People want a different digital marketing experience in a post-COVID-19 world.
What we discovered during our “work-from-home” quarantine is that customers and clients have adjusted and are now accustomed to virtual connections. They have come to expect it, and sometimes even demand it, moving forward.
We need to accept that people want authenticity in their marketing. The content we generate must be real and interactive. Your customers and clients want to feel a sense of community and are eager to be entertained.
We need to let go of what most communication was like in the past. It’s behind us now. Storytelling with human experiences can help audiences resonate with the new, real world:
- Speak and write human – We have the opportunity to change the way that we talk to each other. The tone should be much less “voice of God” and more human perspective. “Hey, it’s me and I want to talk about how content is changing…” Use that voice.
- Embrace conversation, not promotion – Share real stories and experiences with one another. Move away from fancy HTML to plain text in your emails. Create conversations that invite people to download content instead of simply sending them there.
- Be a storyteller – We’ve made this an even bigger point of emphasis in the past year and continue to do so. Bring your customers’ stories to life, especially with what they face in their industry right now. Storytelling is the way to show how we successfully move through COVID-19. See my blog, In Times Like These, Tell Me a Story.
- Don’t use empathy as a tool – Even with states reopening, people have been and are still dealing with incredible hardships. However, some of the content out there is manufacturing empathy for the wrong reason. That rings hollow and turns people off.
It’s acceptable now to break free from traditional marketing formats. This is our moment to bend the rules. What other time in our professional lives has allowed us so much opportunity to try something new and see what sticks?
Have you applied any of these tactics to your content marketing in recent weeks? If so, let us know how it’s working for you.
