Producing Creative Experiences: Making content that resonates with your audience.
A creative experience happens when an audience member relates to a piece of content so well that they feel it was written just for them. It’s that feeling you get when you read something and it almost inspires you with how spot on it was. It provokes action. They stop in their tracks and think, “Wow, this was really made for me.” It is the most potent driving force behind decision making. Any brand that understands the importance of taking the time to produce work this valuable is a brand that will be unstoppable.
Let me first start off by saying this is no easy task. The depth of understanding you must have for your audience is that of your back hand. You must understand their fears, their motivations, their passions, their sources of joy. You must understand what drives them to make the choices they make. Not the external benefits of their choices, but the internal. Anyone can say their audience prefers their brand because it is cost effective, affordable, or of good quality. But few brands can pinpoint the emotional attachment a customer has (or could have) with their brand. The brands that achieve this, are the brands whose sky’s the limit.
A great first step to finding out what motivates your audience to act is by distributing a survey. You will have to ask the right questions, keep it short, and get to the core of the customer’s decision process. Asking the customer why they made a certain purchase is the best way to get right to the point. Now, most customers don’t actively think of the deep, internal reason they buy the things they buy, so you will have to ask why a few times to get to the real root of their decision. You may also have to provide an incentive for customers to complete the survey, such as a small discount or coupon. Lastly, remember to make every question open-ended to provoke more detailed responses (“Tell me about a time when…”).
After you receive a good amount of responses (I would say 50 - 100), you must analyze your results. Identify a common core factor every customer shares. Make connections between things pointed out in their responses and your product. These connections should be focused on benefits (emotional and functional) that your product provides and how they meet their needs. Always remember, focus on the benefit and follow it up with a supporting product feature. You will also want to take special note of things pointed out in negative survey responses. These provide you with insights you would have otherwise probably never known about. These insights can help you improve your product or even identify new benefits to connect your product with a larger audience. While research can be time consuming and perhaps expensive, never leave out this part of the process. If done correctly, research will benefit your marketing greatly and make it exponentially more effective.
The next key to resonating with your audience is creating content that illustrates your depth of understanding for their needs and interests. Understand your audience better than anyone else. Speak to their problems, their fears, and their doubts. Speak to them as you would in a normal conversation. Avoid being predictable, and don’t say anything you’ve heard in every-other-ad-ever. Talk to them as a friend. Be short, to the point, and provide support for any claims. This doesn’t have to be done in a sales-pitch type of way - in fact, it shouldn’t. Without being clever to the point of cliche, be clever enough to illustrate your product benefits seamlessly to their needs. Provide a new perspective to your product, if you can. Avoid superlative writing such as “best, fastest, and most reliable.” There are very few circumstances when you should use these terms.
As with anything else, this skill will develop with time and practice. Your ads won’t be perfect the first time, or the second time, or the third time. Writing comes with experience and the ability to connect with others through words on a page. It’s all about feeling - now more than ever. How does your brand or product make the user feel? How can you relate to their interests and pique their curiosity? These questions may seem redundant and basic, but finding ways to answer them will be the key to your content’s success.
