De-brand From The Clutter

Did you ever wonder why your marketing techniques aren’t working anymore? All the hot leads turning into cold calls? The answer might stem from the fact that we live in an era where brands exist in abundance. If I can just audacity to quote Gary Vee, “Attention is the most valuable commodity of the world.” And he’s right you know. Nobody really cares when you are blatantly holding up your products in their faces.

Years of being in PR and marketing public relations (MPR) has taught me one thing which is common for all industries. Nobody likes to be sold products. You want your customers to feel that they are in charge of the decision making process. The only way you can do that is to genuinely help people instead of advertising or hammering your bla bla bla services or products. We have to recognize that buyers usually go through a process which helps them select or choose from a category of products. I wouldn’t say that the method of buying is similar in every case but what makes the product or service stand out is content. Yes, content.

Content helps you recognize and create buyer personas (to know more about buyer personas, please read: New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. Buyers’ personas will help you recognize what kind of information your buyers are looking for and help you guide them throughout the buying process. For instance, if you are a restaurant and if you post content about organic mocktail recipes, you might appeal to a certain kind of audience. If you put up recipes for vegetarians, you appeal to a different set of audience. My point is, every organization has multiple types of buying personas falling under multiple stages of the buying process. You cannot just create single type of content for multiple consumers who might have different needs. Here’s where I quote Gary Vee again “It’s a game of volume and quantity rather than quality. People don’t understand that they shouldn’t put quality on a pedestal.”

If you are a saloon and you create content for home treatment of dandruff, you appeal to a certain set of people. If you curate a specific community for how men with long hairs can manage their hair, you appeal to a very interesting subset of people.  

The thing is the advertising industry complex of hammering your products and services in the minds of your target customers by the way of repetition has simply stopped working. We have a limited attention span and over exposure to information. If you don’t prove valuable to your consumers, they will not respond to your messages. The only way to stay relevant is to add value in their lives and not just pretend to care of them. When you help people with the right content at the right time through the right medium, you are de-branding yourself from the clutter.

So just to give a few takeaways:

·        Focus on building personas

·        Increase the volume of content for different personas

·        Give them information instead of blatant advertisement

·        Focus on building a relationship rather than showing your brand collaterals

·        Guide them through the stages of buying

·        Give them an experience rather than just a product purchase or a service purchase

There’s a wonderful resource available online

https://contentmachine.com/resources/

This is curated by Dan Norris. For more details on content, you can even refer to his book “Content Machine”.

One last piece of advice is, Don’t think too much. Just start. That is what will set you apart from the players in the industry.