If you look at my bookshelf or talk to me a little while about marketing, you will quickly discover that I am a Seth Godin fan. I’ve read a lot of his books and try to keep up with his daily posts.
Two years ago I read a blog post that has shaped my view of marketing ever since. I have basically adopted this as my philosophy on marketing and I would like to share it with you now:
Seth Godin’s Four Circles of Marketing
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Let’s say that you have an awesome product. You’ve made it into the best thing to fit the needs of your audience. This should make promoting it a little easier, since people will talk about a great product.
Now what?
I want to share some examples of brands that are doing well with their product, but have also taken it a step further to add a little delight and create a better experience around it. (Which also helps to get people to talk about it.) You may have that perfect product and amazing marketing, but there is more you can do.
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Like most Internet users, my eyes usually avoid the big squares and rectangles that live on most websites, begging for you to notice and click on them. Yes, even I as a card-carrying marketer may ignore display ads. But once in a while, there’s that rare ad that catches my eye and brings some unexpected delight.
Zendesk’s latest banner ad did that for me:
How could that sweet old woman be “hellbent on destruction”? What else could I do but click on it?
This post may not fall directly in the realm of advertising or social media, but I thought it was a great example of an organization not turning straight to creating a mobile app to solve their problems.
The Utah Department of Public Safety has a series of short commercials that emphasize the importance of calling the appropriate public services so you don’t take the emergency 911 line from other callers experiencing legitimate emergencies. (Sorry—I’d post one here, but I couldn’t get the embed link to work.)
The ads direct the viewer to visit 911.utah.gov to find the local phone numbers for non-emergency services. In some of the videos, someone opens up what looks like an iPhone app to find the number they needed.
After seeing this ad one night, I decided that it was worth looking into since you never know when those numbers would come in handy. I searched the Google Play apps, but didn’t find anything. Hoping that it wasn’t one another app that’s only available on Apple devices, I went to the website and was pleasantly surprised with what I found. Continue reading
I believe that each social media channel (or each media channel for that matter) has its own unique properties. Meaning, you can’t throw the same marketing message on each channel and expect it to work. You can gan get away with using the same concept, but you still need to adjust the message for medium it’s going in.
I will follow some brands on multiple channels to see how (or if) they differentiate their messages and take advantages of the characteristics of each channel, and some do it very well. It’s no secret that Old Spice has mastered YouTube. With videos featuring The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Wolfdog, singing moms, and individual responses, anything they upload will be seen.
How are they on other channels? Continue reading
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