiful landscaping and high school campuses), the post becomes far more interesting. And since LawnStarter was smart enough to marry a clever and clear Call to Action next to that post, they will benefit greatly from its popularity.

And the best part about this Call to Action? You’re letting the customer choose the content (experience) they want.  If they just want to read the post and look at the cool pictures and videos, they can.  But if they come read your post, then want to learn more about LawnStarter and even do business with them, that option is readily available to them as well.

The Bottom Line

Your content should only be selling IF your reader is ready to buy.  If your content strategy is to use the content to build awareness for your business, then you have to take that into account when you create content.  The job is to attract attention, and you do that by creating content that focuses not on your products directly, but the connections those products have to your customers’ lives.

At the same time, great content that creates value for your readers has earned the right to add a Call to Action.  Think of it as the PBS pledge drive example; no one wants to sit through a 90-minute commercial for buying the concert DVD, but a lot of people are willing to watch 90 minutes of the concert, with a short 5-minute commercial for the DVD placed every 20-30 minutes.

It’s the same approach with your content.  If you create content that interests your reader and truly does help build awareness for your business, then you are also building desire.  By creating content that the reader finds interesting, you’ve also made your business more interesting to that reader.  So you should focus on giving them valuable content, but also think about how you can include relevant Calls to Action in and around your content that gives interested readers the ability to move closer to doing business with you, if they chose to.

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Using Science to Create Better Content

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There’s been a ton of research into the idea that ‘money can buy happiness’.  The consistent conclusion is that money can buy happiness, but it greatly depends on how you spend that money.  For example, purchases of an item do tend to have an impact on happiness.  However, that happiness is typically short-lived, and can actually have the opposite affect if the item becomes outdated or less useful.  Can you remember the excitement you had when you bought your first iPhone?  Probably not, because a few months later the next version of the iPhone came out, and yours was ‘old news’.

On the other hand, research into how purchases can drive happiness has found that when we spend our money on experiences, the happiness enjoyed is more long-term.  This happiness can be increased if we share those experiences with others.  For example, if a family purchases iPhones together, that happiness will be short-term because soon the technology will become obsolete.  Plus the purchase can even become a source of disappointment if friends and acquaintances purchase newer phones that have more functions and capabilities than the now outdated iPhones that your family owns.

But if that same family had instead spent that money on a trip to The Grand Canyon, they would not only enjoy happiness from the trip itself, but for the rest of their lives, they could share that experience and re-live it through story.  They could also share their experience with other people that had visited The Grand Canyon.  So the value of the trip and its impact upon the family’s happiness is long-term.  In many ways, the happiness that the family enjoys from the trip can actually increase over time.

So how can you apply this research into your content creation?  By focusing on the experiences associated with your product.  This applies even if you are selling a product such as a smartphone, or if you are selling a local destination.  My friends in the tourism industry have known the power of selling experiences for decades.  So if you actually are selling experiences such as a destination or a waterpark, or similar, then using the experiences with your content is much easier.

If you are instead selling an actual product, then create content that’s associated with the experiences involving that product.  Notice that Apple actually does this with its iPhone commercials.  Most are focused on how you could capture moments with the iPhone during your experiences.  Such as travel, a wedding, riding in a car, being with friends, etc.

Think about what you are selling, and consider the experiences that are associated with that product.  Or consider life-changing events, like a wedding, a graduation, a birthday.  How does your product relate to those experiences? A camera could take photos of the wedding, maybe a car could be a graduation gift.

The reality is, until a customer KNOWS that they want to buy your product, content that focuses on the product itself does not interest them.  And this is a disconnect because many companies subscribe to the ‘well people won’t know that they want my product unless I tell them about it’ theory.  People would rather hear about how your product fits into their lives.  Which is why you want to relate your product to the experiences that your customers enjoy.

That approach will earn their attention and make them consider that maybe they should buy your product.  Gain awareness by focusing on how the product relates to the customer first, then when they are ready to buy, shift to more product-centric content.

