Unlike the words of great recorded songs, marketing is not set in stone. It moves, winds through grooves, and the things that saw you winning today; tomorrow, they might make you lose. To make sure your marketing campaign is geared for success you need to keep looking at ways to improve it, and that means keeping your learning hat on for the long-term.
Below I give you six songs, their lyrics, and the marketing lessons you can learn from them. Read, listen, watch, enjoy, and learn — and then put these principles into practice.
“Words are all I have, to take your heart away”
‘Words’, by Bee Gees
You’ve heard it a million, make that a zillion times before. But while words aren’t all you have to take your reader’s hearts away, they are the foundation of your content marketing strategy.
The words you use in your marketing need to incorporate the language that your target audience are using. You can use keyword tools to find out what words your readers are using, and the following three are excellent examples:
Words also mean content.
When creating your content, you need to remember your target audience are seeking answers to questions, and solutions to their problems when they read your content – some of which they might not even know they have.
Your content must demonstrate to your audience that you are providing these solutions and answers, and in doing so show how your brand is able to enhance their lives.
As the Gibb brothers, Barry, Robin, and Maurice sing:
“Talk, in everlasting words
And dedicate them all, to me
And I will give you all my life”
Apply this principle when creating the content for your marketing campaigns and your words will live on past the close of your campaign.
“I'm a believer, not a trace of doubt in my mind”
‘I’m A Believer’, by The Monkees
Many marketing campaigns fail to hit the mark because of their liberal use of the truth.
Some of your audience will understand that your campaign is designed to connect with their wallet. However, they will all know if your campaign is making claims that it can’t back up, or, worse still, that is just downright bullshit.
Your audience has to believe what you are saying about your brand, if they don’t then they won’t make the connection with your campaign.
So make sure your campaign tells it as it is, because if you leave your audience feeling like this:
“When I wanted sunshine
I got rain”
Your campaign is destined to fail.
“We are family, get up everybody and sing”
‘We Are Family’, by Sister Sledge
You don’t just want your audience to be buyers, even believers, of your brand. You want them to be part of your brand family.
Why? Because families stick with each other, they look after each other, and families value each other higher than all else.
You want your marketing campaign to connect with your audience in a way that makes them family members, because if you do, then you can make them into customers for life.
As the Sledge sisters say:
“We are family
I got all my sisters with me”
‘In Motion’, by Trent Reznor
What, no words? No. Here the words come from your audience.
What Trent Reznor’s track, In Motion, lacks in vocab, it makes up for in message – it features on the soundtrack to David Fincher’s, The Social Network, which takes the founding of Facebook as its topic.
Social media is crucial for your marketing campaign and the lesson you can learn from Mr Reznor, is that you want your audience to be the ones who are doing the talking.
That is not to say that you should be silent. Far from it. As Reznor does through his moody synth, you need to engage with your audience and leave them needing to shout about your brand – for his synth, you can read the interactions you make via your social media outlets.
There are plenty of ways that you can engage with your audience via your social media accounts:
- You can share videos – Facebook users watch more than 100 million hours of videos a day
- You should respond to all of the comments your audience make – this allows you to show your users that you appreciate them
- You can create quizzes for your followers – they are fun, interactive and easier to create than you may think
- You could guest post on blogs run by your audience – this lets you give your audience more information about your brand, and gives you the opportunity to create backlinks to your company (why not improve your SEO while you’re running your marketing campaign?)
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg for the tactics you can employ to make the most out of your social media channels. They may or not be suitable for your audience.
So, before you decide how you are going to engage with and your audience, get to know and understand them and work out how they would like you to interact with them.
You can do this by utilising the data that your social media accounts have available. Both Twitter and Facebook have analytics sections to them; integrate the data on your social media accounts and work out what your audience like, when they like it, and how often they like it.
If you can get the audience of your social network liking, commenting, sharing with, and tweeting about your brand, then they will influence their followers and the people they already know, making your audience another arm of your marketing campaign.
“Saying: ‘It's gonna be alright’”
‘Shake It Off’, by Taylor Swift
She might be light on her feet, but the message Taylor is conveying in this song is that she’s gonna do what she does regardless of what her critics say.
You need to adopt the same approach for your marketing campaign.
This is not to say that you should be hard-headed, and unwilling to consider the views other people have about your campaign.
What it means is that if you believe what you are doing is right and can rationalise it, then you should press on – it’s the tactic that Steve Jobs employed for Apple, and they haven’t fared too badly.
So, in the words of Ms Swift:
“The haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off.”
“But these things take time”
‘These Things Take Time’, by The Smiths
Last, but not least, it’s this little ditty from Morrissey’s merry bunch. And why pray tell, should “these things take time?” Here’s why.
You need to plan your campaign and that’s something you don’t want to rush. When planning it out there are a huge number of things for you to consider, including:
What you want to achieve with your campaign:
- Do you want to increase awareness of your brand?
- Are you marketing a specific product?
- Are you hoping to move into a new market?
Who you are targeting:
- Are you going after existing customers?
- Will you be focusing on new customers?
- Are you staying within your geographical region?
How you are targeting your audience:
- Through email?
- Through social media?
- Through direct marketing?
So much goes into getting your marketing campaign right and when thinking about the direction you want yours to take, it may benefit you to look at other successful campaigns and see what lessons you can take from them.
The important thing to remember is that rushing into things could leave you with a campaign that runs flat.
Take the time to know exactly what you want from your campaign, who you want it from, and how you get it from them. If you do that, then when it comes to delivery you will leave your audience feeling like Morrissey, namely that:
“You gave me something that I won't forget too soon.”
Marketing is an ever developing, evolving, and revolving discipline. No one will ever have all the answers and those who claim they do will shortly be (if they haven’t already been) overtaken by their peers who continue to learn how to improve their campaigns.
By learning the lessons dished out by these six songs, you’ll give yourself every chance of having a successful marketing campaign. Just don’t forget that everything changes and tomorrow there could be a whole new raft of lessons for you to learn.
Guest Blogger: Victoria Greene is a freelance writer and branding consultant . On her blog, VictoriaEcommerce, she shares tips on ecommerce, digital marketing, and how writers can hone their craft. She is a passionate about using her experience to help businesses improve their online marketing strategies.
