One of the challenges of having been in marketing since the days when TV audiences mattered and customer loyalty was the golden goose is that it’s easy to think that some concepts are so clear, so patently obvious that they don’t need to be mentioned.
Like knowing your audience for example. It’s surely a staple of any business that you have polar clarity on who your audience is. You may also have useful supplementary information gathered from years of research to truly understand them. Like for example knowing that if you are producing a limited edition shoe for the world’s most supported football team, Manchester United, it would be good to know they play in red.
And that their fiercest rivals play in sky blue. So naming a shoe after the Stretford end and giving it sky blue stripes seems to redefine the concept of “epic fail”. I’m not making it up. Unless the SMH has been duped too.
Nowadays, digital businesses that are mimicking the success of Facebook, as opposed to the failure of MySpace are uniformly those that really understand their audiences.
They understand what their audiences want and use those insights and some creative skill to create more things they might like. Sometimes, they get it wrong, sometimes right, it’s never a science, but successful businesses continue to try new ideas while working within a structured framework of what characterises their audience.
Real audience understanding helps to minimise the risks in developing new products and services that your audience will appreciate, which in turn means that you become an increasingly more important part of their lives.
Knowing for example that your “what’s on” pages are among the most popular, it’s a reasonable assumption that people would like a regular newsletter. If your audience are travellers, by all means offer them a special holiday or upgrade deal through a commercial partnership.
Or of course consider producing specially targeted versions of your digital products for niche segments of your audience. A golf business I’m working with links you to the most popular instructional you tube videos each week through a simple newsletter. A magazine client gets more downloads of their podcasts than copy sales of the magazine. But their readers and advertisers love it.
Sadly, in my digital work, I still see a mixture of approaches. I’ve observed organisations who require approval from the CIO prior to uploading content, I’ve seen UX and IA people developing designs without any idea of style and tone and I’ve seen professional advice advocating SEO as the first consideration in content creation. Mustn’t forget those key words.
We’re all learning together, but I’m fairly confident that at the end of it all, content is still king. And the best content is the stuff that truly understands the user, truly understands their needs and truly understands the importance of tone, frequency and content.
And however experienced or smart your team are, always insist that at least two people read every line of copy before you publish. God is in the Detail.
I’ve no doubt there are many Manchester United fans that would pay a hefty premium for a limited edition of the iconic Adidas trainer. But they could have avoided so much negative publicity if only they’d made them in red…
