At its most basic, marketing is a tool for sales. But that makes it sound a bit brash. It doesn’t have to be like that. In fact, the best way to get your audience to engage is to tell them stories through your content.
We make deeper connections when they are more human. Whether we like it or not, we engage with brands on a personal level. We attach emotions to them and brands understand and exploit this.
Monsters and Carrots
You only have to look at the chaos in your local Aldi when the Kevin the Carrot plush is released at Christmas to realise that. The annual John Lewis festive ad campaign garners something in the region of 10 million views. Make no mistake, having the right tone and style and creating a connection on an emotional level makes a huge difference to these brands. Not only in customer perception and awareness, but in becoming part of the very culture of the festive season. This is the time of year when customer spends are highest. Many brands live or die by their sales in that one short sales cycle. And they know it, so they do everything they can to engage their customers.
Overt sales are off-putting, the days of a shouty man yelling at you about how cheap something is are gone. We are much more sophisticated buyers than that these days. But creating content that speaks to the emotional rather than the practical, isn’t always easy. Few of us in the small business world can afford to throw a few million at an ad agency and watch the sales roll in.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t easy ways of tailoring your content in a way that creates a certain feeling towards your brand.
Honesty is the best policy
There is beauty in truth and it is usually easier to create content that comes from a genuine place of experience.
Look at some of the content from brands you admire, not necessarily in your field, but more generally. That way you’ll come to discover what appeals to you and what style or tone you want to attach to your brand. Think about a genuine need or problem that your potential customers may have and work your content around how to solve it. You always know more than you think.
You know this stuff, and even if you can’t articulate it, you can at least jot down some key points that need to feature in your content and let a professional work their magic on it.
I know someone who can probably help with that.