Pic via Flickr user Laura Hadden

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What’s the Difference Between a Brand Ambassador Program and an Outreach Program?

Influencer Marketing and working with Brand Ambassadors are two of the hottest areas in marketing today, but they are completely different tactics often aimed at completely different audiences.  So what’s the difference?

A Brand Ambassador program is where the company and its customers (fans) have a sort of informal and ongoing relationship.  Typically, the participants in a Brand Ambassador program have signed up with the company, so they are raising their hands and telling the brand that they want to work directly with them.  Most Brand Ambassadors are compensated for their involvement.  That compensation could be in the form of cash, or products, or discounts on products, or greater access to the brand, or possibly all of the above.  The benefit to the brand is that it gives them a way to stay connected with its most passionate fans, so they can work with those fans to help them better promote the brand’s products to others, but also the brand can get valuable feedback from its ambassadors and apply that feedback to the business and product cycle.  The Brand Ambassador benefits by having a closer connection to a brand it loves and supports.  Often, Brand Ambassadors will get advance access to upcoming products or projects, and get to go ‘behind the scenes’ at the brand, and are given a level of access that the average customer could never gain.  If the Brand Ambassador program is organized and executed properly, there are clear and obvious benefits to both the brand and its Brand Ambassadors.

For example, Chick-Fil-A has a program where it works with moms, #ChickFilAMoms. It will send them coupons for certain items and also promote certain items to them (especially new menu items). CFA tries to get the moms to try the items, but they also want the moms to tell other moms about the products so they’ll give them coupons but also instructions on messaging, how to promote the items to other people, etc. The customers will also give feedback on the items and brand experience, and Chick Fil-A can then leverage that feedback for change (see Chick Fil-A launching a Mom’s Valet service for moms that bring kids to Chick Fil-A). Customers opt-in to be a part of the program, it’s all about having an ongoing relationship with fans that have raised their hands and told the brand that they want to help them.

Outreach programs are a bit different.  Typically, these inititiatives are designed to raise awareness among a particular group, often a group of influencers.  For example, if Chick-Fil-A wanted to work with influencers, what they might do was identify say 25 moms that were also ‘influencers’, and fly them into Atlanta and let them spend the day with their chefs, see how the food is prepared, maybe learn more about how CFA works with moms, etc.  As Janice Person explained in a recent MarketingSmarts podcast with Kerry Gorgone (Click to listen), Monsanto brings in foodie bloggers to its partner farms to give them a complete look at the process in bringing food from the field to the table, and along the way they also learn more about Monsanto’s role in helping to facilitate that process.  In both examples, the idea of the outreach is to educate the influencers with the hopes that they will then go and tell others about their experience.

And in that regard, both a Brand Ambassador program and an Outreach program are tactics to drive Word of Mouth.  The tactics are simply aimed at different audiences.  With a Brand Ambassador program, you’re working with an audience (your existing customers) that loves your brand and who is already spreading Word of Mouth about your brand.  You want to work with these customers to help them do a better job of this as well as working with them to gain better product feedback from customers they interact with.  With an Outreach program, you’re dealing with an Influencer that has often built a large and (ideally) engaged online following, and you want to expose them to your brand so that they can share their experiences with their networks.  So the Outreach program is a brand awareness tool as well.

Another way to think of the difference is, an Outreach program is a good way to build awareness for a new product line or initiative, whereas a Brand Ambassador program is a good way to increase the marketing efforts of your customers around an established brand.

Is your company looking for a kick-ass Content Marketing Manager? I’m in the market!  Here’s my details, please email me if you have a remote opening! 

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This Is Why Your Brain Hates Case Studies

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Companies (and their agencies) love sharing case studies. They can be great PR for your business, but they typically aren’t the best way for your brain to learn.

Let’s be honest: Case studies are shared to promote the company and sometimes its agency or partners.  They aren’t positioned as learning tools, they are positioned as promotional tools.  And there’s nothing wrong with that, if a company has done good work and wants to toot its own horn, they should feel fine doing so.

