5 minute read
SALES AND MARKETING
Tik Tok! Time is short
In today’s marketing world, you simply must have a strong social media presence. Paul Watkins explains why and how.
BY PAUL WATKINS
We now have an attention span less than that of a goldfish.
Recently tested (no idea how): a goldfish has an attention span of eight seconds, whereas for humans it’s only six!
This means, quite simply, that your marketing message must be on-point. It must be short, concise, and very clear in intention. If not, expect to lose out to competitors.
In recent times, the single most annoying, distracting and yet significant game-changer in marketing is the social media platform Tik Tok: annoying in that it consumes a lot of time - and you’ll rarely see anything on it that you consider of any value to your life - but it works.
So why has Tik Tok been a gamechanger? Firstly, the meteoric rise of the platform.
From humble beginnings in 2017, it now has 1.5 billion users and an advertising revenue of NZ$2.8 billion. But its impact extends well beyond the platform.
You will no doubt have noticed similarformat, vertical, short-form videos on Facebook and Instagram.
These are called ‘reels’: Meta’s answer to the Tik Tok phenomenon (Meta is the company which owns Facebook and Instagram).
YouTube has got in on the act too, with what they call ‘shorts”.
Fit the phone
One reason for the massive rise of TikTok is that the short-form vertical video is designed to fit the screen of a cell phone. Eighty per cent of social media and 56% of all Google searches are now made on a phone.
The first lesson here, therefore, is that you must optimise all of your marketing to look good, and to be easily accessed, on a cell phone.
This includes your social media ads, YouTube videos, website, and any videos embedded on your website.
The second lesson for today is to look at making some ‘reels’.
Reels are low production value: literally just hold your cell phone in your face, or put it on a tripod, and talk for up to 30 seconds.
What do you say? You give genuine value to viewers on how mortgages work, what to consider before re-fixing, what interest rates may do in the future, how to prepare your finances for your first home, how to finance an investment property, and so on.
You won’t run out of ideas. Just think of the questions you are asked every day.
The key is to make reels informative and not look like ads. Give tips, hints, thoughts, ideas, and methods.
Do not sell your services. You need to be seen as a credible expert in your field. This will prompt customers to call you.
Practice makes perfect
Are you comfortable on video? If not, practise, practise, practise.
It may pay to engage a ‘director’: someone to hold the phone and tell you which takes are good. You don’t need a professional video director, just someone who understands social media.
Don’t lapse into jargon, talk too fast or too slow - and edit clips afterwards with text overlays for maximum impact.
You should make a lot of these, 10-20 at a time, and post two a week.
That might sound a lot, but once on a roll you’ll be able to keep going. And you can make 10 variations on a single theme or topic and run them at intervals amongst those on other themes.
Next, load them to Facebook and Instagram and run them as paid ads.
Their impact will be considerably greater than regular-format social media ads.
Social media is the gorilla
Allow me to drive home what I’m saying: you simply must have a very strong social media presence.
Social media is still the 90-pound gorilla when it comes to media consumption.
Traditional media such as linear television (programmes running one after the other) is fast being replaced by streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon’s Prime.
Radio is still listened to, but suffers from ‘repetitive blindness’. That is, if you hear the same ad 10 times, you become oblivious to it.
Then there is press, which is now consumed mostly online, through Stuff. co.nz and NZHerald.co.nz, and by a more discerning but smaller audience. Magazines can still have value as they are target-market or theme specific.
If you still see value in any of the traditional media outlets then keep going, but you must add social media to the list.
As I have said many times, social media is not expensive. Ten dollars a day can be a good budget.
But it can be very labour intensive, so be sure you can maintain it through a dedicated team member or, better still, outsource it. Doing so is not expensive.
Fight against AI advisers
This leads to another change in the marketplace for which you need a defence strategy.
As we speak, systems for fullyautomated, AI mortgage-adviser practices are being hatched.
These artificial-intelligence ‘advisers’ will be focused on refixing mortgages, given the qualification work to get the first mortgage is already done.
When, not if, AI practices emerge, what can you do against them? There are two answers to this.
First, be seen as human. That’s why videos of your face work so well.
People enjoy seeing whom they will talk to before meeting in real life.
This is why so many people ‘stalk’ others on social media and LinkedIn: to see who they are. I’m sure many of you do this, too.
Second, create doubt in prospects’ minds. If you want more re-fixing clients, then your message should be something like, “The serious mistakes so many make when refixing their mortgages”.
Advertising works by playing on people’s fears. But be careful to not overstate it.
Highly specific ads
We are currently in a state of accelerating change when it comes to media consumption and advertising. Specific, on-topic messages are now far more critical than they have ever been. Brand awareness ads - “here I am, pick me” - are a total waste of time. You must now be very, very specific in terms of who the message is intended for, so it’s far better to run 20 ads aimed at 20 highly specific segments than one aimed at everyone. The latter will no longer work.
Type into YouTube, ‘How to make and post advertising reels to Facebook and Instagram’ to work out how to create these kinds of ads. Then, either make and run a bunch of them or engage a dedicated outsider to do so for you.
Tik Tok, people. Time is short! Attention spans are shrinking, advertising messages need to be brief, and the world has moved on.
What used to work is what will put you out of business. ✚
Paul Watkins is a marketing adviser to the financial services industry.
