In the final Local Marketing Insider of 2021, we look back on 6 strategies that stood out amongst the crowd.
Thank you LMI readers for a great first year! I appreciate everyone who has participated in this little experiment. To ring in the new year I’ve collected my six favorite insights from the past 22 issues.
Happy holidays from the Widewail team!
1. Actionable is unignorable in social content
For your target audience (presumably prospective buyers), actionable content gives a quick win - an idea that can be tried out and made a reality right away.
Here’s the formula for actionable, unignorable social content:
Insight + how-to + examples = actionable content
Let’s try it out.
Insight: 68% of consumers, when deciding where to make a purchase, are more likely to go with a business that offers convenient communication methods. Forrester
How-to: To convert more prospects into leads, offer multiple, low friction communication channels.
Example: Chat messaging is popular, convenient and real-time. To enable messaging via your GBP, enable the “Messages” tool within your business manager. Assign responsibility to a team member for chat monitoring and engagement. In the GBP settings, turn on notifications under settings > web notifications > customer messages.
2. Use the coordinated repost on Linkedin to boost reach with your team
We were wondering, what is the best way to leverage the Widewail team’s personal Linkedin networks to spread a message?
This works best: the commentary and creative should be posted directly through the brand page and each participating employee’s page independently.
Using the reshare function produced 8% of the total reach of the direct posting technique.
Our brand account currently has around 1,500 followers. Combined, our team has the potential to reach over 20,000.
For example:
Brand reach: 472
Team reach: 15,877
Sometimes (or if we’re honest, often) great marketing messages/ideas come straight from customers (your’s and your competitors).
3 places to find customer/prospect review content:
Look for these 3 things, and make a note:
Use these insights to tweak your website, product messaging, sales pitch, GMB descriptions, and refine your products and/or customer experience.
4. Use behavioral science to change any experience into a positive memoryIn behavioral science, there is a concept known as the “Peak-End Rule”, which states:
People judge an experience and make memories based on the emotional peak (positive or negative) and its end - not an averaging of every moment.
Tactic: make sure a shopper's final experience with your business is fun and positive.
For example, every component of Ikea’s in-store shopping experience is designed to encourage you to spend more. And because of this, they have a problem. The last memory a shopper has of their trip to Ikea is likely looking down at their receipt, realizing they spent a lot more than they planned on.
Ikea’s solution? Tasty treats. Coffee, hot dogs, pastries - all available at their cafe, located just after the registrar.
Using this trick shopper memories are transformed from:
Peak: finding the perfect bookcase
End: spending $700 instead of your budgeted $300
To
Peak: finding the perfect bookcase
End: “ummm lattteeeee”
As a result, the shopper is more likely to recommend Ikea to a friend.
5. Figure out your “category heuristic” to market to the massesAlso a behavioral science concept, category heuristics are shortcuts or rules of thumb that aid us in making a quick and satisfactory decision within a given category.
Relying on straightforward, accessible information makes it easier for the buyer to make an “informed-enough” decision.
Example: Focusing on how many megapixels a phone’s camera has vs. evaluating the quality of the photos taken by the camera. Image quality is nuanced and subjective. The megapixels spec is specific. For photography experts, more megapixels does not always mean better, but for the rest of us, the number is an easy reference point to identify quality.
How to use this in your messaging:
For your product, what vital piece of information helps clarify the product value?
Laptops: RAM
Diamond rings: carats
Phone: camera megapixels
Car: horsepower or cargo space
Phone network: data speed
TV: size, resolution
Mortgage: interest rate
6. All people look for the same four trails when determining trustworthinessTrust is very contextual, but we generally look for the same four traits:
Competence: is this person, company or product able to fulfill my need(s) effectively?
Reliability: responsiveness, promptness and consistency of behaviors over time.
Kindness: do they conduct themselves in a respectful way, handling a variety of situations with grace and patience.
Integrity: do the intentions and values of the company align with the individual?
Trust is very personal, and in an ideal scenario, we prefer to build trust one-to-one.
Around the time of globalization and the industrial revolution, building trust one-to-one became no longer scalable, leading to the concept of building trust through institutions.
In recent years, technology has created a middle ground, creating a scalable version of one-to-one trust-building. The combination of this new technology and failures in institutional trust has resulted in a shift.
Today, with help from technology, we build trust how people have always preferred to build trust, one-to-one.
Thanks for reading! Happy holidays from the Widewail team.
We have grown to a community of 2,780 local marketers this year. Cheers to a great first year and looking forward to 2022.
The time for rest and family is upon us, but the Widewail year-end holiday pricing is still around for the next 9 days. We're offering the 1st month free for all new product signups and 50% off + 1st month free on Invite Video.
See you in 2022 - Jake, Marketing @Widewail
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