The Conversation
The Perfect Blend |
Your launch story is simply how you present information to your prospects. What are you about? Why should they care? I’ve always wondered why some launch stories hit it big and others just fizzle out like they never even existed.
We all want big successful launches and it turns out that a lot of it is in our hands. If you are marketing your services or launching products, you need to really know how to tell effective stories. Story telling is an art that you can learn and adopt for your businesses and it helps define complex things into simple words. We come across countless situations where we can benefit from this skill - when you’re in an elevator with a potential business partner, when you get a chance to meet an investor, when you’re pitching to your clients, when you run across an old school friend on a weekend getaway and most importantly, when you are about to launch products or events in the market.
Telling a launch story is about summing everything up nicely and presenting it in a way that can influence your potential clients or audiences to take action. This is done by hitting the right mental triggers to the right people at the right time.
The mental triggers that you choose to hit will depend on your individual products, but we can safely say that the old tested rules of “hero play” still apply. And boy do they work! We, as humans, are attracted to stories of drama, intensity of emotions, shock, winning. We want that adrenaline rush. We want that human to human association. We want that heroism. We want to listen to people who understand where we come from. If you can incorporate these into your story, you’re bound to have a greater impact and response from your targeted audiences.
Make your key message (verbal or email) as informal and relatable to your audiences as possible. Make it like a conversation between two people. Here is a structure that you can use for your message:
1- Start with reiterating the fact that you are just like them and have a lot in common. The purpose of this introduction is to get the attention of your key targeted audience.
2- Then name a few frustrations that you have (related to your launch). “I’ve been looking around for cool places to hangout, where I can just take my mind off work and network with likeminded people. But there is just no such place in the entire town…” This should make them think “Yes. I totally get it”.
3- When you’re sure you have that nod, talk about how you aspire for things to be different. You can throw in ideas and thoughts and let their minds wander off. Don’t limit their thoughts to specific examples, let them imagine as much and as far as they can.
4- Finally, when you know that they are excited about how all of this can turn around, present your solution and discuss how it can benefit people like them.
It takes very little time to come up with good meaningful stories that you can use to turn your business around. Having the right strategy for your launches is important for the success of your ventures. If you don’t market your events well, you may not be able to draw the attention that it otherwise deserves. Remember how we discussed that events are like revolving doors of launches and re-launches? The more hype you can create in your launch, the more revenue you will generate for even bigger and better launches.
You have to make your events news-worthy to create the initial buzz. Have stories within stories. Make people want to share the “did you know that….” stories about your event. A great way to do that is to have interesting themes for the event and streamline your entire promotions based on those themes.
The more different and unique the themes are, the more interest they will generate. So, think creatively. Look at it this way, if you can get people to blog or talk about you - you are getting free media coverage worth thousands of advertising dollars. It’s a win-win for both you and your targeted audiences. They want something interesting to talk about, and you want to be talked about.
I am sure most of you would agree that we can’t just expect people to get excited about our events just like that - they need to have an incentive to. These incentives are based on basic human feelings - joy, thrill, excitement, suspense, comfort. Understanding what causes these emotions and what effects they have on the moods and actions is important for creating the right kinds of incentives for your audiences.
When you have built the brand of your events, you will know exactly what emotional bracket you want to trigger to build hype. Different events play on different human emotions - New Year’s Eve at Times Square plays on thrill, happy family picnics play on joy, the Macworld plays on suspense and curiosity, concerts play on fun, soccer matches play on excitement and tribalism, talk-shows play on comfort and product launches play on value.
Once you figure out how you want your audiences to feel before your event, you’re already half way to creating hype. Let’s call it the ‘event’s emotion’ for convenience. All of your marketing messages, communication, interactions, advertisements, letters - everything has to trigger the event’s emotion. If you manage to touch their feelings, they will form an invisible relationship with your event - whether they know it or not, you just managed to touch their heart! This will put them in a position where they will be more likely to attend the event or tell others about it. That’s your attention magnet!
This may sound like you are toying with people’s emotions - but that’s not the purpose of this exercise. Always remember, the New Year’s party at Time Square will thrill everyone present and give them a natural high. But what would happen if nobody knows what New Year’s at time square is? What would happen if nobody knows what it ‘could’ potentially mean to them? Well, they’d rather stay home and watch TV. Unless you tell them what to expect from the event, you cannot expect them to come. That’s it - you’re just setting their expectations straight using event emotions.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! One stop shopping for all your event marketing in social media needs you can’t go past my Events Listed networking and marketing platform. It’s invite only, here’s a backdoor pass on me.
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Your Story |
A story is a message or idea that we communicate with people. It is meant to be consistent throughout the campaign, across multiple channels. The marketing messages, blog posts, website content, emails, everything; needs to be aligned to the story. Please don’t confuse the word ’story’ with something fictitious - it’s just the actual and real message that’s sent out for the world to see.
Planning events or businesses requires creativity. You need to find new ways of targeting customers, new ways of promoting events, new ways of building communities, new ways of planning themes. Everything works at a fast pace these days, which puts the customer expectation bars high. You can only expect to meet those bars if you can differentiate your services and products significantly and manage to stand out from the crowd.
So, instead of looking for best practices or easy ways out, take time out to design your events as if they are a painting. Paint out new ways of blending all of the different elements together to make picturesque memories. That itself is your story, you can decide how you want to paint it.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! One stop shopping for all your event marketing in social media needs you can’t go past my Events Listed networking and marketing platform. It’s invite only, here’s a backdoor pass on me.
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The Conversation |
Conversation is the key which opens doors to people’s minds and hearts. I believe that more than anything else, marketing thrives on communication.
You have to get to know people and find out what they want. It is a false assumption that populated lists mean popularity. Popularity is not achieved just by adding people to your list of contacts. They should be able to recognize and know you. Be one with the people, bond with them and most important of all, LISTEN to them. You can make each stage of your launch a raging success because of the conversations that you have with them.
Show genuine interest; engage them so that you can put them at ease. Be upfront in your dealings and encourage questions. You would know in advance what people want and expect, and this will give you the added advantage of adjusting your events or campaigns accordingly. Keep them updated as everyone likes to be in the know.
The main reason for you to engage in conversations is to build trust. If people don’t trust you they won’t believe you and you’ll have a hard time convincing them. Get them on your side. Don’t put an end to this relationship after your event has been launched. You want your buyers to become permanent customers, so don’t break the thread of this conversation.
Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)
Today’s tip! To succeed online you must start engaging prospects into a never ending conversation. To do this you need a world class email auto-responder system.
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Never Ending Conversation |
Our conversations with our prospects started way before launch. We have 9 different email campaigns running in parallel, targeting different sets of groups. We have video tours walking interested people through the application. We have a presence on facebook, myspace, linkedin and all major social networking sites. We encourage people to follow us on twitter, friendfeed and of the likes. We have 3 blogs running in parallel to our launch campaign. We are open to feedback, discussions and conversations with people - as they are the most important enablers of our business.
Conversation is the key which opens doors to people’s minds and hearts. I believe that more than anything else, marketing thrives on communication. You have to get to know them and find out what they want. It is a false assumption that the more populated your lists are the more popular you are. Popularity is not achieved just by adding people to your list of contacts. They should be able to recognize you and know you. Be one with the people, bond with them and most important of all, LISTEN to them. From the conversations that you have with them, you can make each stage of your launch a raging success. Remember that “there is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for.”
We would know in advance what people want and expect from our launch just by talking to them. We intend to keep everyone updated, as everyone likes to be in the know, and this will help us build the buzz around launch…
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