Style is the best marketing

If you spend a lot of time watching TV shows like "American Idol" or "Project Runway", you'll find some regularity: The finalists are the ones who "know who they are". Winners have a point of view: using their own voice or costume design, to express ideas, emotions and the unique way to observe the world. With such a view as the basis, each competitor is telling a story and forming some kind of narrative way.

In short, it is to show your unique style. Style, it's not a arty thing, it's about how you describe your brand, the style used in all communication and release behaviors, and what you think is unique.

As Chow Plitz, a writer and content marketing advocate, says, "Before you really know your customers, you have to know who you are." If your organization is going to stand out in the marketplace, you need to build a unique, unique identity and create a sustainable, memorable brand. You need to create interesting content that can be shared through social channels, such as microblogs or social networking sites. In other words, you have to sound different from others. ”

Show style

Most companies intend to differentiate themselves by the basics, such as design, graphics, logos, logos, etc. It is sometimes difficult to think of content in hindsight.

For example, in graphics and web design, meaningless padding is usually used for placeholder text to show which words will be used. Since the actual vocabulary is usually added after all the other elements of the document or website (like fonts, typography, layout, and navigation) are arranged, the content is minimized. But that's a stupid thing to do.

John Simons in his book, "Us, me, them, and it: How to write powerfully in business," says a different style. The language you use, and the style you express, is a powerful way to build a unique identity, a way that no one else has used.

He insists companies must expand their traditional concept of corporate identity to include the language, text and style of expression used by the company. After all, the brand creation process involves differentiation. And the description of a brand, first is the text.

Generally speaking, the style that the company chooses is always bland, all companies are the same. If you want to interact with your audience, motivate them, or excite them, it is vital to adopt a unique, human-sounding expression, especially now, when your content is increasingly becoming a defining and indispensable mechanism for who you are.

In other words, your style of expression is your best supporter: It is the foundation of your relationship with the customer you want to create, along with all the other elements of your product, service, culture – brand.

Emma is an e-mail marketing company based in Tennessee State Nashville. On its homepage, the Web-based software, the company adopted a unique approach to achieve e-mail marketing and communication services.

The specific content is: "We believe that such software should be easy to use (Goodbye, messy interface). It should be made for you (Goodbye, generic template). And it should even be fun (goodbye, support phone)." It's all about the style of email marketing, which is why 20,000 of small and medium-sized enterprises, non-profit organizations and government agencies choose to use the company to improve their email briefings.

This way you will immediately have a crush on the company and will do business with it. You will have the feeling that a real person, a person with whom you need to speculator, is writing this homepage. You start to think that Emma is a company that is both fun and strange and can be trusted.

Of course, there are other elements that are playing a role: the content of the company, it sounds to me, is talking to real people, potential customers, and it sends out some information about what Emma can do for them, not just how good it is for the company.

For example, the home page does not show "Emma is a full-service email marketing agency located in Tennessee State Nashville." More than 20,000 organizations use their products and services to meet their e-mail marketing needs ... "They focus on the importance of style, thus grasping the essence."

More interesting

"You may sell to all customers, but remember that you are always talking to a specific person," said Harre Gottlieb, founder of internet company Jellyvision. ”

Does that sound like a euphemism for "talking"? It doesn't mean that. Instead, we are begging you to create something like this: it sounds like a person, not a department of the company, that created it. How to do it?

In the company, it's easier to say that you tend to use the same boring vocabulary that everyone would say. However, if you are a little more relaxed, your closeness will be greatly enhanced (and will bring more interaction). "What worries me more is that I can annoy customers, not be able to shock them," says Gottlieb of Jellyvision. ”

We can think of a few industries where the tone should be tempered in business communication, such as selling coffins to people who have just lost their loved ones, or selling weapons to the Ministry of Defence. But unless you are engaged in one of those business (or a few other businesses), your point of view should contain some interesting elements. In addition, you should be happy to do these things. If you're unhappy with creating content, you're creating the wrong content.

Creating content with personality in an interesting sense does not mean you can't sell something very serious, or something that might be considered annoying. Take a look at Eloqua, a marketing software company in Virginia State, Vienna.

Eloqua created the "The Conversation." As an interactive sales tool, specifically for companies that want to learn how to do online marketing more effectively.

"The conversation" makes Eloqua.com's visitors a predetermined, motivated leader. If that content sounds boring, you certainly haven't seen the video. In this video, Eloqua is introducing its mainstream products to its potential customers, and the way it is described is humorous, relaxed and interactive.

The visitor in the video said she was in the marketing business and said first: "OK, so I obviously can't tease you with any kind of traditional marketing approach, so let me be honest." "Video Tools guide people through a smart, interesting interactive question and answer session, allowing customers to experience two-way interaction, rather than a one-way sermon."

Remain sincere

A few years ago, De Hamis Shaha, founder of internet marketing company HubSpot, made it clear in his blog on entrepreneurship that sticking to principles could bring trouble to business leaders. He was talking about a video produced by HubSpot, which made his CEO Blaine Harrigan overnight.

In creating this video, they faced the choice of whether to really advocate for companies abandoning old-fashioned telemarketing methods and turning to geek methods. They think that is unrealistic. "If we ask people to do that, it's a stick that knocks over a boat, we may lose a lot of potential customers who are not serious about us, and we may lose a large number of potential customers who think we are incompetent marketers." "In fact, they have over 5,000 subscribers, most of them marketers, and most people may be engaged in some kind of telemarketing."

Of course, HubSpot is also criticized. But Maik Volpe, vice president of marketing at the site, says this is a manageable risk. He thinks that if you try to please everyone, you will end up being insipid and no one is talking about you. "Sometimes, we even denounce those who oppose our views in the comments." However, in order to uphold its position, we still encourage dialogue. ”

In other words, as long as your style is sincere, don't be afraid of people's polarized view of you. Your content is created by a real person or someone who has the qualities that make the content fascinating to you. By doing this, you have laid a solid foundation for the establishment of your relationship with your audience. Remember, you should not force your style not to fit your personality, but to nurture a style that best represents you, your company, and your goals, so that you can resonate with your target audience.

In this new era of the Internet, as John Janes, the author of the recommendation engine, says: "You don't always want to be fashionable, just grab the essence of a product or service." Honesty can be an honest benefit because you can usually do a good job. Do what the target market wants you to do, and always stick to it. ”

This article source: it time weekly