Why It’s OK For You to Hate This Blog Post

We spend a lot of time wooing people to like us.

“Follow us on Twitter!”

“Like us on Facebook!”

“Get our email updates!”

“Share us with your friends!”

“Please hang out with us Friday night!” (OK, so that’s from my personal life, but you get the drift.)

And it makes sense that we do, kind of.

The basic guiding principle in content marketing is to gain exposure for our message: more eyeballs, more engagement, and more conversions. We’re supposed to market our content to as many people as possible, right?

Maybe.

This is the basis of the appeal of creating viral content. This is the lure of making the homepage of Digg. This is the promise we hope is kept by StumbleUpon. This is why we create content we hope reaches beyond our niche into a mainstream audience that will melt our servers and crash our website for the day.

But it’s very possible that in the process of trying to be everything to everyone, we end up being nothing to, well, anybody.

In our conquest to expand the amount of relationships we have, we neglect the more important achievement of expanding the depth of our relationships.

In the era of acquisition, have we neglected retention? Maybe it’s time to focus more on serving our existing customers – the ones who make the cash register ring.

For example, a Pennsylvania restaurant recently banned children under the age of 6 from dining at their establishment.

The media was outraged. The restaurant received angry letters and phone calls from across the country. But the restaurant owner didn’t care. Why? Because their actual customers appreciated the (potentially politically incorrect) peace and quiet.

But exclusivity doesn’t always have to be mean-spirited.

Take a look at Miracle Whip’s ad campaign “We’re Not For Everyone.” They use their own commercial airtime to let haters hate on their product all to prove the point that they’re not for everyone and they’re not trying to change who they are to be for everyone. They are who they are and they’re focused on serving the people who love them that way.

Exclusivity is attractive, no matter how it looks.

Remember that band you stopped liking because they went to mainstream – because everyone and their mother and little sister started showing up at their shows?

Remember that social network you fell out of love with because it felt like everyone in the world was on it? Remember that one you replaced it with because it was new. Because it felt more exclusive?

In your marketing manifest destiny, it’s worthwhile to stop and ask yourself the question: do we need to keep expanding our reach? Or should we start developing some depth in our relationships?

Don’t like the idea? I thought that might happen. This concept isn’t for everyone.

[Image: gpaumier]

http://datawench.net GR Morgan

Social and commercial exclusivity are not the same thing. Social exclusivity serves the ego but cannot translate to profit unless the resulting commercial exclusivity draws on a very privileged and/or committed subculture.

The economy is mostly based on a model of continuous growth, not stasis. If next quarter’s profits don’t exceed last quarter’s, the corporation is viewed as a failure and investment falls. It’s inherently unsustainable, but pretty much hardwired.
- http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly
  
  “Social and commercial exclusivity are not the same thing. Social exclusivity serves the ego but cannot translate to profit unless the resulting commercial exclusivity draws on a very privileged and/or committed subculture.”
  
  Agreed. I suppose the better point to be made is that focusing on building a committed subculture (by not marketing to the masses and focusing on serving a dedicated core) can be a profitable strategy.
  
  “The economy is mostly based on a model of continuous growth, not stasis. If next quarter’s profits don’t exceed last quarter’s, the corporation is viewed as a failure and investment falls. It’s inherently unsustainable, but pretty much hardwired.”
  
  Agreed again. I think it’s actually a flawed system because of the lack of sustainability you mention. However, continuous growth does not necessarily need to come from breadth, it can come from depth; by getting more out of the dedicated core you helped to build.
  
  I don’t view this as a prescription for people to follow, but rather an overly dramatized premise to get people to consider the age-old idea of building quality relationships (social or commercial) as opposed to focusing merely on quantity.
  
  There’s much more focus on “building audience” than there is on “serving audience,” which was the point I was trying to make. They are both important, but not treated equally.
  
  Thank you for dropping by with a brilliant comment.
http://blog.coherentia.com Neicole Crepeau

Such a great post, Andrew! I hadn’t heard about the Miracle Whip campaign. As someone who grew up with it, I was totally shocked at my husband’s virulent dislike of this “not real mayo” product. It’s so great that the company was able to leverage that so cleverly!

I think it still comes back to goals and being clear about them. Even for content marketing, we want to reach as many of our TARGET customers as possible-not just anybody. We may want to reach an audience who is likely to share our content with those target customers. That would be a perfectly valid tactic. But so many people are trying to spread their content everywhere as much as possible, getting their headlines in front of people who are just not likely to be interested in the content. I think that does a disservice to us all as it just makes for more noise and causes people to start to ignore the content, unless it comes from a trusted source.

Businesses need to be specific about who they want to connect with and why (to what end) and then find ways to reach and engage them that are valuable to those users and to the business itself. The only way to scale is to have separate strategies for each target audience and scale effectively within those groups. There may also be a limit to that scaling. But, as you say, focusing on retention rather than acquisition allows you to deepen the engagement in each of those groups, which will ultimately lead to more value than spreading yourself thinly across too many only-somewhat-relevant audiences.

Note that Jay Baer’s video today is relevant to your topic, as well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9MqYlXX6Z4
- http://www.twitter.com/hanelly Andrew Hanelly
  
  (Applause). Thanks for dropping by Neicole. I think you’ve stated that very well.
  “Focusing on retention rather than acquisition allows you to deepen the engagement in each of those groups, which will ultimately lead to more value than spreading yourself thinly across too many only-somewhat-relevant audiences.”
  
  Amen!
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Why It’s OK For You to Hate This Blog Post

Written by: Andrew Hanelly