I’m currently looking for a job, most specifically, a Content Marketing Manager or similar position (if you’re hiring, here’s my information).  In talking to B2B companies and agencies, one of the most common needs I am hearing from companies hiring for this position is “We are looking for someone that can help share our client success stories in order to grow our business”.  For B2B companies and agencies, this sharing of case studies makes perfect sense, because it’s proof of concept.

But often, these case studies aren’t positioned in a way that encourages learning.  Too often, case studies are shared, results are given, and takeaways provided. Unfortunately, this isn’t the best way to teach your brain the core concepts that drove success for the case study.  It helps the reader understand the case study, but it doesn’t help the reader understand how to apply the same core concepts to its own business.

Let’s say that your business sells productivity software.  If you share a case study from how your software helped a big-box chain retailer, the reader is going to understand how your software helps in that particular situation.  What you need to do is also share hypothetical or abstract examples that would be more relevant to your targeted audience.  For example, if you want to attract more software clients from the manufacturing industry, you could share your case study from the big-box retailer, but add to it a hypothetical example or two from the manufacturing industry.  Give an example of how a potential client in this space could use your software in the same way as the big-box retailer did.  The added relevance will help the potential client in the manufacturing industry understand how your software could help THEM.

By offering both case studies and hypothetical examples, you make it easier for the brain to both spot and learn the core concepts.  If you only offer the case study, then the brain will learn why the case study worked, but it won’t fully grasp the core concepts, because you are only sharing them in one environment (the case study).  But when you offer the case study AND hypothetical examples, it becomes much easier for the brain to detect (and learn!) the core concept that flows through both the case study and your examples.

The best part? When you marry a great case study with relevant examples that facilitate learning, then you drive more engagement and more interest in your business.  It becomes far easier to see the benefits of working with your business, which also drives more leads.

So if your business wants to make better use of its client case studies, focus on adding relevant hypothetical examples that facilitate learning of the core concepts.  This helps the reader understand why they should work with you and will greatly improve the efficiency of your content marketing efforts.

Or you can just hire me to do it for you!

Pic via Pixabay

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Great Marketing Is About Understanding People, Not Tools

About five years ago I talked to a District Attorney who spent a lot of time talking to high school students about the dangers of drug usage. It was a passion of his and it allowed him to gain a great understanding of how teenagers communicated with each other online.  He told me something (again, this was in 2011 or 2012) that surprised me.  He said “The kids I talk to have left Facebook and they’ve moved to Snapchat.” Now fast forward 5 years and it seems like within the last 6 months every marketer on the planet has suddenly ‘discovered’ Snapchat.  It’s the hot shiny social media tool of the moment, even though it’s been around for years.  The next Instagram, maybe even the next Facebook depending on who you talk to.

But let’s go back to that revelation from 5 years ago that ‘the kids have left Facebook’.  Why?  What caused these teenagers to shift their behavior away from Facebook and move to Snapchat?

In short, it’s because their parents were getting on Facebook. If you want to push teenagers and millenials off a social media site, then add either their parents, or marketers on the site.  And what was happening 5 years ago?

Marketers everywhere were telling us that we had to be on Facebook.  Now fast forward 5 years, and what are marketers telling us today?  That we have to be on Snapchat.

Marketers have never understood that it’s not about understanding the social media tools, it’s about understanding the people using the tools. The only way to understand the people using a tool is to be a part of the community of people that use that tool.  You have to interact with them directly to understand their motivation for being there.

Marketers typically don’t want to ‘waste their time’ with that, they just want to sell.

Surfing

You can only sell to someone that is ready to buy.  Seems like common sense, but too many companies market their products to potential customers that have no idea how those products fit into their lives.  It would be like marketing a surfboard to someone that has never surfed.

If a potential customer has no interest in a surfboard, then you don’t market the product (surfboard), you market how the product fits into the customer’s life (surfing).  Once you’ve sold the customer on surfing, then they are ready to buy a surfboard.

