The psychology behind content marketing

As everyone says, content is king. But increasingly, Asia Pacific marketers are putting into practice what they preach.According to recently released results from an annual Adobe study, the APAC Digital Marketing Performance Dashboard, nearly 75% of APAC marketers said their priority this year was strengthening their digital marketing content strategy, compared to a mere 36% in 2012. This sea change is an indication of two undeniable facts – that Asia Pacific audiences want to be engaged with compelling content and that marketers are finally doing something about it!As marketers continue to push through with their efforts to engage audiences with content, how else can they optimise their content marketing strategy? Psychology holds the answer to this.The science behind content marketing The human brain is designed to filter the barrage of sensation and selectively focus on what’s important. The part of the brain that regulates attention is called the reticular activating system (RAS), and it is activated by four main triggers:Novelty: You respond to what is new and unique in your environment.Physical need: When you are hungry and waiting for your order at a restaurant, you watch every tray that passes by.Self-made choice: When you know there is a Christmas sale at your favourite boutique, you consciously make the decision to skip lunch and join the crowd instead.Personalisation: Your own name will always sound special to you.To open doors and keep them open, a marketer must act like an old-fashioned door-to-door salesperson. The door-to-door salesperson gives the RAS all the right signals to gain prospects’ attention – he must deliver personalised, informative and entertaining content to the individual; otherwise he risks having a door slammed in his face or worse, insults about being a colossal waste of time.Three ways to hold the attention of that hard-to-impress audience1. Be UniqueAppeal to the brain’s search for novelty. Social media scientist Dan Zarrella found that re-tweets tend to contain less common words than normal Tweets. That means uncommon tweets catch and hold a person’s interest long enough for that person to follow through with a retweet. This is the same reason journalists scramble to break a story. Being the first can bring a huge boost in readership. If a brand can’t be the first to write about a topic, give it a fresh spin or take a bold or even dissenting stance.2. Be MagneticLearn the prospect’s name and use it. When audiences hear their name repeated by another human, they are drawn in. But that’s just a first step. From there, content must have personality and perspective, or context. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the kinds of content audiences crave include those that make them cry, remind them they are one of a kind and that life is short.Magnetic content touches deep, human emotions and resonates with the audience’s core desires and beliefs. Whatever the brand, it needs to weave a universal story that connects with the hearts of the audience, not just their heads. Push it from ordinary to visionary—it is the difference between showing an avid marathoner a recommendation for running shoes, and showing that same marathoner an excerpt from Haruki Murakami’s running memoir, a downloadable mp3 running mix, the latest speed training technique, and a recommendation for running shoes.3. Be ValuableHolding attention is about putting value in the content. What do visitors get in exchange for their time? It might be knowledge and expertise, humour and escape, a sense of community and identity, or exclusive offers and discounts. When a brand opens a conversation that puts the prospects’ interests ahead of its own, they will lower their guard and willingly give the brand more attention.Becoming the chosen oneOne amazing part of the RAS is the element of self-made choice. Audiences have power over their attention spans and how they direct their focus. Instead of fearing the individual’s power to choose, become the brand that is most worthy of attention.Brands like Philips and Audi Motors have all effectively harnessed content strategy to make their audiences choose them – Philips focused on provided rich and dynamic content across its marketing channels and achieved a 100% increase in visitor time spent on its male grooming websites while Audi Motors did the same to help audiences enjoy a consistent brand experience on any of its websites worldwide. This accounted for 97% of sales volume.Ultimately the key to creating compelling content lies in personalisation. The ability to offer a deeply delightful and personalised experience to an audience in turn stems from connecting data to content. APAC marketers, especially those in Singapore and Australia are slowly but surely realising the high potential of big data, and using it to help them build key relationships with their audience. Great Eastern Life offers a great testament to that – the company’s goal is to deliver personalised and highly relevant online experiences to their customers based on better and deeply insight on their expectations.Remember, the audience is a group of complex and often brilliant people who juggle competing needs and desires. If a brand can both speak to their humanity and make life a little easier, it will become the obvious choice. This article was contributed by Julie Cleeland Nicholls, director of communications, Japan and Asia Pacific, Adobe Systems.