[Issue 40] Content Campaigns
How to build cumulative results with your content.
[Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash]
The Idea: Treat your content like an old school advertising campaign. Each piece will build on the last, creating cumulative results: like bricks in a wall instead of sand in a sand castle.
Dive Deeper: As we’ll get into below, everything you create should be rooted in your unique point of view. What’s this, and how does it fit into the broader context of your business? You can dive deeper in this article:
The Problem: The Rule of 7 states that someone will need at least seven touchpoints before absorbing & acting on your message.
But creators have the habit of starting every piece of content from scratch. We buy into the idea that every piece needs to be a fresh take. But beyond all the problems with burnout, etcetera that staying on the content hamster wheel creates, this doesn’t benefit our audience.
At best, they associate us with a category of topics we create about. But that’s not enough to set us apart.
The Application: All of your content should be rooted in your unique point of view.
Your unique point of view is the angle or approach you take in whatever it is that you do that sets you apart.
(Credit to marketer Robert Rose for this language. Another way of describing it is Jay Acunzo’s “premise.”)
Ultimately, by sharing your unique point of view with the world, you are taking ownership of an idea. One that you can represent so well that people in your industry or niche can begin to associate it with you.
To do that, though, you need to communicate that idea, your perspective, over and over.
In old school advertising, there’s a mantra that says that “PR builds brands, advertising reminds people about them.”
In the golden age of advertising (from the 1960s through the late ’80s), the best consumer brands would develop a “Big Idea,” then all of their advertising for years would simply be different creative ways of expressing that idea.
Sticking with one campaign concept for multiple years in a row didn’t help the ad agencies at all, who made more money off of selling a new campaign every year. But the brands who didn’t give in and change things up every year saw cumulative results that built on themselves over time.
The ad agency I used to work for, who specialized in positioning strategy, had a word for the phase of finding different ways to creatively express the same core message: dramatization.
This idea isn’t completely foreign to us today:
When marketers create an automated email sequence designed to sell a product, every email in that series is communicating the same idea, just expressed in different ways. Emails might include:
Educational content
Testimonials
Personal stories
Product benefits
But they’re all based around selling this product.
In your content, each piece should be selling your idea, your unique point of view. When each piece ties back to your POV in some way, your content builds on itself. This makes all of your content more impactful, because you’re reinforcing the same message for your audience over and over.
P.S. - As an added bonus, this approach creates brand consistency, a proven revenue driver. In one study, one third of respondents attributed revenue growth of at least 20% just to brand consistency.