At that point, it makes sense to shift to product-specific marketing that focuses on the surfboard.  But if I have never surfed and have no idea why I would ever want to, selling me on why I need to buy your surfboard is a complete waste of time and money for you.

When you’re crafting your content strategy focus on these key points:

1 – It’s more important to understand your customer than it is social media tools. You don’t need to understand Snapchat, you need to understand IF and WHY your customers would use these tools.  That gives you insights into how you can use the same tools in a way that creates value for them, instead of distraction and irritation.

2 – If your goal is to leverage social media to build awareness for your business, then you want to create content focused on how your product and services connect with your customer.  Create content focused on surfing, not the surfboard.  Create content focused on safe driving, not your auto insurance policy.  Creating content focused on the connections between the customer and your products helps get their attention.

3 – If you know your customer is ready to buy your product, then you can create product-specific content, because that’s what they want and need at that point.  But if they aren’t ready to buy, then sell how you product fits into their lives, sell the product itself when they are ready to buy.

Sell me first on how your product makes my life better, then I’m ready to buy, and you can sell me your product.

Pic via Flickr user Kevin Cole

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Long-Form Content or Short Posts; Which Is More Important?

3347658610_bd6daf9b57_zFor years, there’s been a raging debate among both personal and business bloggers over what’s the ideal length for posts.  In general, most bloggers settle in on a post length of a few hundred words, but there are definitely exceptions to the rule.

There’s actually a lot of research that shows that the longer your blog post is, the more social shares, on average, it will get.  In fact, some studies suggest that blog posts can be up to 10,000 words (you read that right) in order to maximize social shares.  The logic is actually sound, as any post with over 2,000 words is likely going to be a deep-dive into a particular topic, and those posts tend to create more value, and as a result, they attract more of those coveted social shares.  I’ve seen this with my own content, as my most shared posts tend to be between 1,500 and 2,000 words.

Here’s the problem: The amount of time it takes to create a post with 1,500 or more words is much more than it does for a shorter post of 500 words or less.  In fact, for the two posts I just linked to (Both of which have between 500 and 1,000 social shares), it took approximately 20 hours total to write both posts.  Think about that for a minute: If you knew that it would take you 10 hours to write a post, how many posts could you write in a month?  1?  2?  None?

So if you commit to writing only long-form content, or posts over 1,500 words, you are also committing to creating far fewer posts.  This creates another problem: It’s harder to build readership if you publish only a few times a month.  Which means your 1 or 2 longer posts you publish a month are going to be seen by fewer people, which means they will gather fewer social shares.

Given all this, it seems there IS a role for shorter content, despite what the ‘experts’ will claim.  The bottom line is that while creating good content is important, creating MORE content is as well.  There needs to be a compromise between quality of content, and quantity.  Both are pivotal for building a readership.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with a hybrid approach.  I’ve been writing shorter posts, sometimes as short as 200 words, sprinkling in 1 or so longer posts of 1,000 words or more a week.  This strategy has allowed me to significantly increase the number of posts I write here, and has resulted in a sharp increase in Social as well as Referral traffic.  This makes sense, because increasingly, traffic from Social is coming from social shares, and those visitors are likely to either know you already, or engage you on Twitter or Facebook AFTER sharing your post.  And as I talked about in the last post, it creates a nice way for your blog content to help you get noticed by others, then you can expand on that relationship via your newsletter, or during those social interactions that come after the sharing.

So if you’ve been on the fence about how long your posts should be, consider letting yourself off the hook and writing shorter posts.  Shorter posts still can be quite valuable for your readers, and creating more content also helps you build readership.  And more readers means when you do write that longer post, it will be seen (and shared!) by more people.

Pic via Flickr user 10Ch

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The Passion Principle: The Secret to Creating Content and Marketing That Your Customers Will Love

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Patagonia doesn’t market itself like your company does.  Patagonia spends almost no money on traditional advertising, and when it does, it typically does so in a way that makes its competitors shake their heads.  For example, a few years ago Patagonia ran an ad telling its customers not to buy its products.  Last year it sent a truck on a cross-country tour where seamstresses would not only repair your Patagonia clothing for free, they would repair any clothing, even if it was from a competitor.

