Even though it has been a while since the last episode of Mad Men has aired, you can still take some jewels of advice from the series and apply it to your everyday marketing efforts. As marketers, we can see how much advertising has evolved over the years and into the techniques we are using today like inbound marketing.
The Peggy Olsons and Don Drapers of the 60's didn't know about inbound marketing, and yet many of their ideas and techniques mirror that and some are still being used today. Using some of the best quotes from the show, we can see how many of the lessons Mad Men had can be put to work.
Practice Social Media
If there was any quote in the series that shows how advertising is a journey, it's this one. Advertisements used to be about talking to buyers -- through tv, radio, billboards, and newspapers. The buyers didn't get any voice in the process and instead only had the option of voting with their wallets.
However today consumers can be quite vocal. With Social media, we can know what is being said about brands, products, services, and even the staff of the companies we love. Marketers and Companies have to be quick to react to consumers in order to prevent a negative press firestorm from starting. Social media has become the place to tell all kinds of stories, what story is your customer telling.
If you don't like what they're saying, then change the conversation.
Emotional Intelligence Matters
Emotions can run the entire gamut, from happiness, fear, sadness, pride, and nostalgia. How will your brand be able to leverage these emotions unless you embrace and understand them? Being able to redirect someone from Fear or Sadness into a state of happiness or nostalgia will become critical as you work on developing your inbound marketing campaign.
You can create very powerful desires to purchase by playing to your customers' emotions. This can be more effective than focusing on pain points all day and you should balance your strategy between the two.
Advertising is based on one thing: happiness.
Reduce the pain
By providing products that can meet a need, and provide answers that solve your customers' problems you can make your brand an invaluable part of your customers daily life. This is key to building a long-term customer who has brand loyalty When looking to create content for your buyers, you should keep in mind all of those needs that your buyers will have when they purchase your product or service. Questions, Concerns, Troubles using your product or service should all be addressed and you should continually investigate where those pain points are at in order to properly address them.
I’m in charge of thinking of things before people know they need them.
Research Your Niche
You need to spend time and research your Niche. Knowing this along with your buyer persona can allow you to fine-tune your message closer to what that market is really looking for which will result in higher traffic, more leads, and ultimately more targeted sales.
That’s not a strategy. That’s two strategies connected by the word ‘and’.