Digital Marketing

Rethinking Website Content: Content That Entertains

In case you missed it, the Web has changed; It seems like only yesterday that you were good enough to take all your brochures and collateral and convert it to digital format, add a little search engine optimization, add a little PHP programming and bingo, you have a website. And if you wanted to show how cutting-edge your company was, maybe you’d add some Flash animation or some royalty-free music. Well, here is a top of the line newsletter, which is not going to cut it in the new multimedia web business environment.

Almost daily I get emails from people asking me to review their websites and tell them why they can’t convert visitors into customers, even though they are attracting significant numbers of visitors on a regular basis to their sites.

The answer is both simple and complex: simple, because these websites fail to communicate the company’s message in a meaningful way to their visitors, which means that no dialogue is opened, and without dialogue, nothing can be done. business; and complex, because implementing the solution requires a new way of thinking about communicating with your audience using sophisticated presentation techniques that place greater importance on creativity than the facts, figures, and direct marketing tactics of the old school.

If you’re looking for a mantra to start a new website initiative or fix an existing website mess: Think audience, not customers.

New words for a new web business environment

In the past, I have come across three newly coined words or phrases (Communitainment, Branded Entertainment, and Snack-o-tainment) that attempt to capture the fundamental shift that has taken place in the expectations of Web users.

All of the new terms have two things in common: one, they require the marketer to think of website visitors as an audience and not customers; and two, they all require the marketer to use entertainment techniques as the basis for delivering content.

Communication + Entertainment + Community

Piper Jaffray’s internet media and marketing research team recently published a report titled ‘The User Revolution’ in which Safa Rashtchy coined the concept of ‘Communitainment’, a combination of the words communication and entertainment. Rashtchy uses the term to denote the “fusion of communication, community, and entertainment,” as a new formula for implementing marketing content delivery.

The report notes that “video ads will be the next big growth engine in brand advertising…” with the Web “the leading medium at work and the second leading medium at home behind television.”

For any company that thought they could do business as usual, this should be a wake-up call. The Web has changed: the market is no longer content to be informed, they have to be seduced, and they are not going to be seduced with keyword density and marketing jargon.

Contrary to popular belief, you can deliver a marketing message faster, stronger, and with better recall using creative video presentations than you can with a page of text. Now no one is saying you shouldn’t have text on your site, but your copy had better be very interesting and well-written if you expect someone to actually read it.

Meaning + Share + Experience

The idea of ​​’Communitainment’ provides a conceptual framework for creating web video presentations that work: your business communication must convey meaning through a focused presentation that uses all the various techniques available to the savvy web producer; Your audience should see enough value in your presentation that they are willing to contact others in your community of colleagues and share it; and lastly, the delivery of the message must create a memorable entertainment experience associated with the product or service provided.

branded entertainment

Leta Baker writes in her ‘Adobe Magazine’ article ‘Creative Persuasion: The Rise of Branded Entertainment’ about her concept of using entertaining online video presentations as a means of effectively building brand awareness.

Baker is talking about a video that doesn’t smack you over the head with a hard-selling sales pitch or bore you to death with nonsensical platitudes, but instead features entertaining short shows that companies can attach their brand to so that viewers get a memorable experience. positive impression of the company from him. This is a long-term strategy that takes into account the reality that not all genuine prospects who visit your website are ready to buy your product right now, but they might, when and if they remember who you are, when they’re ready to to buy. .

There are many ways to implement this ‘branded entertainment’ concept and not all of them have to be completely devoid of salesmanship. Apple’s iPod commercials are an example of what I would call ‘branded entertainment’, even if Leta Baker objects. Unlike most commercials that people rush to avoid, iPod commercials are actually anticipation: People want to know what Apple is going to do next, and the result: The iPod has the lion’s share of the player market. MP3.

Apple Macintosh commercials are another form of ‘brand entertainment’ that involves a sales pitch. Here we have an ongoing campaign with well-developed characters that the audience has come to know throughout the campaign. Audiences look forward to what these characters are going to do next. This doesn’t mean every PC owner is going to run out and buy a Mac, but over time, Apple is getting people to recognize its product as an alternative.

Because the commercials are entertaining, people listen and wait for the next installment of the campaign. The public is getting the message and that’s all any good marketing campaign can do.

And here’s the big stumbling block for many small businesses: Good marketing requires patience and should be geared toward opening a dialogue, not just making a quick sale.

Most website sales pitches are like bad pick-up lines: crude and ineffective; an audience needs to be courted with tender love before it can hope to see any results. If you are not willing to invest time and creativity in opening a dialogue with your audience, you can forget about using the Internet as a marketing tool.

Snack-o-tainment: fast food entertainment

The term ‘Snack-o-tainment’ was used by Nancy Miller in her ‘Wired’ magazine article ‘Manifesto for a New Age’ in which she equates new media consumption with society’s addiction to fast food. media, we as marketers must feed that addiction.

It wasn’t that long ago that the biggest objection to online video was that it took too long to load; now we see it compared to fast food. The fact is that video can deliver a meaningful message in the fastest possible way because it conveys content using the full arsenal of communication tools.

We can look to television for a model of how to deliver these little morsels of corporately nourishing, entertaining marketing manna.

The thirty-second commercial is an example of how much memorable content can be packed into a short amount of time by adding a little entertaining creativity to the mix. And unlike television, there is no expensive premium associated with time on the Internet, so content can be as long or short as the message requires.

A campaign based on this formula can be complete with storylines, character development, and exclusive music, all designed to convey your marketing message in an entertaining way that will not only stick in the memory of your audience, but will also be anticipated by them. audience. . The famous soap opera-style campaign ‘Taster’s Choice’ from years ago was one of the best examples of combining entertainment with a commercial message.

Even the humble jingle can be resurrected to provide a bit of ‘sit and take note’ to an otherwise mundane presentation. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t know the recipe for MacDonald’s Big Mac, based on their fabulously successful commercials, even though they haven’t aired in years. In fact, the current slate of MacDonald’s commercials is so forgettable that one wonders why the old standbys haven’t been brought back to life.

Another bit of delicious marketing entertainment was the series of Chili’s Restaurant commercials featuring various singers performing their jingle ‘Baby Back Ribs’, which provided far more entertainment in thirty seconds than a full Britney Spears CD. More importantly, that infectious ‘baby back ribs’ song has become deeply ingrained in the public subconscious, and when the inevitable questions arise, ‘where are we going to eat?’ that jingle starts playing in our heads. If you want to be successful, learn from what works.

Can you afford to wait?

If your business is expanding as fast as it can with a growing list of clients and ever-increasing profits, then perhaps you can afford to ignore the changes taking place and the expectations of your audience. But if things can get better, and if you want to improve your web marketing, then you have to adapt to new ways of delivering content.

You can’t let outdated thinking get in your way. There is a difference between the experience of twenty years and the experience of one year repeated twenty times. There is no point in repeating old methods that no longer work.

You know things have changed, so get ready to deliver your content in a way that enables your business to become the next big success story on the web.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *