3 Marketing Lessons From the News Media: What to Learn and Un-Learn

3 Marketing Lessons From the News Media: What to Learn and Un-Learn:

The news media is in be business of customer traffic just like websites. They are trying to get the attention of people and hold their attention for as ling as possible. Here are three lessons marketers and business owners can take from the news media and one you should unlearn.

People Like Headlines

People watch shows and buy magazines based on headlines. If you have a relevant and exciting headline, you will attract customers and if you provide interesting coverage of the topic, you hold attention. Focus on titles like “5 Ways to…”, “Why you should”.

Focus on the benefit and outcome, not the method to get there. Reveal the method in the body of the post, video, podcast, or other content you create online.

Pre-Promotion is as important as the story itself

In order to gain traction for a story the news media commonly advertises their upcoming stories before commercial breaks to keep people interested and seed their stories.

Use this in your Advantage on your blog posts and videos by letting customers know about upcoming content, product launches, even existing content. This will drive traffic and increase customer engagement.

Perspective is everything

The news media knows that their viewer has specific interests and is of a certain demographic. They use this to impact HOW they cover a story. For example, a single event may have different implications depending on what your customers interests are.

As an example, there was a winter storm that took out power to many residential neighborhooda in MA this year October Local media covered the effects of the event on local residents. Other media outlets not directly affected focused on the impact the ever would have on power companies ability to react. Media outlets even further away focused on the impact of climate change on these types of natural disasters.

The takeaway for marketers is that every event has a different impact on different people. When creating content for your audience, consider how the topic impacts your customer and find a unique perspective from which to provide value.

One Media Lesson to Unlearn

The media lives hype. Unfortunately the hype only goes so far. At the end of the day, people will only believe you if you follow through on your story. If you continuously put out poor content, people will stop listening. Don’t jump on the bandwagon with speculation if you know nothing about a topic. Build trust by providing insight on topics you know about and provide solid information and value to your customers.

What other lessons do you think we can learn from the news media?