Was Nike’s “Air Jordan’s” of the late 80’s and 90’s any better than any other shoe? It’s “GOTTA BE THE CONTENT”
Steve Jobs built out an amazing army of marketers! From the beginning Steve Jobs new that it was content that led the way, followed by the “wow” of the product. This commercial was aired only once, but its impact was felt for many years to come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8
Obviously replicating the genius of Steve Jobs is no easy task, but we can again take a key lesson and try to figure out how to apply it. Job’s used product and content to excite a customer base.
But, if we were to examine how Nike excited an audience, it had nothing to do with the product (although folks at Nike may beg to differ). It was the content. It was pure genius leveraging Spike Lee and Michael Jordan ,”It’s Got to be the Shoes”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abr_LU822rQ
Okay, we are smaller businesses, we can’t get Michael Jordan or Spike Lee to speak about our products, how can we excite an audience?
A more recent example of exciting an audience base is Groupon. They used deep discounts and the gimmick of working together with your friends to get great deals on products or services. This created an event, where each day people would wait for the email regarding a great deal. Then they would reach out to their friends by calling, emailing, and “facebooking” to actively sell the promotion to their friends so that they can take advantage of an even better deal.
Today, Groupon is more of a deal of the day site than a group deal site, however the lesson is still real.
So what can we do? We can work to engage our customer base with the most interesting and relevant content we can come up with. We can use references to other pieces of great content like I did here. Plus we can use triggers to get those people to share content with their friends and colleagues.
Here are some real time examples of that.
A toy company has a data base of people who have purchased from them. They engage their base with content about play date ideas, and way’s to engage kids in group play. Then, they send a promotion. The promotion is a contest: create a virtual play date with 4 other friends and be entered to win $500 worth of free toys. What happens is an email is sent to the customers who are already engaged with the brand, and that email creates a viral spread of the brand over Facebook and Twitter. The toy company has created a fun and engaging content program and campaign that has increased brand awareness by over 100% and increased the size of the target marketing list by over 50%.
This is an example of a program that a small business can run for at or less than $500/month.
What campaigns can you do? If you have thoughts and ideas, feel free to submit them here.