Patagonia does everything it can to stop you from buying its products.  And its efforts have been a colossal failure.  The privately-held company is not only growing, it’s growing faster than its founder wants it to.

“I am faced with this ‘growth’ thing.  We could be a billion-dollar company in a few years, and it’s not something I ever wanted or even want.” – Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard

 

“I’m Fast, and There Ain’t Nothin’ You Can Do About It”

Consider this broadcast commercial from Nike that debuted last month:

This commercial breaks two long-accepted beliefs of what makes successful advertising:

1 – The belief that people don’t like commercials. There’s been an entire cottage industry pop up around helping consumers skip or avoid commercials. Yet this commercial from Nike had over three million views on YouTube within the first week.

2 – The belief that you have to sell something. This commercial never advertises a product or service, and there’s no call-to-action at any time to buy either. Strip out a few quick and almost subliminal appearances by the Nike Swoosh logo, and you would have no idea what company was responsible for this ad.

 

But something is being sold here.  Maybe it’s the dream that every child has when they play mini-midget or pee-wee football that one day they will be the next Peyton Manning or Julio Jones.  Maybe it’s the dream that a mother or father has for their child to see them one day become an NFL success.

Nike understands that every child has those dreams, and what it is selling is how its products can help make that dream a reality.

Nike’s marketing focus for this commercial isn’t its products, it’s what its customers are passionate about. That instantly makes its message more interesting and appealing to its audience.

 

“The Challenge of My Life Is…To Find Out How Far I Can Take It”

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And then there’s Red Bull.  Long heralded as the poster-child for successful content marketing, Red Bull does little to promote its actual product.  Instead, it promotes the activities its customers are passionate about.  Even to the point of sponsoring ‘extreme sporting’ events and teams, helping to push forward an entire industry.  Red Bull’s customers can see that the brand is just as devoted to the sports and events as they are, and this makes it easier for these customers to become more devoted to Red Bull as a result. Red Bull understands that it’s not about selling its energy drink, it’s about selling what happens after you drink it.

 

Most of us view marketing in the same context. As being boring, repetitive, and a nuisance to be avoided.  Yet in the hands of brands like Patagonia, Nike and Red Bull, marketing becomes something else entirely.  Interesting, engaging, and even inspirational.  Great marketing doesn’t sell a product or service, it inspires us to change ourselves, to even change the world.

Why the Disconnect?  What Are These Brands Doing Differently?  

One of the main reasons why I wanted to write Think Like a Rock Star was because I was enamored with how easily rock stars can create and cultivate fans.  And when I say ‘fans’, I am talking customers that literally are in love with their favorite rock star.  I wanted to write that book to determine if brands could create fans using the same methodology as rock stars.  I was thrilled and delighted to discover the exact process that rock stars use to create fans, and how brands can do the same.  It’s all in the book.

On the same note, for the last few months I’ve been fascinated with how brands like Patagonia, Red Bull, Nike and Pedigree simply create better marketing than most other brands.  I wanted to deconstruct what these brands are doing differently to determine if there’s a pattern and a process that your brand can use to improve its own marketing efforts.

Recall the AIDA model of measuring advertising effectiveness that we all learned in college.  The ‘A’ stands for Awareness.  It’s the starting point, a potential customer has to be aware before they can have Interest and the Desire to Act, ie purchase your product.

This is where most brands deviate from those that create truly effective marketing like Nike, Red Bull, Patagonia and Pedigree.  Most brands begin at the starting point of making sure that they make potential customers aware of its product.  They sell potential customers on what the product does, and use that as the basis for making the case for why you should buy it.

Brands like Red Bull, Nike, Patagonia and Pedigree do something radically different.  They don’t start by trying to make you aware of their products, instead they try to make you aware of how their products will fit into your life and make it better.  The focus isn’t their products, it’s your passions.

