Will you marry me? What does marriage have to do with digital marketing?
How do we get potential customers to buy our products or services using digital marketing? Why don’t people purchase when they see your ad? What does the Mere Exposure Effect mean? And what does marriage have to do with it?
All good questions…Let’s start at the beginning…
As an agency, we meet many people with fantastic ideas, great products and unique services.
And many of the wonderful people we meet are interested in digital media because they believe it is the route to sell a lot of products, make a lot of money and become mega rich. They believe that when people see their products on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn that a potential customer will click on the ad, go their website and make an online purchase or an online booking. A sale will happen instantaneously. Sadly, this is not the case.
If you want one nugget from this blog, here it is:
Marketing is a long-term play. It is a series of light touchpoints along the consumer journey where trust and the need for your offering grow to the point where one is ready to engage in a transaction.
It’s just like getting married…. Imagine you are single and you decide to head off down to the local shopping centre. And imagine you get down on your hands and knees and propose to everyone you come across who you are attracted to. How many YES’S do you think you’d get? I would suggest you’d get knock back after knock back. Now let’s imagine you try it again, this time with a one-carat diamond ring. Again, NO THANK YOU, NO THANKS. I would suggest you’d still get knockbacks. Now, you may get a couple of takers with the lure of the diamond ring, but it would more than likely to be a very short and sharp relationship.
The way one gets married, we may meet someone in a bar, or get introduced by a friend (A referral), work colleague, a dating site etc. We may buy someone a drink, go on a first date, go out for coffee, perhaps the movies – we may be lucky enough to have a sleepover, go on a holiday, meet the parents – all light touchpoints along the way, until we get to the point where the question of marriage comes up and BANG, we get married.
Marketing is the same. We need to have trust. Trust isn’t built after one view of your product on Instagram. A consumer needs to be familiar with your brand. This is backed up by the psychological phenomenon ‘the MERE-EXPOSURE EFFECT’.
The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle. Source Wikipedia
The way you build trust and familiarity is to ensure your target demographic receives multiple touchpoints of your brand. They need to see your brand multiple times to build enough trust to even consider engaging with your brand.
A touch point could be a post on Facebook or Instagram. it could be a review, a recommendation or a sponsored ad. It could be an e-newsletter, a video on YouTube, a Google ad. All these touch points matter. We need to build up the relationship with the consumer just like we would when beginning the dating process.
A powerful tool we digital marketers have up our sleeve is RE-TARGETING. It is the ability to serve ads to those people who have engaged with our brand. This can exponentially increase the number of brand touch points over a relatively small period of time, speeding up the sales cycle. I’ll cover RE-TARGETING in a future blog as it deserves a whole page to itself.
In summary, marketing is a long-term play. We can’t expect to make a sale from one click on an ad or post. We need to have multiple touchpoints to build up enough trust and familiarity before the consumer will even consider engaging with your brand.
So get to it. Get those posts out, create the ads, do some YouTube videos, send the emails, create Instagram stories, create some events, get engagement using viral video…or chat with us at Digital Marketing Adelaide to see how we can help you increase your brand touchpoints.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Williamson is the Founder & Company Director of Digital Marketing Adelaide. He keeps busy doing what he enjoys most – talking. He has a passion for social media and all things digital marketing.
Matt is an internet entrepreneur, social media expert, multiple business owner and digital marketer who specialises in assisting businesses to generate more revenue via the power of online advertising and digital marketing. Matt regularly speaks at events as a keynote speaker focusing on digital marketing & social media.
View Matt’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewdjwilliamson
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