The Ancient Secret to Not Letting AgTech Marketing Die Poolside
DON'T CAST YOUR COMPANY AS THE HERO; don’t fall in love with your own reflection.
In Greek mythology, there's a story about a man named Narcissus.
To make a long story short, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Refusing to eat or sleep because of his warped longing, he died staring at himself.
The moral of the story is clear; self-obsession leads to destruction. The tale of Narcissus should be a cautionary one for those of us leading modern brands…
DON'T CAST YOUR COMPANY AS THE HERO; don’t fall in love with your own reflection.
The State of the Marketplace
Researchers tell us that our customers spend about 40% of their conversation focused on themselves.
We ALL love to talk about ourselves. It is how we are wired. Call it narcissism, selfishness, whatever you want...the facts are the facts.
But if our customers are thinking about themselves that often, do they have space to absorb your constant barrage of self-promotion?
No.
They are interested in how you can help THEM achieve THEIR goals.
Our prospective customers see between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements every single day. They do not have time to absorb your self-promoting messages; they need more content focused on them.
As brands in a developing market, we are talking about ourselves WAY TOO MUCH and neglecting to focus our content on the audiences we exist to serve.
It is estimated that around 21 cents of every media dollar spent in 2019 was wasted based on poor message targeting. That's an awful lot of burned investor money…
The reality is that our targeting will continue to suffer, leading us to hemorrhage cash flow and investment if we insist on being the hero of our marketing messages.
Helping Your Customer's Build "Social Currency"
In his book, "Contagious," Jonah Berger explores why some ideas spread over others. He asserts that the brands who succeed in having their messages catch on most effectively are those who help customers build "social currency."
He identifies social currency as the fact that people naturally talk about things that make them look good rather than bad.
Stop talking about how great your brand is, ad fatigue has set in. Instead, talk about your customer, find out where they want to go and tell them how you can help them get there. Make it natural to inject your key messages into their self-promoting dialogue and build their social currency.
That is how you get your message to spread and - more importantly - how to avoid your brand dying alone, staring at its own reflection...
Make something different. Make people care. Make fans, not followers.
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