Creating Content That Converts
Are you tired of creating content that seems to tick the boxes, but falls flat? Joe was joined by Christina Garnett MBA, Award-Winning Advocacy Strategist for HubSpot to explore the secrets to taking your content from 'meh' to 'amazing!'
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Transcript
Creating Content That Converts – Christina Garnett
Joe: Hello and welcome to the Essential B2B podcast brought to you by Lead Forensics. I’m your host Joe Ducarreaux. This episode is the audio taken from a webinar that we ran called The Power of Emotion, Creating Content That Converts. For this I was joined by Christina Garnett, MBA, award-winning advocacy strategist for HubSpot. Now regular listeners to Essential B2B will know that we’ve adopted the motto of people buy from people and this came up yet again when Christina and I were discussing how to leverage people’s emotions when it comes to marketing and selling. This was a great chat and you’re going to get loads out of this.
So without further ado, please enjoy this episode of the Essential B2B podcast with Christina Garnett.
Joe: Hello, welcome to this Essential B2B webinar entitled the Power of Emotion, Creating Content That Converts. Joining me to discuss that very topic is Christina Garnett, MBA, award-winning advocacy strategist for HubSpot. Hi, Christina. How are you today?
Christina: I’m doing well. Thank you so much for having me.
Joe: It is our pleasure. Right, so let’s get stuck straight into this, shall we? What do you think are the most effective ways to create a connection with your audience through your content?
Christina: You have to be able to give them something that doesn’t look like anyone else’s content. You have to resonate with them on a level that immediately catches their attention. Some ways it’s human. We see this on TikTok a lot. There’s a lot of story time content. As soon as you see a certain person’s face framed in a certain way, you know you’re about to get a story and so you stop because you have this expectation.
But it really comes down to, do you understand the kind of content that your target audience wants? What they need, even? As you have that understanding, you’re going to be able to not only determine what’s working and not working, but you’re going to be able to create a plan for what future content needs to look like.
Joe: And how do you go about building trust and credibility with your audience then?
Christina: It really comes down to consistency. If I know that there’s consistency in the pattern that you’re creating, I know that you’re going to talk to us in a certain way, I know that I can come to you specifically to get some type of information and then my experience agrees with that. That’s going to build trust over time.
So really a great example of this is, when YouTubers and influencers on TikTok recommend something and then you go, based on their recommendation and your experience parallels and is equal to the same sort of situation. Versus this is clearly an ad because my experience is completely opposite of what I was expecting based on your recommendation. So having that honesty and having that track record of, if they say this is good, then it’s going to be good. That takes time, sadly, but once you have it, it pays dividends. It’s a huge unlock for brands.
Joe: I think you’re absolutely right, particularly with your example of YouTube as an influence. I think we’ve probably all seen examples of creators that we know and we’re familiar with, we’ve been following for a certain amount of time. Occasionally you can almost feel let down when you can see quite obviously they’ve done something for a quick payday or something like that, can’t you? It’s just suddenly you’re like, I’m not entirely sure this is the sort of product or service that you genuinely believe in. So I think you probably have just done this to make a quick buck.
Christina: And it’s sad, though, because it takes such a long time to build that trust, but it only takes one major error to destroy all of it. It’s kind of like you’re building this tower of glass. It’s going to take a very long time, but it takes one little rock and it’s gone.
Joe: It’s very tricky once you get started, but I think you’re absolutely right on the consistency piece, absolutely. Personally, we have the Essential B2B podcast that’s going on and one of the reasons I think that’s done so well is because we have consistently, every Friday, 3pm GMT or BST, whatever it is, we release an episode and a post to go with it. That absolutely speaks to the consistency piece, for sure. So, what are some common mistakes that companies make when they’re creating their content and what can be done to avoid replicating those mistakes?
Christina: I think there’s two big ones. One is ignoring what their audience needs. IF you don’t have a social listening platform or you don’t have a social listening program for your brand and you are not taking the time to understand how your consumers, how your customers and prospective customers are talking about you or talking about your specific vertical. How are you really able to provide them with something that is striking and resonates?
But it’s also important to note that feedback, that feedback loop essentially also creates an opportunity for you to read the room. If you’re creating content that is no longer relevant or let’s say that you have a huge customer base that’s angry about something and they are continuing to push for a response or an answer or a resolution, and you just keep piping out content like it’s just a normal Friday. You’re actually pouring gasoline on a really big fire because you’re showing, oh, we’re still working. We’re just not going to answer you the way that you want us to. We’re not going to do anything that impacts you specifically.
I think that leads into the other problem, which is trend hijacking. A lot of brands are focused so much on virality that they completely ignore the fact that virality is a very much double-edged sword. You can go viral for all the right reasons, and you can go viral for all the wrong reasons. It needs to align with your brand. It needs to align with the kind of customers that you want to keep and gain.