Patagonia isn’t selling clothing, it’s selling what you will do while wearing its clothing.

Red Bull isn’t selling an energy drink, it’s selling what happens after you drink it.

Nike isn’t selling shoes, it’s selling how you will be better at the sports you play while wearing its shoes.

Pedigree isn’t selling dog food, it’s selling happier and healthier dogs.

Pedigree

You don’t market your product, you market how your product fits into your customers’ lives.  Too many companies market their product and assume that the customer can make the connection for themselves as to how that product would be relevant to the customer.  Quite frankly, this is incredibly lazy and ineffective marketing.  The smart companies are the ones that understand their customers enough to understand their passions, what stirs their souls.  And they take this knowledge and create marketing messages that tap into these passions, and that make the connection for the customer between their passions, and the company’s product.

If you focus on the things that your customers are passionate about, by extension your customers will become more passionate about your brand.  The key is to market things that your customers are passionate about, that also relate to your product.  Nike promotes being active in sports because it sells the equipment you’ll need to perform those activities.  Pedigree promotes happier and healthier dogs because it sells the dog food that’s going to help your dog live a happier and healthier life.  But customers are more passionate about being active than they are about a running shoe.  They are more passionate about creating a better life for their golden retriever than they are about your dog food.  Nike and Pedigree understand this, so they focus on their customers’ passions first, and the connection between those passions and the product, second.

In fact, most brands prioritize its marketing communications in this order:

1 – Sell the product, what it does and why it works.

2 – Sell how the product fits into the customer’s life.

3 – Sell ideas, beliefs and causes that customers are passionate about, that also relate to the product.

Most brands focus almost all of their marketing efforts on #1, with a bit of #2, and almost none of #3.

But the brands that truly create memorable marketing communications flip the order:

1 – Sell ideas, beliefs and causes that customers are passionate about, that also relate to the product.

2 – Sell how the product fits into the customer’s life

3 – Sell the product, what it does and why it works.

There’s two important point to realize about both these approaches.  If you focus mostly on the product itself, many people will immediately tune your marketing messages out because you haven’t yet made the case to them for what your product is relevant to them.  Also, your message will immediately be classified as being a ‘marketing’ message, and most of us immediately ignore any message that we view as being ‘marketing’.

Second, if you focus instead on the ideas, beliefs and causes that your customers are passionate about, that instantly makes your ‘marketing’ message relevant to your customers.  You immediately perk their ears up and they will listen to what you have to say.  Also, you are creating that Desire to learn more about your product so your customers will be motivated to do their own research on your product.  And let’s be honest, we all want to support and advocate for companies we believe in.  If your brand shows me that it can connect with me around the ideas, causes and beliefs that I hold dear, I will feel better about doing business with your brand.

 

So what’s the formula?  What’s The Passion Principle for your brand?

First, you have to know your customers well enough to know who they are, and what’s important to them.  What you want to do is find the connections between your product, and your customer’s passions.  This isn’t always obvious, and typically requires research on the part of your brand.  For example, Fiskars didn’t realize how popular its orange-handle scissors were with its customers in the scrapbooking community until they started talking to those customers.  This knowledge caused the brand to shift its marketing focus away from the scissors (product), and instead focus on scrapbooking (customer’s passion).  By shifting its marketing to focus on the passion of its customers (scrapbooking), the brand became more interesting and relevant to its customers.  BTW, Fiskars just reported that net sales increased by 62% in Q3 for 2015.

So in order to create marketing and content that your customers will love, start by asking (and answering) these questions:

1 – What are our customers passionate about?

2 – What are they trying to accomplish?

3 – What problems do they need to solve?

4 – What roadblocks are in their way?

5 – How does our product relate to any or all of the previous points?

The fifth point is probably the most important because it’s not enough to simply understand what your customers are passionate about or what their problems are, you also need to understand how your product is the solution to that problem.  Otherwise, you’ll be focused on ideas, passions and beliefs that might be relevant to your customers, but that aren’t relevant to your product.  Which means your content and marketing won’t be as memorable or relevant to your customers.

