Do you still think that you do marketing for your company? Well, think hard.
We, the marketing fraternity, can talk about our great product or service all day, but self-promotion can't contest with the kind of credibility and authority that comes from consumer stories. Traditional marketing is in ICU and on life support. The rules of the game have changed. Today's consumer is independent, empowered, and their voice of reason increasingly affects the opinions and experiences of people like them. It allows heavy lifting of your brand that resonates and stick with your targeted group of consumers.
As a new age marketer, it's imperative that you are also a smart strategist and one who understands consumer's pulse better. The magic trick is to facilitate platform and provide opportunities. Be the enabler which would help your consumers express themselves. If you can make them fall in love with your brand, your consumers will spread the word, create content and grow your brand. But the question is, how do you make them fall in love with your brand or product?
At the onset, we should deprioritize targeting markets. While doing the segmentation exercise, we think about market size, age, gender, etc. We spend most of our time behind this. Maybe we should start targeting people. Understand their ecosystem, what triggers a response out of them, what kind of social interactions they prefer, what excites them, etc. Once we have successfully profiled our consumers, we can group them with similar characteristics under one category and begin our engagement. Thereby, kick-starting the community marketing program.
The beauty about building community is that it isn't just about the brand, but also people making connections with each other. Think about this. As a consumer, what are you most likely to do? Follow, like and comment on a particular individual's/brand's blog, or spend more time in a community, where you have like-minded people to discuss/debate on your favorite topics? If you choose to do the latter, you and I would soon become best of pals! But if you're not convinced, yet, read the below tale about a brand who is reaping benefits.
HBO definitely takes the iron throne with their social marketing for Game of Thrones (GoT), an original series of books authored by George R.R. Martin which, after becoming a televised series, has broken all viewership records and won numerous awards and accolades. So what made the show such a runaway success? Apart from the gritty story, action, voyeurism, dragons, Cersei's evil plans, John Snow's honesty and Tyrion's intelligence; it is also about how the excitement among fans is articulated across every strand of media. In fact, GoT episode ratings have started to rank as HBO's most watched show since 2007. Crunch this data. The Season 4 finale had a whooping 19 million cumulative viewers. Mind you, the number doesn't account for the real viewership as the episode was also the most illegally downloaded one across the world.
So how did HBO achieve this success? They managed to ride the the wave by getting fans involved in conversations, while also using creative campaigns to re-kindle the fire between the episodes in seasons. One of the show's most successful social efforts was the #RoastJoffrey. It was the first social media roast where fans, celebrities and even show's cast sent in taunts and jokes. In its first 48 hours, it collected more than 60,000 roasts, 1 million interactions and 850 million impressions. Time for slow clap.
There was also a 30-day countdown to the season 4 premiere called Beautiful Death, which featured many graphic illustrations representing a significant death from every episode, and also asked fans to submit their own artwork. Why death? Well one can argue that deaths in GoT are pretty important and central to the plot. They're shocking and gruesome, but also beautiful.
Recently during Red Nose Day, a campaign dedicated to alleviate condition for children and young people living in poverty by raising money, GoT casts got in touch with Coldplay and made a musical as part of the larger charity effort. It attracted over 8 million hits on youtube and was shared on various social media sites. The effort helped raise $21 million. Apart from being a smash hit ROI strategy, it also elevated the brand's character in the minds of its consumers. There you go, that's the way to make consumers fall in love. Here, take a look at it yourself.
HBO has channelized GoT fans' enthusiasm to fuel its marketing. They amplified the speculation and conversation that happened around the characters and always looked for ways to capitalize and reward fans. The GoT community even overshadowed the author's own blog. It is abundantly clear that communities are more endearing when the relationships are many-to-many. Communities will thrive because of consumers. And, as marketers, we should keep stoking the engagement fire.
Now, if you still prefer to follow, like and comment on a particular individual's/brand's blog over a community, no hard feelings. But do remember to share my blog post there.
