I was driving back from a meeting the other day, windows open and the polite British strains of Radio Two bubbling out of the Radio and on comes The Jeremy Vine show…
Now I LOVE the Jeremy Vine show. It both delights me and irritates the absolute hell of me in equal measures and on an almost simultaneous basis.
Sometimes I am sat there shouting at the radio, stunned that they have let a slow witted, muppet call in and share his pearl of nonsensical drivel on the airwaves and sometimes I am literally moist eyed with joy at a heartwarming tale of human goodness – it’s brilliant stuff.
And it is brilliant because it is engaging and by engaging I mean it gets me involved, being part of the show as a listener is not an emotionally passive experience. I can’t just ignore it.
And this is where the big lesson for us all comes in.
The ability to engage is CRUCIAL in your marketing – achieving engagement is what separates the most successful marketing campaigns and businesses out from the rest of the pack.
They pick their audience and they engage with THEM. And that link is important. For many years I was a Radio One man, the thought of listening in to people ‘discussing things’ on the radio was unentertainable.
Nowadays listening to Radio One sounds like listening to someone talking in hieroglyphics… I can now listen to Radio One without actually hearing it.
And this is why so much marketing doesn’t work – because it doesn’t engage, but where people have created content that engages it builds big audiences and it makes money.
All the most successful business are looking to create engagement rather than just tell people what they do. Think Gary V and his daily swearfest, or the unlikely duo of Insurance and Meerkats. It’s all driven by the desire to create a reaction, a thought, a feeling, an opinion, a like or a share.
So think about your own marketing, is it engaging? Does it have opinions in? Will people be moist eyed with joy or wrung with frustration?
(And just to be clear frustration is good – you don’t have to make them frustrated at you, it can/should be more about the problem you fix but you HAVE to make the FEEL something).