If you don’t understand how people feel about you, how they feel about your vertical and you’re not reading the room, then you’re going to trend hijack, and it’s going to be even worse. Because it’s not going to be on brand. It’s going to open you up to liability. It’s going to open you up to negative conversations about your brand. I think we’re seeing this a lot on social with specific brands where they’re turning their brand into chaos. Like they are the ones that’s going to make you think, I cannot believe they just posted that.
The problem with that is that every time you pull that lever it becomes less and less powerful and then it becomes expected. Then you’re just the chaos brand and then it no longer works. So you’ve literally destroyed your brand for eyeballs and engagement and then that just becomes your new brand, and then it doesn’t even move the needle anymore. It’s just really sad that for the sake of virality, we’re seeing content that doesn’t fit brands, that doesn’t make sense, that doesn’t align with business goals, just for the sake of if we burn the whole place down, we’ll get an article about us or we’ll go viral. That’s not always the answer.
Joe: And again, with the consistency piece, as you say, it is very difficult to keep that up. You may have one post that goes absolutely gangbusters. You can’t keep up with that sort of thing. As you say, you’re going to burn out very quickly. How do you ensure that your content encourages your audience to take the desired action from that piece of content?
Christina: You need to know what motivates them. So thinking about what do I want them to do? Then you need to reverse engineer it. If I want them to do a specific action, what does that CTA need to look like? What’s going to make them actually want to complete the CTA? What do I need to do in order to encourage that? So it’s emotion, or actually trigger, then emotion, then behaviour. You need to make sure that you have that thought process laid out.
A lot of what we see in the virality is that they’ve weaponized anger. A lot of press does it really well, sadly, where they will have a clickbait, really like a hate bait headline because they know that people are going to go on Twitter and they’re going to quote tweet it with ‘no’ and then they get read the riot act. But they don’t care because they got clicks. They’re like we took your clicks, we don’t care thanks for your click and but that’s emotion. What they’ve done is reverse engineered.
One of the most powerful emotions is anger, hate. We see that globally, the people who are able to go viral, who are able to capture a lot of conversation and attention, it’s because they weaponize anger and hate, knowing that that’s such a powerful motivator that it’s going to make you behave in a certain way. It doesn’t matter because all those behaviours lead to, you’re talking about me, you’re clicking on my articles. If that’s what I wanted and I don’t mind that it’s from a negative connotation, then I’m just going to keep doing that. And that’s what we continue to see. It’s just really sad because there’s a lot of great journalists, there’s a lot of great web content out there that’s doing fantastic. But because they’re not resorting to this hate-anger conversation, it just doesn’t have the traffic.
Joe: It definitely seems to be the case that outrage is certainly the cheapest emotion to sell and the easiest one to sell, isn’t it? I heard a little while ago on a podcast, people talking about American Idol and how Simon Cowell doesn’t care if you like his show or not because people who don’t like the show will still watch it to go, this is rubbish! It’s a compelling point you make. But really, I think you’ve got to question yourself, it’s all very well if that’s what you aimed to do, if you can get a larger audience quicker by selling anger and hate. Is that really what you want to be building your brand on? Surely not.
Christina: Ideally, the answer is not. Ideally, the answer is no, but there is this Machiavellian content creator persona now. We see it across all channels. So it’s definitely a hardcore question and it’s definitely something that people need to consider. But at the end of the day, if what you’re chasing is status and clout, then do the ends justify the means? For many people, sadly, the answer is yes, absolutely, let’s go, let’s burn it all down. I would challenge people to take the harder route. It’s sad, but there’s definitely a lot of people who that’s how they make their bread and butter, that’s how they do it.
Joe: Absolutely. At the very start of the chat, Christina, you mentioned videos in a certain format and there being a literacy with you understanding, OK, there’s a story coming to this one now. How can you use storytelling to make your content more compelling and engaging?
Christina: I really like the Pixar story spine. I think it’s a really great foundation if you’re thinking about how you want to do stories, because Pixar is the master of being able to make you cry in a children’s movie, they’ve nailed it. No one’s better.
The Pixar story spine is basically a sequence of ‘and then this happens and then this happened’. It walks you through essentially the hero’s journey. This person is here. This is who they are. There’s a challenge. Because of this challenge.
The thing is about great storytelling that we see across content, that we see across great literature, it’s been around forever.
I’m an English major! The hero’s journey is well established. You can look at Greek mythology and you can look at all of these past things. There’s a lot of goodness there. I forget who said it, but there’s something to the effect of only five or six actual origin stories. Then everything is just an amalgamation or tweaking of those stories. I find that with most things, some things are timeless. So what can you take that’s timeless and then how can you tweak it, manipulate it, mould it into something that fits for you? I think that that’s really fantastic and that sets that precedent because no matter who you are and where you live in the world, you’ve heard stories. You know what nursery rhymes are, you’ve read fairy tales. They might differ slightly but you have this natural storytelling knowledge.
