Every day we are confronted by a deluge of “must haves”. You must have the latest social network account, you must have a mobile app to sell, you must have this and you must have that; it never ends. It’s a wonder most entrepreneurs aren’t permanently on some kind of anti anxiety medication, the pressure to “must have” the next wonder-tech is just too much. In a business environment of deafening and confusing noise how do you make yourself memorable?
What we find with many clients is that they spend most of their resources on attracting attention and then assume that if they come, they will buy, and unfortunately that just isn’t what happens. When someone takes the time to come to your website you have an obligation to provide them with meaningful, memorable, content – in short, educate your potential client with how your product will benefit them.
That’s right, sales are really a function of education and education is useless if your audience doesn’t remember anything you have to say. Just as bad is an audience that remembers your content in principle, but forgets who said it. In other words you might as well have made a sales pitch for your highest profile competitor. If you haven’t related your content to your brand, your effort will be counter-productive. Ultimately the marketing approach that best protects you from the competition is how effectively you associate your brand to your audience’s ability to achieve success.
As we said in the beginning, your audience is inundated with information, most of which is instantly forgettable while some is retained only in general; that is, your audience remembers ‘what’ and maybe even ‘why’, but they forget ‘who’. We’ve all seen commercials on television for something that sticks in our heads as cool and desirable but for the life-of-you you can’t remember the company selling it. Sales are really a function of education and association. Facts and features in and of themselves aren’t good enough as a marketing strategy. Meaningful content requires both information and performance in order to make a lasting impression.
Take for example science; it’s complex, difficult to learn, and often conflicts with preexisting notions of what is. Performer-educators like Neil deGrasse Tyson combine information and performance in order to cut through the reality TV noise in order to deliver meaningful, memorable branded content. The take-away is simple: content serves no marketing purpose unless it relates to the brand that delivers it: how you say it is as important as what you say.
The Trouble With Kids Today…
We live in a world dominated by glib, superficial attitudes and interests. The lack of fundamental understanding of human nature among the population is staggering to conceive. Communication has been reduced to tweets, relationships to Facebook friends, and ‘Entertainment Tonight’ passes for news. It’s no wonder many people fail to see what’s important and relevant in developing a marketing strategy. Believe it or not there are people who actually study human behavior and things like how people learn and remember.
There is something called Cognitive Load Theory that deals with how information is presented so that an audience remembers what’s being presented or taught. Without getting deep into the nitty-gritty of the theory that deals with Intrinsic, Extraneous, and Germaine Loads, we can still take away the three basic elements needed in order to present content that is associated with your brand.
Things To Remember In Designing A Presentation
- The level of difficulty and complexity of the content.
- The techniques that best suit the presentation of the content.
- The manner in which content can be related to preexisting experience.
The implications of these three elements impact the development of content and the performance needed to present it. Content and performance go hand-in-hand, and neither has any relevance without the other.
A Really Good Place To Start
“What’s The Big Idea?” defines twenty-eight ways to differentiate your brand by creating a marketing strategy based on your company’s emotional value proposition. “Brand Universe” takes that marketing strategy and turns it into a unique marketing, sales, and cross-platform content-delivery environment. Check out the free previews on Blurb.com.