Anticipation is Your Friend: The Art of
Teasing a Product or Service Before a Proper Launch
All of your print
marketing materials should be designed to evoke an emotional response. Most
of the time when you're marketing a product or service, your goal is to
convince people to spend money on what it is that you have to offer AFTER
the fact. This is time consuming and isn't always successful, especially in
a crowded sea of competitors. But what if there was a way for you to start
your print marketing momentum well in advance of the actual product or
service's release? What if there was a way to build so much momentum
leading up to that day that all of the hard work from a marketing
perspective had already been done for you?
Luckily, there is a way to accomplish all of this and more. By spending
your marketing dollars pre-emptively and teasing the launch of your product
or service well in advance, you can build the type of hype that will
continue to pay dividends for a lifetime.
The Most Efficient Marketing Engine on the Planet - Disney
Perhaps the most powerful marketing machine in existence belongs to The
Walt Disney Company - and this isn't just because they seem to have
unlimited financial resources at their disposal. Consider the masterful way
that they built anticipation for "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force
Awakens." Starting a full year out from the premiere of the movie, a
teaser trailer was released to build anticipation. Since that opening
salvo, we were bombarded with a steady stream of marketing content, from
tie-in comic books to a toy launch event that was treated as a national
holiday, and more. Anticipation for a new "Star Wars" film could
not have been higher going into its release, but what did all of that
marketing really tell us about the film itself?
The answer is "not much." People knew what it was called, knew
who was in it, knew it had the words "Star Wars" in the title and
very little else. So, why was the hype going into the release of the film
so massive if people actually knew next to nothing about it, let alone
whether or not it would be good? Because of the power of
"anticipation" in action.
Little By Little
When building anticipation for a product or service ahead of its release,
the key is to understand just how powerful saying very little can actually
be. You don't want a print marketing material to literally say "this
is what this does and this is why you want it." Doing so removes the
air of mystery from the proceedings, which is one of the key ingredients
when building anticipation. You need to focus on core images or small facts
that only hint at a much larger whole. You want people to say to themselves
"I NEED to know more about what this is," because at that point
you've got their attention. Once you have their attention, the actual
product or service itself can help make sure that you never let go.
Focus On the Problem, Not the Solution
Say you had a product or service that made it easier for stay-at-home moms
to get the kids off to school in the morning. If you wanted to build
anticipation in your print marketing materials, you might focus on that
particular problem above all else. The different waves of your campaign
would be devoted to essentially confirming what they already know -
"kids tend to not be cooperative in the morning, if only you had more
hours in a day, it's difficult to manage your own schedule and theirs at
the same time, etc." Then, you might tease with a bold statement like,
"We're about to change all that. Stay tuned for more
information," and continue to hit them with additional marketing
materials in the run-up to the actual launch.
Not only have you appealed to their sentiments and hinted at how you're
about to change their lives in an emotional way, but you've also begun to
build anticipation at the same time. The great thing about anticipation is
that it tends to snowball - if you can get a customer excited today, your
focus can then become on KEEPING them excited, which is significantly
easier and less time consuming than getting their attention in the first
place.
Anticipation is one of the single best assets that you have in your quest
to connect with your target audience in new and meaningful ways. If you can
play the "anticipation game" in the right way, you won't have to
worry about convincing people to engage with your product or service when
it launches. They'll come directly to you - they practically won't be able
to help themselves.
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