I’ve been saying for a while now that the context in which you communicate with your customers is actually more important and material to the success of the communication than the content itself. Your pitch can be Hollywood-quality and utterly heroic, but it will only hit home with those who hear it. We want to be talking to the folks who are willing to listen (and maybe even interested in our story) and not to the accidental observers, the poor suckers who are duped into clicking on random crap, or the people who don’t even see our offerings because they’re positioned “below the fold” in digital terms. I pity the fools who are still paying millions of dollars for videos “shown”, but not seen by any human beings. And I can’t wait for the media agencies who are still selling clicks instead of real, measurable results to credulous cretins to take their last desperate breaths and disappear.
In addition, it’s increasingly clear that the source of the information and the credibility and connection of the referring/sharing party matters more than brand, celebrity endorsements, bogus rankings, etc. This is precisely why social is rapidly overtaking search as the primary source of everything we want to know about and why Facebook continues to blow away Google on every possible scale. We want to hear from the people who we know and whose opinions we value and not from the crowd or a bunch of strangers with nothing better to do. In addition, people with broad connections and networks within their organizations or cohorts turn out to have just as much (or more) viral power and amplification capacity as the for-sale “influencers” that everyone has been chasing for the last several years. We just not as dumb any more as the dopes on Madison Avenue continue to think we are. We are looking for authentic, accurate, actionable and timely information to make our buying decisions and it has become a reasonable and realistic expectation that this is exactly what the best and most competitive businesses will provide.
We call this approach “smart reach” – what I want, when I want it, wherever I am, and without asking. And it keeps getting smarter as our data and our tools continue to improve. What has changed the game recently is that the degrees of possible precision in targeting have continued to become more particular, detailed and granular. It’s simply no longer sufficient to use proxies, placeholders, and best guesses in order to properly target and reach your audience. In addition, just knowing who the audience is isn’t enough information any longer to be the predicate for an effective communication strategy: you’ve got to know what they are interested in and – even more importantly – when – in terms of their behaviors – when to reach out to them in order to complete the circle.
There’s a simple reason that high value products searches are almost all taking place these days on Amazon and not Google or other search engines. When I’m engaged in a defined activity, I go to the power tool for that job – the specialist, not the GP – because I’m time-constrained and I’m trying to get something specific done. I’m not browsing and I’m not bored – it’s not a discover exercise, it’s a task.
And it’s in this mode that the more valuable assistance and offerings you can provide for me (including suggestive selling and “nudge” commerce ideas), the more real value you are providing and the more receptive I am to the pitch. This seems pretty obvious and simple – you’re being helpful and additive – not distracting or irrelevant. But it’s a message that being missed by the masses of marketers at the moment. If you don’t incorporate the mode of my behavior into your marketing model, you’re missing the boat.
There’s an interesting debate developing right now that addresses exactly these kinds of concerns. It has to do with the fact that – while Facebook has now caught up with (and possibly passed) YouTube in terms of the number of video views per day (call it 4 billion plus a day for each of them) – YouTube argues that the engagement levels of the viewers with each YouTube video are dramatically different and much more substantial and that this “context” makes YouTube a much more attractive channel for video ad placements. YouTube says that Facebook’s video “views” suffer from all the same complaints I mentioned above – inadvertent views, distracted viewers, drive-bys, etc. – and that – as a result – the appropriate context for delivering the right video ad to an interested viewer isn’t present. But, of course, when the videos you’re being shown are sent by your friends and are actually theoretically meaningful to you, you could argue just the opposite - that I’m more likely to watch and be interested and receptive to related video content in this mode – than when I’m bored and scrolling thru random video recommendations on YouTube hoping to find the next great cat video.
In any case, the more major takeaway is that we do many materially different things when we’re online (and also we behave differently when we’re mobile – which almost everyone is these days – as opposed to when we’re sitting in front of a screen) and our attitudes and receptivity to messaging varies as well. In order to reach us effectively, you’ve got to know how to determine and your plan needs to take into account that my interest in your message will vary greatly depending on whether I’m shopping, gaming, socializing, or just scrolling. Messages that aid and assist me in the process are welcomed – things that interrupt or are irrelevant are ignored.
So the bottom line is pretty simple: if your audience isn’t listening, it doesn’t matter what you are saying or how well you are saying it. The right pitch at the right point in time and place is the only message that matters and the only one that will make it thru the confusion and the clutter to the customer.
PS: “You Get What You Work for, Not What You Wish for”
