Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. Today I would like to talk to you about cause and effect in marketing. Often it’s the case that I find people online looking for an effect without first having. Or thinking about the cause.
If we take social as an example. The effect most people want is a large following or audience, so what would the cause be? In many of my previous videos I have talked about differentiation which may be one. But there are many causes you could choose in order to produce the effect of a large following. One might be controversy, another expertise, fame, frequency of posts, being interesting, valuable or entertaining to a user. A combination of lots of those things may create more exposure than doing just one of them.
I would encourage whenever you are seeking an effect in marketing. Or maybe even in business, think about what cause would produce that effect.
If we take it to SEO for a moment. Most want the effect of being top of Google. But aren’t willing to do anything or provide the cause which produces that effect. Imagine you are Google for a moment and pick a keyword that is relevant to your business. Google wants the best possible experience for their users. So what page would they want top of their index for your chosen keyword? The answer is the best most relevant page on the internet for that keyword. So when you think about SEO or ranking your site for a particular term. Ask the question, is it the best page on the Internet for that keyword? If not, give Google a cause which produces your desired effect. I am aware that Google isn’t perfect in its ability to pick the best pages. But if you aren’t top and want to be, you could attempt manipulation. Or you could choose cause and effect which in my opinion is the best long term strategy.
You can also take this principle to increasing conversions on a landing page if we take this example to PPC. The effect being lots or more conversions on your landing pages. What would the cause be?
Is it likely that a bog standard landing page is going to produce lots of conversions for you? By bog standard I mean “this is what we do and here is a form”.
It may be the case that you get some conversions that way, but what would a better cause be? A good principle to follow when answering this question is, is it easily reproducible? If it is, it’s likely it will be. If it’s not easy to reproduce, that’s your cause which produces the effect you want.
An example is…
A high quality video on the landing page. Where you show the process of how your product is made, or service is delivered. How many other businesses are going through the effort of producing something like that?
Another example might be something highly valuable to give away in exchange for their details. Most have heard the principle of giving away a PDF for example. But if you wanted the most number of conversions possible. Would you do a PDF or would you do something much more valuable than that. Maybe a PDF, an audio book, a video series and a personalised strategy call. What genuine prospect could say no?
An E-Commerce example might be what is included in the purchase. How much information on the product is present on the product page. Is it one image with a short description? Or is it multiple high quality images with video and a description which would be written as if there weren’t any images. Or video to look at?
As usual, you would test the effectiveness of offering different give-aways. And choose the one which gets you the best response. But thinking in this way is the opposite of quick tips or hacks. Which is what seems to be what people are looking for online at the moment. Also the content which is produced.
The hack for this and hack for that philosophy is easy to reproduce by anyone. Whilst I do believe in being efficient, I am opposed to anything which promises a desirable effect without first providing a cause which is not easy to reproduce.