In marketing good content strategy really comes from simply understanding the human that you’re trying to reach. B2B, B2C, it really doesn’t matter. It’s all about the person and ultimately the goal is to move someone to take some sort of action. I kind of likened it to dating.
For entrepreneurs, business owners or non-marketers, the idea of creating a content marketing strategy can be really overwhelming. How do you know where to start? What will work for my business? How do I know what’s working and what I’m just throwing money away on? Have you ever asked yourself any of those questions? You see, in its simplest form, video marketing or any marketing really is simply about relationships – people connecting with people.
Harvard Business School professor Gerald Zaltman said that 95% of our decision making process when making purchase decisions happens in the unconscious mind. So how do we as marketers influence the subconscious mind? Mind control? Well, it’s simpler than that, you see. It’s about emotions, it’s about creating ways for our brand to connect with our ideal customer on an emotional level. You see by connecting with emotions we’re influencing the subconscious mind subconsciously and that’s exactly where good marketing begins. We want our ideal customer to feel something first and then to take action. As Zaltman was clarifying, people make buying decisions based on emotions and then they justify that decision with logic and reasoning. All action whether it be a purchase decision or not follows this same process Feel, Think and then Do. You feel something and then you think about it and then you take an action whether that be a purchase decision or not. If you have a headache which is causing you to feel pain, then you think about the options that will help you overcome that pain. Then you take the action, you take the paracetamol. If you’re feeling frustrated with your financial situation, then you consider your options and then you go and speak to a financial planner. If you’re feeling run down tired and overworked and then you stumble across a youtube video featuring a Fiji Island getaway and then you go and see a travel agent. You’re feeling, thinking and then you’re taking the action. I’ve oversimplified it for sure but when we consider any purchase decision we can recognise that there is always an emotional trigger that starts that buying journey.
So in a marketing strategy we need to connect with our prospects on an emotional level first and then work to change their beliefs about something before asking them to take some sort of action and potentially buy our product or service.
Feel, think, do – it’s human nature and i kind of likened it to the idea of dating. You see on a first date your goal is to get your prospect that person sitting across the table from you to feel something about you, to connect on an emotional level with you first. So you’re going to dress nicely, you’re going to tell great stories, you’re going to make eye contact. The idea is to make a great first impression on an emotional level to encourage them to go to the next level with you.
In that next stage in that dating analogy is when you’re going on second, third, fourth dates. Here, you want them to think differently about you. You want them to start to connect with you on a more cognitive level and understand that this is a relationship that is going to work for them, that there’s an alignment, that they like you and they trust you.
Finally in this dating analogy, that’s when you can go for the conversion, where the sale is made. When it comes to dating, you can consider what that conversion might be. But what happens if you go straight for the conversion on the first date? So why do so many businesses focus their marketing strategy around trying to influence the conversion on the first date? You don’t want to be slapping your prospects in the face.
So, how will you adopt this Feel, Think, Do approach when you’re creating and thinking about your marketing strategy?
