Faithless tactical methods of web marketing – do you agree, it sounds serious enough, does not it?
Among western marketers, these techniques are known under the half-joking name of shameless marketing tactics, i.e. fail-safe, almost always working techniques.
To what extent this name corresponds to the true state of affairs in your online marketing, we will give you the opportunity to decide for yourself.
The main and common feature of such methods is that they are inseparably capturing the attention of users and awaken an unrepresentative, irresistible interest in the advertised product/service.
Use of animal images
People love the images of pretty animals. This is the reason for the worldwide popularity of the cute kitty cat Kitty (the Hello Kitty) and the funny dog Snoopy, who has become a “billionaire” in the number of published images.
Non-serious, “cartoon images” actually have a huge marketing potential: it is cute funny animals of one kind are able to melt the toughest hearts and open the tightest wallets.
This irrational psychological phenomenon is widely used in real marketing practice. Let’s remember the pretty gecko Geico, which became a mascot of the car insurance program offered by the insurance company Geico.
Yes, there is no logical connection between auto insurance and a talking lizard, but this commercial has collected 25 million views on the Global Network – more than any other commercial advertising auto insurance services. The number of views increased – the number of insurance services sold increased proportionally.
Gecko became a real “movie star,” inspired by his success as a marketer, Geico subsequently used images of other talking animals, including squirrels and marmots, in their advertising campaigns.
Using numbers in headings
Use of numbers in headings of target pages – a reliable and checked up in practice way to draw attention and to increase conversion. You can increase the psychological impact of large numbers with adjectives such as “shocking”, “unpredictable” or “crazy”.
This statement has been repeatedly confirmed in practice, especially when clients have been given a discount of 10%, not ten percent.
Returning to the first paragraph of our article, given the knowledge we have just acquired, we should probably correct the phrase “this commercial has collected 25 million views on the Global Network” as follows: “This commercial has collected 25,000,000 views on the Global Network. You have to admit, all these zeros look impressive.
Using children’s images
Many brands have conducted very successful marketing campaigns using images of cute children. In terms of the power of influence on the target audience, children have only one competitor – pets. 🙂
As an example of the successful use of children’s images, we can mention the advertising campaign of the Coppertone Water Babies line of children’s cosmetics. Children’s images on lotions and powder packs had a strong impact on the target audience – mothers who adore their babies.
All other users who are not directly involved in the target audience, the images of the children gave a sense of peace of mind, which, according to marketers, has contributed to the creation of sustainable positive associations associated with the product.
However, if the association of Coppertone products with children’s images is quite logical, in the practice of web marketing there were examples of branding with the help of images of cute little kids products that are not associated with a happy childhood.
An example of this is the Evian brand’s advertising campaign. Their advertising video collected more than 56 million views, thus becoming an example of one of the most successful branding in history. Although the lovely carapuses are not directly related to mineral water, marketers have significantly increased the visibility of Evian products during this campaign.
Marketing Bulletin specialists conducted an interesting statistical survey to answer the question: which images – “guys” or “animals” – will cause a greater response from the target audience?
The children won – their images helped to increase conversion by 88%, while the cute representatives of the fauna world contributed to the growth of conversions by 42%.
Use of “inciting” headings
Such a method is a kind of violation of tacit rules of communication on the Global Network, but if your headlines contain a little incitement, if they contain the words “hate”, “fix” and “mistakes”, then your text will certainly have readers.
This is, of course, only a clever trick: the point of it is that publishing an article on your blog entitled “15 things that cause absolute hatred for your site”, you do not mean a particular site – you are talking about some generalized Internet site.
However, users will subconsciously perceive such a headline as your personal attack on them, which will force them to read your publication to find out what they have earned such an assessment.
It’s not an empty speculation: this article with this title has been reviewed 26,515 times, along with 1500 “likes” on Facebook and almost 2000 “retweets”. Excellent result!
Using this method does not mean that you should be demonstratively rude to your readers, but you may well touch their self-esteem by pointing to real mistakes. In search of an answer to the question, what they have done wrong, users will definitely follow the link to your post.
Use of hyperboles
Along with “incitement”, the hyperbolization of the situation covered in the article and mentioned in the title is an excellent way to draw the attention of users to your target page/site/blog.
Let’s consider an example from the practice of Fleishman-Hillard PR-agency. One of the independent web news resources published an article titled “Canadian branch of Fleishman-Hillard Agency apologizes for the most vulgar press release in the history of mankind”.
Of course, there are many curious people who want to know what “the most vulgar press release” and the agency that created it are. As a result of this action, the agency Fleishman-Hillard attracted close attention from the most authoritative mass media.
“Newsjacking” or speculation
If you’re always up to date with the latest news, you have a real chance to “hook” your marketing campaign to a high-profile media event.
The “news hijacking” tactic promises to be very much in demand: because you use the already popular, “promoted” news that everybody hears – you only need to distract a part of the already concentrated public attention to your company/product/service without much marketing costs.
Here’s a great example of a skilful interception: the management of the London Fire Brigade learns from the newspapers the following “hot news” – Kate Winslet was rescued by Sir Richard Branson’s mother from a burning building.
Brave London firefighters immediately sent Kate an offer of free training courses for professional firefighters. With minimal effort, time and money, the firefighters received a lot of praise from the UK press for their initiative.