Cheers!
We, the marketing fraternity, can talk about our great product or service all day, but self-promotion can't contest with the kind of credibility and authority that comes from consumer stories. Traditional marketing is in ICU and on life support. The rules of the game have changed. Today's consumer is independent, empowered, and their voice of reason increasingly affects the opinions and experiences of people like them. It allows heavy lifting of your brand that resonates and stick with your targeted group of consumers.
As a new age marketer, it's imperative that you are also a smart strategist and one who understands consumer's pulse better. The magic trick is to facilitate platform and provide opportunities. Be the enabler which would help your consumers express themselves. If you can make them fall in love with your brand, your consumers will spread the word, create content and grow your brand. But the question is, how do you make them fall in love with your brand or product?
At the onset, we should deprioritize targeting markets. While doing the segmentation exercise, we think about market size, age, gender, etc. We spend most of our time behind this. Maybe we should start targeting people. Understand their ecosystem, what triggers a response out of them, what kind of social interactions they prefer, what excites them, etc. Once we have successfully profiled our consumers, we can group them with similar characteristics under one category and begin our engagement. Thereby, kick-starting the community marketing program.
The beauty about building community is that it isn't just about the brand, but also people making connections with each other. Think about this. As a consumer, what are you most likely to do? Follow, like and comment on a particular individual's/brand's blog, or spend more time in a community, where you have like-minded people to discuss/debate on your favorite topics? If you choose to do the latter, you and I would soon become best of pals! But if you're not convinced, yet, read the below tale about a brand who is reaping benefits.
HBO definitely takes the iron throne with their social marketing for Game of Thrones (GoT), an original series of books authored by George R.R. Martin which, after becoming a televised series, has broken all viewership records and won numerous awards and accolades. So what made the show such a runaway success? Apart from the gritty story, action, voyeurism, dragons, Cersei's evil plans, John Snow's honesty and Tyrion's intelligence; it is also about how the excitement among fans is articulated across every strand of media. In fact, GoT episode ratings have started to rank as HBO's most watched show since 2007. Crunch this data. The Season 4 finale had a whooping 19 million cumulative viewers. Mind you, the number doesn't account for the real viewership as the episode was also the most illegally downloaded one across the world.
So how did HBO achieve this success? They managed to ride the the wave by getting fans involved in conversations, while also using creative campaigns to re-kindle the fire between the episodes in seasons. One of the show's most successful social efforts was the #RoastJoffrey. It was the first social media roast where fans, celebrities and even show's cast sent in taunts and jokes. In its first 48 hours, it collected more than 60,000 roasts, 1 million interactions and 850 million impressions. Time for slow clap.
There was also a 30-day countdown to the season 4 premiere called Beautiful Death, which featured many graphic illustrations representing a significant death from every episode, and also asked fans to submit their own artwork. Why death? Well one can argue that deaths in GoT are pretty important and central to the plot. They're shocking and gruesome, but also beautiful.
Recently during Red Nose Day, a campaign dedicated to alleviate condition for children and young people living in poverty by raising money, GoT casts got in touch with Coldplay and made a musical as part of the larger charity effort. It attracted over 8 million hits on youtube and was shared on various social media sites. The effort helped raise $21 million. Apart from being a smash hit ROI strategy, it also elevated the brand's character in the minds of its consumers. There you go, that's the way to make consumers fall in love. Here, take a look at it yourself.
HBO has channelized GoT fans' enthusiasm to fuel its marketing. They amplified the speculation and conversation that happened around the characters and always looked for ways to capitalize and reward fans. The GoT community even overshadowed the author's own blog. It is abundantly clear that communities are more endearing when the relationships are many-to-many. Communities will thrive because of consumers. And, as marketers, we should keep stoking the engagement fire.
Now, if you still prefer to follow, like and comment on a particular individual's/brand's blog over a community, no hard feelings. But do remember to share my blog post there.
Cheers!
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