The Campaign You Hate May Be the One to Run

As a business leader, you most likely craft the outward image of your company with careful thought and consideration. Commonly, a company’s marketing content is a reflection of its values. But you are not your customer. When it comes to marketing communications, the campaign you hate may be the one to run to attract customers to your business.

Remember the Oatly Jingle from last year’s Super Bowl? Everyone hated it, yet sales rose 212%. That horrible $5mm ad has them on target for a $10 billion IPO. Nicely done Toni.

When it comes to marketing you are not the customer. You may have been at one time. You might be closely connected to your customers. Your mission could even explicitly say you exist for their benefit. However, at the end of the day, customers don’t think like you. They don’t believe what you do. And they won’t act like you.

If your marketing efforts have been underwhelming, it could be because you are providing communications that you want to see or that you think to sound good. Not what customers want to see.

4 Things You Can Do to Focus on What Your Customers Want

Start with Market Research Data

The only way to truly understand what your customer is with market research. You need to understand what they need from you and what they’ll respond to. You can do this with quantitative research like surveys and analytics. You’ll also want to get some qualitative research data.

Understand that Nobody will Read Your Stuff

Nobody reads the copy. This especially true if you are writing for yourself. To fix this:

• Write about what is important to your audience.
• Not what you think is important to them.
• In as few words as possible.
• Bullet points are bests
• You read all these points didn’t you
• See it works

Prioritize Your Messages

You have seconds to get your customer’s attention. Pick the one thing that your research told you is most important to them. Don’t feed them the whole cow in the first bite. They don’t want to know everything you can do. Give them the one thing your research says will get their attention. Then you can get to the other things later.

Make Your Customer the Star

Have you ever dealt with a business that doesn’t think its products are spectacular? Nobody cares how great you think you are. They want to know what you can do for them. If others who have the same problems have been successful using your products. So, make your customer the star in your materials, not how great you are. Then show customers the content they want to see.

The research may show the best content to generate sales is the one you hate. But would you rather protect your ego or your bank account?

How can we help you get more out of your marketing campaigns?