Remember Memorable?
Marketeers always want to get noticed. Consequently they are often seduced by the latest/fastest/most cost-effective ‘routes-to-audience’, in the belief that somehow, if they aren’t on the latest bandwagon they’ll be left at the roadside.
It’s a myth that needs to be busted – because doing what everyone else is doing is the perfect way to dilute sales.
We can’t ignore a modern truism – we live in a world where we are exposed to and/or endure countless numbers of overt marketing messages every day. Sometimes they’re covert too. It’s relentless.
Well I say countless, I did read somewhere recently (despite the fact that there aren’t really any reliable/official figures) that we each encounter somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 brand-orientated episodes of one sort or another every day.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Assuming you’re in bed asleep for eight of those hours, that means, even at the lower end of the scale, you’re having multiple brands wave their knickers at you 375 times per hour.
That’s 6.25 times per minute.
It would be utterly exhausting but for the fact that as humans we unconsciously (because of our magnificent and endlessly impressive, on-board super-computer) filter out the vast majority of those.
But that’s a lot of advertising rendered effectively ineffective.
Many brands seem to think the best way to tackle this ‘problem’ is (more often than not) to play the numbers game and go for the high-volume route. Try to be omnipresent. But that’s costly, so do lots of digital because it’s cheaper and therefore you can afford a bit of wastage.
But let me ask you a simple question:
How many advertising messages do you REALLY remember seeing yesterday?
Now no cheating or pretending please – I’m talking about the ads that really hit home, the ones that you remember precisely where, when, and via which medium you got them. I tried it myself and I could remember just FOUR. And remember this sort of thing is my career/hobby/obsession rolled into one – I’m always looking.
But for the purposes of this Blog let’s stick with my recollection – 6,000 potential pings and only four landed. That equates to a hit rate of 0.00066 per cent. And effectively 5,996 incidents of ‘wastage’ too.
Not exactly what you want to hear if you’re responsible for the budget that bought that advertising, is it? No wonder marketing budgets are almost always the first things to get cut when times get tricky.
So how do you address this problem? One mitigating tactic is trying to broaden the appeal of your product/service to somehow expanding your potential audience, but that invariably leads to vanilla advertising. Which is a waste of time, effort and budget.
We simply can’t be all things to all people all of the time. Not only is that impossible, it’s a pretty daft objective in the first place.
The truth is we have to go in completely the opposite direction.
Don’t think big, think small. You need to recognise that for your specific audience, who are only actually at the pointy bit of the buying cycle every now and then, timing is key. You need to be saying the right thing, in the right way, in the right place, at the right time for them. And to do that you really need to understand how they think and behave.
And here’s the kicker - they need to remember you.
And the key to being remembered? Well, some would argue it’s volume of messaging (they’re after your budget!) but I’d say you need to be creative, be specific, be relatable, be benefit-led, be funny, have charm, be a little disarming and/or self-effacing, and look like really nice people to work with or buy from.
Whether it’s washing machines, baked beans, industrial pumps or double-entry bookkeeping you’re selling, those are good qualities to convey when a buyer is thinking about buying.
Now think of those ads you actually remembered from yesterday AND those unforgettable TV ads, radio jingles, press ads, and posters from yesteryear…they all had those self-same qualities, didn’t they?
It just goes to prove that the message is always more important than the medium.
So be a little braver and aim to do something memorable – because, employed correctly, creativity will get you noticed in a more meaningful way.
Creativity is King. Long Live The King!