The best marketing is when you don't know it's marketing
Excerpt blog by Mikael Cho
I hate when I know I’m being sold to. I tune out. And so does everyone else.
It’s not good enough to hammer your marketing message down people’s throats and expect them buy. This is especially the case today. As bestselling author Jay Bauer wrote in his book Youtility,
Excerpt blog by Mikael Cho
I hate when I know I’m being sold to. I tune out. And so does everyone else.
It’s not good enough to hammer your marketing message down people’s throats and expect them buy. This is especially the case today. As bestselling author Jay Bauer wrote in his book Youtility,
“Due to enormous shifts in technology and consumer behavior, customers want a new approach that cuts through the clutter: marketing that is truly, inherently useful.” |
Networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feed in content at a high volume. Multiple devices for home, for work, and everything in between allows this stream of content to seep into every aspect of our daily lives. Your company messages are mixed in with photos and updates from friends and family. You are no longer just competing with other companies for attention, you’re competing with the people closest to your customers, notes Jay.
In order to cut through this noise, Jay states that you must create “marketing so useful, people would pay for it.”
This doesn’t mean you need to charge people for access to your marketing. It means that your marketing should be so good that people would gladly pay for it if they were asked.
To have customers and fans, you need to create value first. In today’s world, this is often much more value than you think.
When you create value first, people pay attention.
This is exactly what two University of Pennsylvania professors found when they looked at the New York Times most emailed articles.
The results of their study showed that people liked sharing stories that taught them something the most – even more than stories that might be surprising and interesting.
Giving someone something useful they can apply to their own lives has the biggest impact. After I read this research, I wondered,
“If a story with practical value could have this level of impact, what would happen if this practical utility could be applied to something even more useful than a blog post?” |