Wouldn’t it be great if your business could do just ONE thing to reach all your potential customers, make them fall in love with your brand, and move them to purchase something?
What’s really appealing to most about that idea is that it’s easy.
“My job here is done”
The problem is, engagement is NOT easy.
Super Bowl commercials work, if they work at all, only for brands that already have some kind of engagement with customers. The ad for the big game is just another chapter in that story.
Most years feature a brand which has pushed all its chips in to show the ad and doesn’t have much of a follow up. It simply can’t work. Will we see one this year?
Is your company about to put all its hopes into something like a Super Bowl ad?
True story: my company, Caxy, once spent 100% of our available funds exhibiting at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We were a 2-person development agency at the time. Selling services. At a trade show where individual consumers came to see the latest plasma TVs and gadgets.
It was a colossal failure. 0 leads. Here’s how bad it was – the highlight of the trip involved the comedian Gallagher. You know him? He’s the guy who smashes watermelons. Well, I met … his brother. So what’s your Super Bowl? Have you bet 2016 on that 1 trade show in June? Is that new brochure the 1 thing you changed, and are you now expecting that it’s going to finally be the big breakthrough? Are you planning on launching the new website and sitting back to watch the cash roll in?
Before you go get bigger bags and a wheelbarrow to drag the cash to the bank in, consider that succeeding today involves customer engagement across many channels, over time, with a feedback loop that is the driver for changing what you are doing.
You should be looking for engagement in the channels you know about, including social, email, digital products, mobile, and so on.
But are you ready to invest in the engagement that happens over time and that only works if YOU are actively engaged as well? To be actively engaged, think of having a normal conversation with someone.
If you are talking to a friend about the Super Bowl, for example, and the friend says they just can’t stand the sport, do you launch into talking about how the Panthers are going to crush the Broncos? No. You listen for what THEY are interested in and engage there.
So why aren’t you doing that with your customers? Are you staying on just one note? Are you even listening to what customers are saying? Do you look at what customers are doing with your digital products to see what they care about and what you might change to serve them better? Have you listened to what salespeople say the customers are saying about your service? Have you tested your messaging?
If you haven’t been doing any of these things, it’s never too late to start.
As for the Super Bowl, let’s hope there isn’t a GoDaddy commercial.
