If I had to sum up the past decade of marketing in one word, it would be “adaptation.”
Customers are just too smart. They block ads, ignore canned content, and are better read than ever before. They continue to be more and more empowered. So what’s a marketer to do? How can brands possibly react in time to shifting expectations, much less strategically?
To start a great conversation, you need to know what to say
Good English, well spoken and well written, will open more doors than a college degree…Bad English will slam doors you don’t even know exist.” -William Raspberry
The answer may be simpler than you think. Although marketing and its tools are constantly changing along with technology, human psychology remains the same.
According to the science of first impressions, people form a “thin-slice” impression of you, your website, or your brand within seven seconds. And they decide whether they can trust you in one-tenths of a second. Since 90% of all startups fail, we think it’s safe to say that most business owners don’t pass this litmus test.
If you really want to get into your customers’ heads, you need to learn what to say, and how to say it. Your message must come first—the rest of marketing, like social media and email campaigns, is about getting that message in front of the right people. But if your icebreaker is bad to begin with, it doesn’t matter how many people you talk to at the party. You need to know how to start and keep a conversation going about your brand.
You don’t want your voice to get swallowed up in the background noise. If you really want to maximize your marketing ROI, you can’t afford to take risks with careless, untargeted writing.
The future of marketing will be even more conversational
Good marketers tell a story.” -Seth Godin
The brands that do marketing right are the brands that get that distinction. Creating content, whether inbound or outbound, requires commitment and poise. It demands care for quality. It needs the soul of a good story. And that means brilliant writing.
What’s your story? When’s the last time you gave a thought to how your content was performing? Are you just putting it out there, hoping to cash in on the “freshness” factor of SEO? That’s not science—it’s a shot in the dark. Today’s marketing requires consistently high-quality content. If you’re not delivering that, Google is not on your side.
You need to stop thinking of your customers as “quality leads”, and start thinking of them as human beings, like you, who have problems they want to solve. How can you solve their problems for them? That’s the conversation you need to have with your customers. That’s the conversation your marketing needs to deliver.
Don’t settle for poor writing just because it’s easy. The only way to get customers to talk to you and trust your brand is by becoming a great conversationalist.