Case in point: Name your 5 favorite Super Bowl commercials from last year.  It’s tough, isn’t it?  I bet you’re struggling to remember even one, aren’t you?  Yet every year we’ll see Super Bowl ads that make us laugh or tug at our heartstrings, but unless the message is relevant to the brand, it’s difficult to remember.

Now here’s another test: What brand did the ‘So God made a farmer…’ Super Bowl commercial from a couple of years ago?  I bet its easier for you to remember that Dodge was behind this commercial, right?  Why?  Because a Dodge truck fits into the life of a farmer.  It makes sense because farmers need trucks to get their work done, so there’s a connection there that works.

If the connection makes sense, then the content or marketing message will resonate and be more effective.  Remember, you don’t market your product, you market how your product fits into your customers’ lives.

Pic via Flickr user Sheila_Sund

Pic via Flickr user Kevin Cole

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Building Your Blog For 2016

23409777699_7332a88c97_zEvery year I use the month of December to do a bit of an audit of how my blogging year went, and then plan out how I want to leverage the blog in the coming year.  I pick December since it’s the last month of the year, plus traffic is typically down the first 2 weeks of the year anyway as we all get knee-deep into Holiday shopping and planning.  So it’s the perfect time to take a step back and examine where you’ve been and re-assess where you are going.

When you’re planning for the coming year, it’s best to start with this question: Who is our desired blogging audience?  In other words, what type of person do you want to read your blog?  For your business blog, you’ll have answers like:

  • We want readers who are current or potential customers
  • We want readers who are current or potential donors or partners
  • We want readers who are current or potential clients

This is a good start, but the more specific your answers, the better your results.  And it’s a process, you want to drill down with your answer because the more specific your focus, the more efficient your content creation efforts.  Here’s how I would drill down if I were deciding exactly who I wanted to reach with my blog in 2016:

Q – Who is your desired audience?

A – Potential clients.

Q – Potential clients for what service(s)?

A – Potential clients for my speaking and consulting services, as well as companies looking for sponsorship opportunities.

Q – Which area; speaking, consulting or sponsorships is most important to you?

A – Hmmmm…probably speaking first, consulting close behind, then sponsorships.

Q – So it looks like potential clients for speaking and consulting are where you want to devote most of your energy.  Will you be focused on speaking on the same areas where you would like to consult?

A – For the most part, yes.  I want to speak on topics related to brand advocacy, customer engagement, and helping companies create more customer-centric content and marketing.  These are also the same areas where I want to focus my consulting.

 

Notice how just by asking a couple of more specific questions that I’m already narrowing down my focus a bit.  At first I was just thinking about wanting readers who are potential clients, now I know I need to focus more on potential clients who need speakers and consulting services, moreso than sponsorship opportunities.  Additionally, I know that I typically will be speaking on the same topics that I want to consult on, so there’s a lot of overlapping there.  This is already helping me better define my blogging focus in 2016.

A Hypothetical Example of How This Could Work For Your Company

Let’s do this exercise for you.  Let’s say you blog for a company that sells website security services.  You charge customers a monthly fee to manage their basic website security.  You’ve noticed that customers will typically contact you when they have an existing issue with their website (it’s been hacked, there’s a malware issue, etc), and they will continue to buy your services for 2-3 months after the problem has been solved, then they will typically stop buying and won’t contact you again until there’s another issue that they need help with.  So there seems to be a lot of churn starting at the 3-4 month mark, so one of the focus points for the entire company is trying to reduce that churn rate and increase the time that customers stay on.  Let’s go through the same Q&A process for this example company:

Q – Who is your desired audience?

A – Current and potential customers.

Q – Which one is more important to you in 2016?

A – Well we need both, but a business focus in 2016 will be ensuring that current customers stay with us for a longer period of time.

Q – What would typically be reasons why customers would leave?

