(sales x marketing) to the power of technology = extraordinary results

Create Leverage and Engage Your Leads

By Kim Albee

Getting valuable content to your target market is important.  It helps you build relationship and regard.  But putting together compelling content takes more than just providing information to your leads.  It’s also taking into account and triggering four Key Engagers.

I ran across this idea while reading a book I picked up years ago, called “The Power To Get In” by Michael A. Boylan.  It’s a book about access.  Gaining access to those leads and prospects that are important to your sales efforts – and getting right to the decision makers.  While designed for Sales folks, the ideas in the book translate into the Internet marketing age and can be used when putting together your content and approach for reaching your target audience.

The idea is to develop a content strategy that builds leverage with your leads.  If you think about the types of people that make up your target audience, and think about the four Key Engagers, as you construct your personas, you can create a more compelling content strategy.

So what are the four Key Engagers?

1. Fear of loss.  Think about it, when we were kids, we’d mis-behave and only stop and straighten up when the adults around us threatened us in one way or another.  As human beings, we pay attention when we think we could lose something important to us.   
2. Curious Insecurities.  Everyone wants to get ahead.  We pay attention to who’s up, down, ahead, behind, etc.   We’re concerned that someone will pass us by; that we’ll get left in the dust.  We look out for number one.  That is true of each of your leads as well.  Everyone is curious to know where they stand and how we or our organizations compare with others.  
3. Competitiveness.  Our society is extremely competitive – just think about it – with our jobs, schooling, homes, and in social environments, whatever the flavor of it, we “compete” with our peers.  If anything, this has become more pronounced in recent years, not less.  Most people want to be better at their jobs, or be rewarded or recognized for their contribution.  
4. Strong Desire to be a Serious Player.  Many of your leads have a strong desire to be connected, to be in the loop or in the know.  It allows them to feel they are important and have something to contribute.  They want to be viewed as a major player.  Someone who’s approval or knowledge is important if not critical to whatever is happening.  When they sense this could “go away”, they will immediately scramble to catch up.

Understanding these aspects of your target market can allow you to build content that engages your leads at their core.  After all, it’s about gaining access and trust with your leads in a way that affords your organization a shot at winning their business.

Agitation Can Make The Difference In Your Messaging

By Kim Albee

I recently listened to an interview between Perry Marshall, a marketing expert that I follow and Joshua Russell a Professor of Screenwriting and Film Aesthetics at DePaul University. It was a fun and interesting conversation where they explored the power of stories from both a screenwriter's and marketer's perspective.  While there was far too much to cover in a single email, there is an essential idea that made an impact on me that I'll share with you.

A well told story will captivate and control the audience.  As Joshua Russell said, "It will take people to a place that is beneficial." What's beneficial of course, being determined by the story teller.  As marketers, our job is weaving a story compelling enough that our audience can't leave in the middle.  Given the multi-tasking nature of people today, it can be challenging to cut through the clutter that is clamoring  for their attention.

So how do we hold their attention and keep them interested?  As we read, our perception is constantly changing and being revised as we work through the material we're reading.

Paying attention to critical points of perception can help when we are constructing our stories.

When telling a story, there are three essential steps:

1.  Establish a subject.
2.  Introduce conflict with the idea of the subject (revising our understanding).
3.  Come to a new understanding (i.e. new subject).

Said another way:

1.  Introduce a Problem.
2.  Agitate the itch of the problem.  identify with it.
3.  Offer possible solutions to the problem.

If we skip step #2 and go right to #3, we aren't allowing our audience to naturally progress and follow the story.  By including step #2, we are allowing the audience's perception to identify with the problem for THEMSELVES, and naturally evolve THEIR perception of the need, so when they reach #3, they're saying "Yes!" in their head.  That is what defines engaging content.  If we skip step #2, and jump right to step #3, we will be forcing our point of view on our audience, which creates conflict, not engagement.

As Perry said, people can have problems for years and do nothing about it.  But when it gets to a boiling point, then we'll change.  As the stakes of the problem get higher and higher, it starts to look easier to change than to stay the course.

Agitation is the glue that connects the problem with the solution. 
How well are you agitating?