By now the long-stemmed roses are wilting and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates are all but empty, signs that special Valentine’s Day love is already fading. But when it comes to content, customers need to feel a deep emotional connection on an ongoing basis. Helping clients make clear and consistent connections with their audiences is a major creative challenge. IMPRINT staffers offer up six ways to do it.

SPRING SURPRISES

Andy Seibert, Managing Partner

Content builds and nurtures relationships, and who doesn’t want a relationship where the love endures? To do your part, you need to be reliable—deliver content of value on a consistent basis. But then surprise and delight. Appropriate to your brand, consider being humorous, provocative or challenging. Surprise and delight can also come in the form the content takes: make eyebrows rise with a short video, listicle or interactive infographic. A little can go a long way, so don’t overdo it. Spring a surprise just often enough to keep the spark alive.

STRATEGIZE STORYTELLING

Dan Davenport, Editorial Director

We help our clients’ audiences fall in love with content by taking a decidedly strategic approach to storytelling: What exactly is it? What elements does it use to draw customers in? We then show clients how we can help them craft true stories — articles, videos, podcasts that create bona fide narrative by introducing a protagonist who overcomes a challenge to reach a resolution. Beginning, middle, end. Science tells us humans are hard-wired to respond to stories with such an arc. The result is deeper, sustained engagement and an ongoing conversation between brand and audience. That’s something every client can love.

FLAUNT A POV

Ken Williams, Managing Director

Audiences are inundated with content on a daily basis. Making sure you stand out in the crowd is key to making audiences fall for you—and only you. One effective way to break from the pack is to incorporate a unique perspective in everything you publish, one that captures the firm’s distinct point of view—whatever that may be—and resonates with readers. Your unique POV typically comes through in your editorial, but it can also be displayed visually through infographics, interactives and video.

AMP UP EMPATHY

Meg Staknis, Managing Director

There’s nothing like knowing that someone gets you. To accomplish that automatic emotional connection, you have to forget about yourself and focus on the other person, or in marketing, your audience. The best marketers achieve this empathy by putting themselves in their audience’s shoes. They always try to understand what the audience needs, what they want, what will make them happy—and attempt to respond in clear, accessible and interesting ways. When you think about it, it’s like any other relationship: We all just want to be understood.

INJECT HUMOR

Duncan Milne, Managing Director

Great content should feel natural and conversational. And great conversations happen when we listen, when we engage, when we respect each other and, more often than not, when we share a sense of humor. So be lighthearted when you can. You don’t need to crack jokes, but by making your customers smile with wordplay, headlines and clever captions, for example, you can give your brand a distinct personality—one that charms and seduces.

GET FRESH

Ashley Brenner, Creative Director 

Content that is fresh can be a real turn-on. Of course, “fresh” is a subjective term. What it means for us is content that has a clear, distinct perspective, is visually contemporary, and brings a lot of energy. We all know when it comes to falling in love, being beautiful is always a good thing! So there’s the art—make it look great and inviting to the eye. Then comes the science: all this gorgeous content must align with our clients’ marketing strategies. Falling in love with an image or a video doesn’t help our clients unless it leads to a conversation and a deeper connection. That’s the goal of great design: fostering dialogue with customers that keeps those double-tap-hearts flowing.

To talk more about these tips, please reach out!