Authenticity, Relevance and Action
Customers don’t have time anymore. They need to make split second decisions on purchases, atleast on what NOT to buy. 70% of customers make a choice of brands without a sales guy being in front of them. Brands don’t have time either. They do not have time to send millions of messages hoping that their prospects might actually receive them. Hope, as is said, is not a strategy.
So, what do marketers need to do to get their customers interested and help them make a purchase – get the lag between the customer knowing the brand and then purchasing it to zero. In other words, be so awesome that customer gets to know you, experience your products and try it out – all in one go. For this to happen, what you say about the product has to be well just AWESOME. Awesomeness is not a choice but table-stakes in the world. How do you do this? Here is what I believe your messaging has to be…easier said than done but I am afraid is the only choice.
Your messaging needs to be Authentic. There are just too many people who claim their products are honest and real, but oftentimes disappoint customers when they see or use them. The continued success of brands like Nike, Apple, National Geographic and Wimbledon is because of this authenticity. Other people tell your customers and prospects that these brands are great when they are authentic. You don’t need to do this anymore for yourself. All this without you having pump in millions of dollars on advertisements
Your message needs to be of Relevance to the prospects you are speaking to. Just too much content that is not relevant to your customers actually reaches (read ‘bothers’) them. Calling an executive at 10 am on a Monday mornings offering him a home loan is not endearing your brand to him. Your digital marketing campaigns should be able to ‘recognize’ the customer’s profile and be able to morph themselves to be useful to customer and provoke interest towards purchase. Google, Facebook, Youtube and Emirates do this exceptionally well.
Your message needs to get the customer to Act- build an intense desire in the minds of the customers to try or buy you. The action is that customers get to experience a small portion of the product and reassure himself that this is indeed what he was hoping for all the time but did not get it. A useful byproduct of the action will be that customers talk in THEIR community and that can amplify the message several folds. Of course, he would do this only when he feels proud that he has been just seen or consumed your product. Awesome messaging gives him the bragging rights to do this.
Marketers have to have a clear framework to be able to ensure that ALL their messaging passes these three litmus tests or face the fact that they are just another speck of dust in the clouded marketplace
