Aug 25, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
David Ogilvy said many things that have gone into the marketing lexicon, one that is particularly relevant to the ways we are communicating today:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”.
It is disturbing for me to sped several hours creating a blog post, and then to have just a few people read it, and I find that following the rules below, my readership increases markedly.
- Lists always work,” 6 ways to build a better backhand”
- “How to” headlines always work. “How to build a better backhand” If you can actually find a way to combine a “How to” with a “list”, well, off it goes. Like “How to leverage these 6 ways to build a better backhand”
- Highlight the benefit, a WIFM (what’s in it for me) headline. “Having a great backhand increases your chances in doubles”. Sometimes a bit of innuendo or double meaning goes a long way to making a headline better “linkbait” to the body of the article or email.
- “Free” is good, “Free e-book on how to build a forehand Federer would love”
- Evoke curiosity, then deliver in the body. “How many more sets would you win with a better backhand?’
- Draft several headlines, and give considerable thought to which is the best to use in the context of the audience, and what it is you are trying to convey.
- Length, SEO experts tell me that about 60-70 characters is the limit, as the search engines cut off the subject lines at about 70.
- Learn from what others are doing. About the best source of effective headline writing lessons is in the local newsagent, spend a bit of time browsing the magazine section, there are SEO killer headlines effectively selling stuff that nobody in their right mind should buy
- The final consideration is that while it is the headline that gets people in, it is the value you deliver through the information in the body of the message that keeps them there. There is just so much content out there, so many opportunities to spend your time, that the real value is in delivering sufficiently good information and ideas to induce people to read the whole post, then return, again and again. The headline is just the icing, it is the cake that people consume.
There are many formulas, that claim to make writing good headlines easy, just like those above. However, like most things that can be broken down into a formula, you end up with some degree of repetition, a “sameness” with others, it may work, and usually has to date, it may deliver the outcome, but it is still the outcome of the same formula your competitors are using. So be different, add some humanity to the message, nothing is as good as a bit of humanity to connect to your audience.
That is really hard.
Aug 20, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
The blokes I saw as a youngster who had outrageous success with the girls were not always the best looking, or the most interesting, or had the best cars (although all these assets did seem to help) they were the ones who were genuinely interested in whoever it was they happened to be talking to at that particular moment in time. They directed all their attention and empathy at their companion of the moment, casual or otherwise.
Why do we think we can be successful digitally with strategies that are second rate in the real world?
Websites are communication tools, they are a digital metaphor for the conversations you have at a party, in a pub, at the office, in private. Nothing more.
So, go to the home page of your site, (or your competitors) and look at it through the eyes of the person you are attempting to communicate with, and:
- Count how often you talk about yourself, using pronouns like “we”, “our”, “us”
- Count how often you talk about the problems your customer has, the ways that you are referencing their needs and challenges
- Compare the numbers, and in most cases be amazed at how often you talk about yourself.
- Repeat for every page on your site,
- STOP talking about yourself!!
- Rewrite, and reap the benefits.
Pretty simple formula really, no different to those blokes I was envious of years ago.
Aug 19, 2014 | Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Small business
As everyone will tell you, (including me here) marketing is about stories, stories that resonate, are remembered, that generate empathy, and lead to an action, and hopefully if your effort is to be rewarded, a transaction.
So what are the elements that make a good marketing story?
It is instructive to look to the stories we all read, from books we read to our kids, to the fiction we read as adults. All seem to share elements of 6 common traits:
- They are written for an audience. Kids love stories, and reading to my kids was one of the joys of being a parent. They would have loved last years best seller, Jeremy, the story of the kookaburra chick that fell out of the nest and as reared by a family until he could look after himself. Great book for my kids, as kids, but not my choice for my personal reading.
- They have a hero and a villain, and the hero always wins after a seemingly unwinnable struggle, usually at the last moment, and unexpectedly.
- They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning sets the scene, the middle tells the story, and the end does a recap, and reinforces the message of the story.
- They all have a message, something worthwhile taking away, and that takeaway is the point of the story. Aesop, a Greek slave had this part nailed.
- They all have dramatic tension coming in waves through the story. The hero is confronted, and prevails, then is confronted again and prevails again by being smarter, more helpful, inventive, and resilient than the villain. The rhythm of the story builds to the climax, with the hero again, prevailing in some way that demonstrates the traits of ingenuity, resilience, and “goodness”.
- The story has a plot. Pretty obvious, but the plot is what ties it all in together, and provides the context for the hero to beat the villain, to achieve the unachievable, and deliver the message.
A good story gets remembered, and can be retold. That is not just luck, it is the way we have evolved, storytelling is the way we related information vital for survival in the first couple of million years as we moved from caves to the present, passing on the strategies for staying out of the way of all sorts of risks to life and limb along the way. Recently there has been a lot of sophisticated research searching for the mechanics, this post from Chris Penn includes links to several.
Point is, the sophisticated research is simply telling us the mechanics, Aesop just knew the formula, and it remains the formula today, from writing a blog post to making a presentation, you may as well use the formula to your benefit.
How did I do?
Jul 27, 2014 | Change, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
The single biggest stumbling block I see to successful digital marketing is not the technology, or the money, desire, or need, it is simply the unwillingness or inability to create relevant, engaging content of value that suits the context in which it is seen.
Usually it reflects a lack of a solid understanding of why they are in the business, other than to pay the bills. As Simon Sinek would say, the “Why” of the business.
Interestingly, the same stumbling block exists with bigger enterprises, they may have websites stuffed with words and pictures, but often that is all they are: words and pictures without value.
The same reasons exist for the failure in both categories.
