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Spark The Imagination And Motivate Action
Here are 5 ways sales promotion boosts content marketing effectiveness as the emotional motivator that closes the loop, inspires the imagination and makes the sale.
Engaging customers and prospects with relevant content, that they seek out and actually enjoy reading, has become more efficient and less expensive than traditional ads.
According to Demand Metric, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing, while generating three times more leads.
In the same report it was noted that 86% of people skip TV ads altogether. These very same people are continually seeking out content that makes their lives better. Searching for answers, products and information online has become the new normal.
Story telling and sales promotion techniques are among the best ways to create an emotional connection. Hitting an emotional cord attracts customers and inspires them to read more to ultimately become your best brand supporters.
Sales Promotions Create an Emotional Connection
The words WIN, FREE and SAVE ignite receptors in our brain to grab our attention. When people are attracted by an one of these offers, it’s a great opportunity to use content marketing to literally fulfill their deeper wants and needs.
On the surface it may seem that people react to an offer because hey, everybody wants something for nothing right.
To create an emotional response you need to also fuel the reader’s imagination, motivation and trigger their perceptions. Using thought-provoking content, relevant to their relationship with your brand, is a great technique to inspire action.
Consider that people are nourished by respect, encouragement, emotional comfort and opportunities for affiliations.
Whether you choose a sweepstakes, contest, free sample or even a discount coupon, make it about your relationship with the customer and tie-in one of these humanizing factors.
A simple way to connect the dots between an offer and an emotional connection when planning out your copy is to follow the offer with the words ‘so you can’ and insert a concept from the list above.
’Enter your email address for our FREE white paper on engagement so you can be the best in your field’ …is an example of a good beginning statement.
Following up with how you will help them accomplish this in explicit point-by-point copy gives you the opportunity to tell your brand story while building a relationship.
Involve Customers With Your Brand
Having people post pictures of them using your brand or sharing an experience related to your product has become a popular way to interact with customers.
Contests, where contestants submit answers, or their solution to a skill based project, to your site is also an effective interactive technique. Having others vote on their entries brings the interactivity full circle.
Consider that the 3 elements of any experience are: the place you were, the people you were with and the challenge you faced.
Millennials, more than other demographic groups, love participating in a shared experience. Many sales promotion techniques can incorporate and simulate the elements of these three elements, when you get creative.
AirBnB created a contest around the recent total eclipse ‘experience’. The prize was a night in a transparent geodesic dome in Oregon. The day of the eclipse the winners got to board a plane to the path of totally.
The opportunity to sleep under the stars and be part of a natural phenomenon drops the reader into an experience. The reader also becomes keenly aware of the uniqueness of the AirBnB product. Ahh, the beginning of a special brand relationship.
Increase Social Sharing
When contest entrants share to get votes on social media channels, it is in effect a personal endorsement of your brand to their friends.
Combining your brand sales promotions with trending topics or an entertaining, spectacular, or visually interesting graphic, also increases social sharing.
Visual Media, such as video, is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than other types of content.
The best sales promotional videos drop the viewer into an experience and leaves them changed in some way. Short (less than 60 seconds) and highly emotional videos are viewed and shared more often.
Attract and Retain Customers
Sales promotions wake us up and attract our attention. The words WIN, FREE and SAVE mentioned in the emotional connection point (above) are at work to pique our interest.
Continuity programs, such as buy three times over the year and receive a FREE prize or triple points in a loyalty program also get us motivated and involved.
To appeal to today’s consumer, your sales promotional content marketing strategy needs to be more than simply rewarding consumers for an action.
People are moving towards supporting companies that are doing good in the world and whose mission aligns with their own values. Integrating sales promotions with your corporate social responsibility strategy is another optimal way to attract and retain customers..
Drive Response and Sales
Sales Promotions motivate people to action. Entering a sweepstakes, using a coupon, receiving a sample or logo’d promotional product all require some form of consumer involvement.
Content marketing benefits, presented around your sales promotional offers, makes the promotional event or item come alive in the minds, hands and hearts of the consumer
It takes a customer hearing a message 7 times before it actually registers with them.
The ongoing content marketing quest is: to share your story about how your product/service improves the lives of your customer. Add some fun and interest along the way and mix things up.
Your content marketing calendar should include a variety of sales promotional techniques to reward, surprises and/or excite the reader
Show how much you respect the relationship and give your customers a coupon or promo code discount. Offer them an incentive for sharing content.
You worked hard to build the relationship, it’s time to make it a win/win by inviting them to participate.
The ultimate goal of content marketing is to create and distribute relevant and consistent content to attract, retain and drive profitable customer activity. Using these tips will enhance your customer relationship and improve your results overall.