A – Typically, companies will contact us when they’ve encountered a security issue with their website that requires immediate attention.  They will sign up for our service and then after we’ve fixed the issue, they will typically stay with us for a few months and if the issue doesn’t flare up again, often they will discontinue the service and only come back if something else happens in the future.

 

With just 3 questions, we now have a much clearer sense of the direction of our content in 2016.  We know we need to focus more on connecting with current customers and giving them a reason to stay with us longer.  This helps drive our content strategy for 2016, and gives us an idea of the types of content we need to create, such as:

  • Blog posts that talk about how customers do more business with companies that have a secure website.
  • Blog posts that talk about the potential damage to a brand’s reputation if their website is repeatedly down due to poor website security.

Blog posts such as this help make the case to current customers that it’s better for their business to stay with your company and let them continue to handle their website security.  By taking a few minutes to think through your content goals for 2016, it not only helps you better connect with your exact target audience, but it means you will spend less time on your content and that it will be more efficient.

Pic via Flickr user Giuseppe Milo

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Fans Have Gravity: Why Customer Acquisition Isn’t Your Best Marketing Bet

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Marketers are obsessed with size.  Especially size of market, and they often spend billions of dollars chasing the biggest market of all:  New Customers.

And yet, rock stars follow a completely different marketing path.  Instead of marketing to New Customers, they go out of their way to create experiences and engagement with their biggest fans.  Lady Gaga created LittleMonsters.com to cater specifically to her most hardcore fans.  Taylor Swift has T-Parties just for a handful of her biggest fans at each concert.  Amanda Palmer does secret shows where she usually gives away tickets to her biggest fans, even to the point of excluding ‘New Customers’ from the selection process.

Notice the complete difference between how most brands and most rock stars market.  Most brands market completely to New Customers, even to the point of all but ignoring their Brand Advocates or Fans.  While on the flipside, rock stars go out of their way to connect with their biggest fans, even to the point of ignoring New Customers.

What do rock stars know that most brands do not?  Rock stars understand that Fans Have Gravity.

Think about your favorite restaurant.  The one you always take out-of-town guests to when you want them to experience the ‘best’ your city has to offer.

How many people have you encouraged to visit that restaurant in the last year?  Your loyalty and excitement for that restaurant is attractive to other people.  Your friends and the people you talk to about the restaurant are more likely to visit it because of interacting with you.

Why does this happen?  Because…

1 – Fans are more trustworthy than brands.  When a brand runs a commercial saying they are awesome, we don’t believe it, but when a fan says the same thing, we do.

2 – Fans have passion, and passion is sexy.  Fans are genuinely excited about the brands they love, and their passion is infectious.

3 – Fans want others customers to be fans as well.  Fans love their favorite brand for whatever reason and want to share that love with others.

 

So if fans have gravity and pull other customers to them, what happens when multiple fans are in the same place?  Their ability to attract others becomes stronger.  This is why rock stars focus on connecting their biggest fans to each other.  Simply being in the same space with other people that love the same rock star helps validate that love for each fan.  It makes their ability to attract other people to them and the rock star that much stronger.

Rock stars relentlessly focus on connecting with their most rabid fans ONLY, even at the expense of connecting with new customers.  Look at concerts:  Concerts are the lifeblood of every successful musician’s career.  They are cash cows for the music industry, and always have been. Why?  Because they are events designed to appeal to the rock star’s hardcore fans only.  The person that has never heard a U2 song would think you were a fool to pay $100 for a U2 concert ticket, but the U2 fan would not only do so, he’d happily stand in line for 3 days just for the privilege.  For the fans, concerts are a way to get special access to their favorite rock star.  They can be a few feet away from them while they perform.  They can get an autograph after the show.  ‘New Customers’ of the rock star have no interest in any of this, and that’s why the rock star doesn’t market to them.  They connect with their biggest fans and create magical experiences for them.

How much money is your company leaving on the table by not connecting with your biggest fans and creating amazing experiences for them?