- Lack of marketing leadership. Where marketing is seen as an expense, and customers are all those out there from whom we need to extract money. In these cases, creating content is always a barrier, and where it exists, it is usually a steaming pile of crap. Irrelevant, hard to navigate, bland, talking about themselves, yada, yada. Almost always the content improves when the customer is put as the focus of the content generation activity, answering the question “how can we better inform our market” When everybody in a business recognises that they have a marketing responsibility, you get the environment where content can be improved, and this is a leadership function, to drive the culture.
- Content is not recognised as an asset to be leveraged. Knowledge is the new currency of success, in almost every business. Those who know more, and can leverage that knowledge, find success. Knowledge management is therefore crucial and where does it reside? Between the ears of employees, stakeholders, suppliers, and often customers. When that simple fact is recognised, steps can be taken to extract the knowledge, and organise it in some way to become information of value to customers. Intellectual Capital, is knowledge that can be used, and unlike physical capital, the more it is used, the better it gets.
- No process to record and organise ideas. Content is everybody’s responsibility, but there needs to be processes in place that make it easy, and encourage the contribution of ideas and information that can be massaged into content of value. The best i have seen are a bit like the traditional sales funnel, everything that comes in , and coming in is everybody’s job, is recorded, then the ideas and information progressively filtered and organised in a process that creates value for recipients at the end. You really need an idea bank into which everyone makes deposits, and deposits are rewarded, and used to create valuable content.
- No focus on content. The old adage, what gets measured gets done, is true, if it is important, and is treated as such, it will get done. One business I work with is led by a lady who sees content as important, so she devotes a part of her considerable energy to creating it, and by that simple example has tuned the place into a content generation machine over a relatively short period, and they are getting the sales to prove it works.
- Content is marketing’s job. NO. It is everybody’s job in an enterprise to assist the customer.
- You think you know it all, and why would you tell your competitors?. When this syndrome becomes obvious it is time to leave. Most commonly I see it in other wise sophisticated technical businesses, where the history tells them that keeping information to themselves, and dolling it out to customers like a drunk offering a swig at his bottle when they ask nicely is the way to gain and keep customers. Rubbish!
- Content for contents sake. Putting up any old stuff on digital platforms is counter productive. Our digital world has given all the power to the customer, if you post rubbish, it will be seen as a reflection of the business, and who would want to do business with you?
There has been a lot written by all sorts of people on the subject of “content” and there is a lot more coming. However, there are a few simple rules that should be followed:
- Make sure whatever content you put out there is a reflection of the business, its priorities, strategies, and value proposition.
- Know who your primary customer group is, and what they are looking for in a supplier in your space
- Always look at your content with the eyes of your customer, and in the context of the competitive landscape in which you are competing for your customers attention, engagement, and ultimately, money. If your digital face is not up to scratch, why should customers trust that your products and services are any better?
I would be very happy to talk more about all this over a coffee.
Jul 14, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Small business
kmjantz.wordpress.com
“Content marketing ” is no more than a new buzzword to try and build interest in the stuff we marketers have always been doing, telling stories, and creating a context in which the stories we tell will be meaningful, and be a catalyst to an action we want.
It is also fundamentally important that the bag of stuff called content is understood, well organised and communicated.
Cave paintings were perhaps the first, they told stories about the lives of those living in those days, passing on messages to those that followed, next week, month, millennium.
I have argued previously that Martins Luthers church door was just facebook in beta form, but perhaps the first recognised piece of content marketing as we now know it emerged in 1895 with the first publication of the John Deere farm machinery magazine “The Furrow“, still going strong.
The Michelin brothers first published the “Guide Michelin” a motoring guide in 1900, with the objective of telling the few motorists then around where they could find petrol, accommodation, meals and repairs in France.
In what may have been the first modern cookbook, Frank Woodward saved his $350 investment in the rights to “Jello” at the last moment by publishing a recipe book, the first step in creating a dessert tradition that still exists in the US, and perhaps taking the first step towards our obsession with cookbooks, or “Cooking Content Books”.
Burns & McDonnell engineering first published their “Benchmark” magazine in 1913, and Procter & gamble did more than bring us our daily cleansing products, they gave the name “soap opera” to the daily dose of what we still call “soaps” on TV, by sponsoring radio programs in the ’30’s.
Lego has been the king, with their magazine, and now the Lego movie, how great is that, to have Hollywood make a movie about your product? Wonder where the funding came from?
The examples of so called “Content Marketing” exploded after 2000, any scan of the web will give hundreds of thousands of examples, opinions, and infographics. Curata’s list of content marketing e-books is a great assembly of information, and more evidence, if any more is needed of the interest in the area.
Point is, “Content” is not new, neither is the notion of engaging by communicating stories offering advice, and managing context, it is just that we now have some pretty potent additions to the toolbox.
PS. August 2014. This article on “The Furrow” magazine appeared on the Contently website in August, and offers added insight into this venerable, and far-sighted publication.
Jul 4, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Strategy
Have you created the best content you can, original, insightful, and engaging, that demonstrates your domain knowledge, but it goes nowhere?
No impact, no interest, even your friends do not read it.
It is a bit like throwing a party and having nobody turn up.
Maybe you forgot to send invitations, after all, psychics are pretty rare, so people need to know the party is on.
Creating the content is just the same, the creation is only a part of the process, you also need to market the content, and having done that successfully, then the content can be judged by the response you get.
So, following are four simple, common sense marketing rules to apply to your precious content.
- Have a strategy that promises to deliver the objectives, creating the content is not enough.
- Use data, not just your gut. The data is freely available, and enormously valuable, use it.
- Learn by doing. The oldest and still the best game in town is to experiment and learn.
- Remember always that creating the content just gets you a ticket to the game, not the automatic right to play, that comes from elsewhere.
