Rule 1: Make It Personal.

Many smart marketing campaigns do not use traditional advertising models. For example, the company GoPro makes cameras, yet now rarely ever talks about cameras in its marketing. Instead, it publishes actual customer “Photos of the Day,” highlighting the customer’s thrill of adventure purpose.

This cuts through the competitor marketing noise, as well as social media messages, and creates deeper, more contextual customer relationships.

Rule 2: Narrow your target Audience

People need to feel like they have found it on their own, rather than thinking they are being sold.

For example, the brand Oreo implemented automated “listening” for relevant words in customer social media posts, and automatically “liked” the post, and sometimes wrote a friendly comment to the author of the post. These engagements well accepted by all.

Rule 3: Give them what they want.

People more readily engage with things they have asked for. This is technically called “permissioned,” and it comes in two forms: implicit and explicit. Implicit permission occurs when an individual contacts your brand first, such as through a Google search. Explicit permission involves an overt action, such as following, friending, or subscribing.

Even without direct contact or pinpointing an individual name, brands can use targeted demographic data from other sources to suggest that the person on your website right now is forty-five, ready to engage and looking to buy an SUV in the next sixty days.

Rule 4: Make the experience genuine, original, and authentic.

This usually boils down to satisfying an expectation: Is the experience using the right voice? Is it empathic with the audience? Are consumers seeing a brand experience congruent with the media channel they are using?

Your brand experience must deliver on all three of these measures.
Besides getting the voice right and communicating empathy for your audience, delivering an authentic brand experience means aligning it with the media channel where people expect to find it. Don’t make the mistake of publishing the same content on all channels.

Rule 5: Converse on topics of purpose, not just products or service.

Purposeful experiences range from corporate social responsibility to themes motivating customers to engage and participate in a shared activity, such as an event or a food drive. These create deeper, more contextual customer relationships, and incentivize customers to spread your message.

Patagonia was one of the first brands to win big by putting a “save the environment” purpose first. Founder Yvon Chouinard has said that making a profit is not the goal, but profits happen “when you do everything else right.”

Even if the traditional marketing models still seem to be working for you, remember that the world out there is changing fast. Thus I recommend that it’s time for you to proactively rethink your model, along the lines of the five initiatives outlined here, for this demand-attention era, before the market flags you as irrelevant.

Brands can lose their luster quickly and are a lot harder to rebuild. Need help navigating the digital marketing age? Give us a call to discuss your goals!