Coachella has recently come to an end after the annual event’s two weekend extravaganza, and there are some great marketing takeaways we all should be aware of. People fly across the world to attend one of the most expensive music festivals, the majority of the attendees being from the age of 18-25. The demographic is considerably young when comparing their average career journey and Coachella’s ticket price. This leaves many questioning why they empty their wallets for just one weekend and for this specific event?
Yes, the lineup is racked with high demand artists, but the main reason lies far beyond the performers and amenities. It is about the prestige that comes with the ability to experience Coachella. As we all know, the Fyre Festival was a complete bust but still managed to secure thousands of attendees and dollars before the event even existed. This was all because of the marketing strategy to focus primarily on creating an elite dream that would portray a better version of yourself as a concert-goer.
While this is just one example and we are not in any way promoting shallow characteristics, the idea of creating marketing approaches that centers around what the audience wants has been proven to be effective.
Here are some of the human-like marketing techniques that make you think about…well you.
SELL THE “WHY” OVER THE “WHAT”
When Steve Jobs debuted the IPod, everyone including professionals in technology were scratching their heads at first. At this point MP3 players were nothing new, as they’ve been around for a while. The biggest challenge for Apple was to sell a relatively similar product at a much higher price point. Many argued that there were, in fact, differences from the competing MP3s, and the major attribute was how Jobs marketed the IPod.
There was obvious improvements from cassettes, records, and cds that these brands boasted about as selling points. However, instead of marketing strategy like everyone else’s “1GB of storage on your MP3 player”, Jobs sold under the captivating statement “1,000 songs in your pocket”. The thought of that made it very intriguing and a better person in some sense if you owned an IPod.
“‘Here’s what our product can do’ and ‘Here’s what you can do with our product’ sound similar, but they are completely different approaches.” – Jason Fried
There is a significant difference between “features” and “benefits”. Features are what your product does or has. On the other hand, benefits are what importance the features hold or mean. Have you ever bought a product such as a camera that came with a four page user manual? Many of the times products have features that are never used or insignificant to the average user.
The bottom line, features are the “what” and benefits are the “why”. For great marketing, use the features to build a selling point that exemplifies what is beneficial to the user’s lifestyle.
THINK LIKE YOUR AUDIENCE
For our every actions is some sort of a social or emotional dimension. Professor Clayton Christensen highlighted a very interesting research analysis of the consumer behavior behind the integration of milkshakes in the fast-food industry. At first marketers narrowed down the specific demographic that purchased milkshakes. Then they invited a handful of those individuals to survey, questioning how the could improve the product – whether it be cheaper, smoother, more chocolaty. Surprisingly, the survey results had little to no effect on the sales.
The marketers went back with a different outlook, focusing on what items were purchased with a milkshake and what time of day. 40% of the buyers bought only a milkshake in the early morning. After questioning a few regarding their decision, it was discovered that most were on their way to work and wanted to enjoy a fulfilling treat that lasted a while. A milkshake was the best option due to the thickness and effort to finish within 30 minutes. Enhancing the milkshake did very little, but finding ways to reach more long commuters in the morning was a much more effective tactic.
They don’t want quarter-inch bits. They want quarter-inch holes.” – Theodore Levitt
To effectively sell a product you need to get inside the thought process and daily lives of your target audience. Someone is only thinking about buying quarter-inch bits when they are trying to make a quarter-inch holes. Much like the marketing research from the milkshakes, products hold more value when they offer solutions or better our everyday livelihood.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT
Similar to the milkshake research conducted above, many successful brands don’t stop at just one experiment. Consistently trying different approaches to draw more attraction to your brand and products requires a significant amount of effort but pays off when you finally get it right.
In 1957, Pepsi was challenged with an identity crisis, as it was being overshadowed by their competitor Coca Cola. It wasn’t necessarily because of the product but the brand’s lack of direction and indecisiveness. To save the brand, Pepsi hired young marketeer Alan Pottasch. With a rather daunting task to turn around a whole company, Pottasch made a bold decision “to stop talking about the product, and start talking about the user”. This was the birth of “The Pepsi Generation”.
“For us to name and claim a whole generation after our product was a rather courageous thing,” Pottasch would later remember, “that we weren’t sure would take off.” But his intuition would prove correct. “What you drank said something about who you were. We painted an image of our consumer as active, vital, and young at heart.” – Pepsi
Creating a community around the product increased the word of mouth organic growth and Pepsi become once again head to head with Coke. The risky move for the time period of 1960s was one of the first marketing efforts of its type to put the consumer before the product.
Today many brands are once again losing sight of their audience and focusing on getting their product seen. Social media has helped and hurt the visibility of brands. With the daily struggle to be noticed they are losing the perspective of how to successfully capture their audience at the same time. It’s not entirely about how many people see your Facebook ads. It’s about how many understand your product’s benefits, which will ultimately lead to more purchases.
There’s no doubt that influencers are a great tool for marketing. Their high following creates a sense of community and admiration. Even though we all know their lives may not be as glamorous as it’s portrayed on Instagram, we still buy into the products they advertise because we want a life of one of those jetsetters or city dwelling fashion novas.
“The brands who are winning are those who are telling their stories through adding actual value, particularly through image, video and Instagram stories.” – Bianca Bass, international marketing consultant.
Visualization is one of the most effective ways to sell a story or display the benefits of products to one’s life. Spott is a marketing SaaS platform that allows users to make any content interactive, enriched, and shoppable. The features within Spott’s technology is deliberate to make a difference in your consumers journey. By processing the content once, it becomes interactive across all platforms: your own websites, social media channels, third party websites, interactive video player platforms and even physical assets, such as paper magazines and boarding. The Spott.ai dashboard benchmarks performance of every unit of content on all platforms based on views, clicks and baskets.
Spott is one of the leading AI solutions that focuses on helping brands understand their consumers needs, wants, and intentions. Learn more about Spott HERE and feel free to get in touch with Rob Verschelden, Senior Sales Manager, to request a demo for your brand.
