More Video In Every Pocket
6 Content Starters To Get Growth Marketers There
Digital marketing is trickier than ever. There’s more channels to manage — but most of the budget is spent in exactly 2 places. There’s more data to understand your customer — but less time than ever to do the analysis. It’s easier to develop and ship a product, even as an experiment. But the competitive noise is immense.
As a result, many businesses trying to find new customers, deepen engagement with existing ones and generate more revenue are guilty of being too transactional. Customers are looked at not as people, but as users. They’re a number, to be measured in the waterfall by their dropoff at every stage, or their conversion to a monthly active user.
But not everyone who sees your ad, visits your mobile homepage or even lands on your App Store or Play Store download page is that serious- yet. Even if they’re on their mobile devices, they may not be anywhere near converting with a single tap.
Instead of Potential Customer X, think of every human being as someone passing through a market, in the ancient sense- an open air faire, with dozens of merchants shouting a pitch at each possible customer, trying to get them to buy their fruit, textile, garment, livestock, etc. Who stood out in that market? A more engaging seller. Don’t just shove an apple in the face of every passerby. Tell a joke, play a flute (a pungi) to charm a snake out of a bushel, compliment the shopper or at least scream the loudest offer.
There has to be a modern equivalent.
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Growth became the moniker for the marketing science of attracting attention from potential customers, keeping them interested, inspiring them to want your thing, and getting them to buy it. And there are great resources out there to study up on growth — like Susan Su’s new series at Reforge.
But the era of digital marketing, and all the digital marketing success that are in turn trumpeted as case studies and best practices, and even the very rise of the term growth marketing, disguise the fact that there may be new channels, new data, even new user (human!) behavior…but there’s nothing new in your marketing challenge.
You’re trying to get a human being to find you, notice you, be interested, and buy. And that’s hard.
Notice what I’ve listed, twice, in two different ways: Attention. Interest. Desire (or Decision). Action. That’s how Alec Baldwin described selling in Glengarry Glen Ross 25 years ago. You can have your own acronym for the customer funnel- many marketers have. But the challenge is the same.
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I have a theory: All of the opportunity that growth marketers see — channels, formats, tools, data- leads to a tendency to try to turn marketing into a science. That’s why we use terms like acquisition when we really mean something simple as “get a new customer.”
The hardest part of AIDA has always been the I. So we skip that part, hoping to go straight from Attention to Decision.
Interest. How do you get someone to like you? How do you know if they do? This classic problem takes you back to middle school and the butterflies in your belly when you see a certain face across the cafeteria. It’s as old as time. It’s harder than ever, thanks to the many, many options we have of things to spending our time being interested in.
That’s where video comes in for a marketer. It’s not right for every situation, every audience. But it may be the best format for getting an individual customer interested in digital channels.
At YouTube we called it the Power of Sight, Sound and Motion (and obviously we weren’t the first to say that- just the first big, meaningful video destination.) Bonus: it is easy to measure interest in digital video. Even though all the video destinations use different metrics, you know if people like your story. It’s whether or not they watched it longer than they had to.
All this leads to the point. What’s the flute and snake in your marketing arsenal? Where is the storytelling on your home page? Your landing page? On your app install page? In your app?
Video is extremely prevalent now in ads — especially on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and many, many websites’ ad spaces, thanks to the magic of Audience Network extensions of those big providers plus the schlocky ad networks who otherwise clutter your web viewing.
But it’s missing from so many other places.
A mobile footnote: We’re also quick to tout when mobile overtakes desktop (or laptop) in viewership- such as when YouTube viewership crossed over to more than 50% mobile a couple years ago. Whether your audience is mostly mobile yet- and it’s easy to tell- assume they will be soon. But guess what? Mobile doesn’t make it any easier to convert a customer. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that a mobile viewer has a shorter path to conversion, that you can skip Interest. It — and video — may matter even MORE in mobile!
Some missed opportunities to use video and build interest that seem simple to me:
>>Why don’t company career pages — or job/company/salary review sites like Glassdor- have more video? Welcomes from hiring managers, bios of employees, diversity success stories? Missed Opportunity: Humanize your company by showing off your people.
>>Why don’t more messaging apps — for example those like TeamSnap used by leagues, coaches and parents to organize youth sports- make it easier for parents to upload and share video? Missed Opportunity: Get users to use your app more frequently — not just for checking a schedule or message.
>>Why don’t more media companies ask their writers to introduce long-form content with a quick video trailer, shot an iPhone and shared via social channels? Missed Opportunity: Make sure the digital audience knows the story is thoughtful journalism or editorial from a qualified human being, not volume clickbait.
>>Why don’t more local businesses run promotions using an inexpensive video featuring the shop owner / chef / host introducing the offer via cheaply targeted video ads on YouTube and Facebook? Missed Opportunity: Create the urgency to shop local and introduce your business in a format far more effective than display ads.
>>Why don’t more realty firms cast their most compelling agents as local experts, tour guides, advocates, news gatherers and sharers with regular, informative video reports that go beyond current listings? Seth Godin proposed exactly that 9 years ago. You’re the expert on your neighborhood- not just what’s for sale. Missed Opportunity: Build long-term trust with a local audience of potential buyers by showing your knowledge and insight.
>>Why don’t more consumer companies use interesting front line employees to handle FAQs or even specific customer service questions? WarbyParker did it for years out of necessity. Now we’re talking about being more engaging in the lowest part of the funnel- with a customer you already have. Missed Opportunity: Be more human when something has gone wrong for a customer.
If those 6 examples aren’t relevant to your business, adapt and apply. It’s just a matter of grabbing that flute and playing the snake out of the basket.
