Marketers spend a lot of money interrupting people.
The thing is, people don't want to be interrupted anymore.
That is a giant change in terms of how products and services will be marketed in the future because even if we throw an enormous amount of money at advertising, it no longer guarantees attention and thus, marketing as we know it, has changed.
It's going back to principles that were commonplace thirty+ years ago. This phase of marketing focuses on developing Customers for life, rewarding your most valuable Customers (MVCs) and developing relationships that encourage word of mouth (WOM) promotion. It's really back to the future! The major difference between the past and today is that today we can scale the WOM using existing technology and use that same technology to help us identify our MVCs. ​We simply need to know who our MVCs are and what they want. To achieve this, we need to know:
1. What tools to use
2. How to use them properly and respectfully.
The next time you are out on the road in a car, have a look at other drivers. I'll bet that more than 50% of the people you look at will be fiddling with their mobile phone or texting instead of watching the road.
If you do any form of outdoor advertising, this is important to you because people are staring down at their mobile phones to text others and tweet followers instead of looking outside at your ads!
They do the same when indoors too by using a TIVO, fast forwarding through all the advertising when watching a recorded show and by leaving the room when TV ads are playing on a live stream.
Face it, ads are designed to interrupt whatever our prospects were watching to get a bit of attention. In fact, ads are designed to interrupt people and people today really don't like to be interrupted. Ad agencies have gone to extremes to capture your attention - think about some of the crazy ads you've seen these days. Most shout at you; capitalizing on your subconscious interest in the seven deadly sins with zeal but rarely do any appeal to your actual needs and desires.
These same prospects have even conditioned themselves to ignore online ads (especially those on the right side of a page) so well that we can no longer interrupt what they are doing online to get even a moment of their attention.
But, as a marketer, you need to get their attention so that you can tell your story, convert the prospect and make a sale.
So what can you do?
Roll back the clock and think about what marketers did when your grandparents were out shopping. I'm referring to an age before everyone had cell phones. Back then marketers and sales people actually listened to their prospects and acted upon that information in order to deliver a 1:1 marketing experience. Reputation and value were king.
There were interesting articles to read that were written by talented writers who knew their craft and could tell a convincing story that Customers were genuinely interested in.
One way to do this in today's distraction filled world is by using Twitter search to learn more about each of your Customers and then applying that knowledge to personalized marketing campaigns.
Hey, some people still see Twitter as an ancillary broadcasting channel to use when publishing press releases. Well, I assure you, it's not. Twitter is a tool that allows real people to share their thoughts in real time and allows marketers like us to listen in and record their thoughts, learn about each and reach out to them when the timing is appropriate. For the Chinese market, this tool would be Weibo.
Twitter is kind of like being at a cocktail party. No one wants to be pitched at during a cocktail party. They might be curious to know what you do. And, if your story is compelling, they might invite you to tell them more but, most cocktail parties are places to meet and chat about things of mutual interest - not pitching.
If you want leads to walk through the doors of your business, you will need to know something about the people that have expressed interest in your brand, your services or your offers. You will need to do something remarkable with that information that helps you build a relationship that is so memorable, so powerful that this prospect will want to do business with you forever and tell dozens of his friends and thousands of his online followers about the remarkable experience as well.
So, we are recommending that our prospects (big brands like Volvo, Bugatti, UBS, CS, Prada, Boss and others) leverage one of their remarkable publications and enhance the distribution by creating an interactive, metric oriented version of the magazine - something that a specific segment of Customers would LOVE to read and share with others - and bring such a publication to life on mobile devices using our KinetiZine services.
Most of our prospects already have such magazines and brochures but they rarely consider leveraging these investments to gauge audience interest in their content, products, and services.
Today, such insight is seriously limited because they associate production to a print run where the over-prints are relegated to a store room rather than a prospect's coffee table.
We are suggesting that many print publications are well written and worthy of broader distribution. We also suggest that a company's best sales person is an amazing, under-used, brand ambassador. Why not create a brief video presentation to scale his / her influence on the target audience? Did you know that such videos can easily be embedded onto the pages of the publication today?
The features that we can add to a publication today, allow these brands to get in touch with what their Customers are thinking and also analyze usage so that brands can improve their marketing and deliver more products that their audience actually wants to buy.
The end result for the marketer is attention. The holy grail in this age of distraction. Such attention would be earned for all the right reasons and it will often lead to purchases because there is a match between demand and supply. As a bonus, each brand would also have access to an audience willing to spread the word. What more could a marketer want?
Now, this is clearly not for everyone. It certainly isn't for the traditional marketer who like a deer staring at the headlights of an oncoming car, is afraid of making a mistake.
This concept is for marketers who want to learn from their target audience and deliver both an excellent user experience and improve their products at the same time. It's also an interesting digital tool that can help build Customer relationships for life.
Let's bring this down to earth a bit and orient it toward a single retail shop. Each person responsible for marketing and sales at a brick and mortar location needs to be the voice of that store. They are usually the initiators of the store's Customer service culture as well. This person needs to build trust with frequent communication about things that are relevant to his/her target audience. Thus establishing credibility and authority with the new generation of Customers and giving them the opportunity to engage with the authority figure when a need arises.
In the past, this was achieved verbally, on paper and through other forms of communication. In the age of distraction, it becomes more difficult to get the word out there at scale unless you embrace innovative services such as WeChat, WhatApp, Weibo, Twitter and FB while you create an App that helps solve a problem for your target audience at the same time.
Sure, this can be a bit too much for the small corner grocery store but the objective remains the same. Establish brand authority and credibility and then scale by using technology to attract Customers who are similar to your MVCs.
It is much easier if you already think this way and have developed a few publications designed to solve problems encountered by your target market. If you have such publications, then all you need to do is digitize and scale. And, scaling distribution of these publications can be done easily with KinetiZine today. The missing link is adding some interactivity and engaging your readers so that they take the next step with your brand.
Once you know what your MVCs really want and you know where you can reach them, engaging your audience is easy with an App.
Suggestion: Stop throwing good money at types of advertising that no longer convert well and start looking at your MVCs and what they want so that together we can help you deliver more smiles.
