How much of your marketing is designed to deliver what you think your customers want?
Maybe you think they want specs, feature lists, pricing, whatever.
This is logical.
Your customers probably think they want these things, too.
To be fair, we do need specs & features at some point in our customer journey, just usually further down the sales funnel. They’re how we confirm an emotional decision we’ve already made.
But first, we need to make that emotional connection!
Defy expectations to create emotions
Remember the three types of content rule? Good content should Inform, Educate, or Entertain. We’re focusing on the Entertain portion today, which also includes:
- Surprise
- Delight
- Inspire
- Entertain
To get attention for your consumer products, some combination of these things is all you need.
Here’s a personal example:
Many people’s idea of a vacation is relaxing on a beach. Mine is Muay Thai, feeding street monkeys, racing enduro, and touring a factory.
Very few of my friends want this. Half the time my own wife and kids don’t even want to do it. But everyone enjoys seeing the photos and hearing the stories.
Guess whose vacation we’re talking about the next time we gather?
It’s not the one where we sat lazily on a beach four days and overpaid for every meal. It’s our trip to Thailand, because we did some crazy shit.
Do something crazy.
Sometimes, it’s OK if your content doesn’t perfectly align with your customers’ expressed desires, as long as it entertains them or inspires them.
Or just makes them happy to be associated with you.
Because you can’t build a brand on specs & features.
Look at Red Bull. Most of us aren’t doing any of the wild stunts they sponsor, but we like the idea of those stunts. We want to share that content and talk about it so that we appear cool and interesting by association.
What is your content doing to make people want to associate with you? To talk about you?
What are you putting out there that makes people want to connect with your brand and learn more about those specs and features?