This is why we can’t have nice things
Right on the back of the “web 2.0” days, and a little after Twitter created a new verb and noun in the English dictionary. There was a moment. A brief glimpse of hope and euphoria where if you had something useful to say, you would be heard.
If you were a relatively unknown company, you could put out quality content on twitter and it had a very good chance of being retweeted until your website crashed. If you were a singer, you could do a great cover song, upload it to YouTube and get a nice record deal out of it. Things were great for everyone.
Then we, digital marketers, came along and f*#ked everything up.
Try and post an amazing article with hashtags on Twitter and you’ll get a bunch of people adding you to lists, in other words, you’ve told them what you’re about so that they can try and market to you in the future. Unless you have an existing fan base of 1000s, you’ll be lucky to get a couple of retweets and some likes.
Post a cool article or promo on Facebook, you’ll essentially get some of your own customers to simply like it or a random share if you’re lucky, but if you want to reach new masses, you’re going to have to pay Facebook for that.
Create a post on LinkedIn, and you’ll maybe get a couple of likes and a few messages asking for employment opportunities.
If everyone is special, no one is special.
Today, everyone will still tell you “content is king”. While this is true, it’s meaningless. Everyone comes up with the same regurgitated “quality” content and blasts it on every social media profile — and people are becoming numb to it. Just as people eventually ignored radio ads, until TV ads came about, then ignored TV ads when you could quickly turn your attention to your phone. Now people are beginning to ignore content marketing — because it’s everywhere.
Sure, if something really matters to you and you see a related article — you might click it to read. Then if you get sucked into the funnel, eventually you might actually make a purchase. However, from the company’s stand point — every one of their competitors is now doing the same thing and providing the same content with perhaps a little twist.
Can you hear me now?
All of this has led to a massive amount of noise in what were once great marketing channels. So as digital marketers, where do we go from here? We can’t just stop providing quality content. After all, content is king. It’s my belief, that the next step is to go beyond quality content and to provide value in other ways. Expand the definition of content as we know it.
Beyond Content
I recently went into a liquor store here in Dallas to buy rum for NYE and a lady was offering samples of some Vodka. I took the free sample, and guess what happened? I loved it, and bought a bottle of that Vodka. That got my gears turning and I realized that people aren’t really doing that in the digital marketing age yet. Content is typically considered a blog post, article, infographic, or video. All of which can provide value to a potential client, if they weren’t being drowned out by all the noise of competitors doing the same thing. What if I could offer my potential customers a bite-sized taste of my services? while my competitors were offering articles about their services.
The SevenCube plan
Since this concept is new to me, it’s still in the works, but I plan to provide a free tastings of the services I offer, in advance of securing a client. How will I do that?
Google’s Page Insights API. A potential client with an existing website will be able to easily see how fast their website loads, if it’s mobile friendly, and even get suggestions to fix it themselves. The kind of stuff I would normally do in a website audit of a new customer. All for free and without talking to me or giving me their contact info.
Local SEO. If they have an existing business, I can tell them which business directories they show up on and where they don’t, their current rankings on top keywords, and who’s linking back to them. Again, they’ll be able to do this for free without giving away their contact info. I’ll then have a “get free advice” call to action, where I’ll take 10mins to analyze their report and tell them what I would change or do different, if I were them. No up-selling, just free advice.
Design Concepts. Once they do contact me, I can give them a free preview of what they will get. Over the years of doing this, like most designers, I have developed custom templates. I can leverage these templates to quickly draft up a mock-up of their website. I’ll explain that it’s a template and it will and should be customized. The potential client gets “free” work done and are able to visualize what they will get, before they get it.
This is my take on how to provide quality value in addition to quality content. Every business or company will have to find their own way of doing it, this one is just mine. I’m half writing this to vent, and half writing this to more strongly formulate my ideas. I realize the concept of giving away a sample is nothing new in the business world. However, it’s not a strategy Gary Vaynerchuk and some of the other big guys are dishing out yet, so I have some time to benefit from it before the rest of the herd catches on.
In Summary
We had a good thing going, but like everything in life, it’s coming to an end. The “new” thing hasn’t been established yet, and I think providing direct value in the form of a sample is going to be the new game in digital marketing. It’s a whole new way of doing things, but that’s why I believe it will work. At least until we all find a way to mess it up
If you liked this article, I’d appreciate a little tap on the green heart, thanks!