If you can find out what are the timeless activations that you can be a part of and then how can you make that a part of your story and plug in the pieces that make you special and make you unique. I think that’s such a great way to tap into human behaviour as a whole. I know where this is going. This feels safe to me. I understand. I know where we can go from here.
That also leads to that trust, too. There’s something that’s less dangerous and less scary when it’s like, okay, this recipe feels familiar to me. I know what this looks like. And then you kind of, you feel more compelled to join because it doesn’t feel scary. It doesn’t feel as alien.
Joe: Despite the fact that Pixar is talking about existentialism in what are essentially kids’ movies.
Christina: I love it though, there’s layers.
Joe: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Among other bits and pieces for Lead Forensics, I’ve previously made videos and every single one I’ve made I’ve tried to go; okay the brief is, can you make a promotional video for X event or something? Within that I’ve gone, okay, what’s the actual story of the event? The way I’ve put it all together is, okay, here’s the start of the day, here we’re getting into it. You’re absolutely right.
We’ve talked about the creative side of creating content and storytelling, that sort of thing. Going to the inverse, how can you use data and analytics to measure the success of that content and then make informed decisions about what content you’re going to be making in the future?
Christina: I think you need to have a very good understanding of what is even possible to be measured based off of like where that story is being distributed. That could change the kind of data points that you can pull and therefore that’s going to change the KPIs you’re going to be looking at to determine if it’s successful? I think this is where you turn into Dr. Strange a little bit and you do some game theory. You can break down like what are all the different variations of data points that we could find from this? Then what aligns with our business goals? If I’m trying to drive traffic, then obviously that’s going to be something for me. If I need a certain number of MQLs, well, that’s also going to dictate what that looks like.
Understanding what are all the potential opportunities based on where it’s being distributed. Is it paid or organic? Am I even able to target it or are we just putting it in one specific location and hoping that’s enough? Whatever that looks like, understanding what’s possible based on where that content lives and how it’s getting to people and then trying to find that sweet spot where is what we need to measure for success, where does that align with the data that we’re actually able to pull?
You’re going to have vanity levels, like it was seen by this many people. That’s really like low impact, but how can we dive a little bit deeper and how can we learn more? Maybe what you’re going to find is, if I put it on channel A, I’m going to get this kind of persona, which is more involved with our current customer base. But if I put it on B, this is going to be more like our prospects, the people that we would like to reach out to, but we haven’t really created that relationship yet.
The data you’re going to be able to pull from each of those is going to mean two very different things. This on point A, if we’re looking at our customers, maybe they decide to upsell with us, or maybe they share it with their community, or maybe they’re advocates for us and we increase brand affinity. But on B, maybe we get some leads. Maybe we’re able to get people into our flywheel to be able to see if they want to learn more about us, maybe get a demo or maybe figure out how they can use us in their daily work.
So you just have to be prepared that there’s no right or wrong answer. I hate being the person that says it depends. But the answer is always, it depends. We’re dealing with humans. It’s always, it depends.
Joe: It’s all relative.
Christina: Yeah, yeah. It’s all nuanced.
Joe: What types of content do you find are most likely to generate conversions then?
Christina: The stuff that’s going to excite you and be able to immediately resonate with you. I see this with ads all the time, if you see an ad that does not feel right for you, there’s nothing that makes me angrier than I know that because I’m a woman of a certain age, I know exactly why I’m seeing an ad ! But it’s like, I don’t need that and I’m angry that you would assume I would need it because of my gender and age. Versus me seeing something that I absolutely need and I’ve been thinking about or wanting, you go from rejection and anger and how dare you, to is this a sign from the universe that I actually should be buying this because I’ve been thinking about it?
Very different. But because of that, it makes me behave in very different ways. So if you’re able to see that and it feels compelling, it’s huge. I think TikTok does a great job of this because it’s able to create an experience that we don’t see on other channels.
A really great example of this is haul videos, where people will go in and they’ll show all the things they bought. If I have found a creator that looks very similar to me, has a similar body shape as I do, then I see this person get a haul and I see them buy something and try it on and it looks amazing on them. My brain is, that little gremlin in my head, is going to think you would look just as good if you bought that. You should buy that too.
We see this across media in general. We want representation. So if there is a creator that resonates with us and feels like they represent us, if they buy something, they’re happy with it and it looks great on them. Then as a consumer, I’m going to feel the same way. I’d be like, I have to buy this. I will look just as good. It will look just as great on me. So we want experiences. We want content that specifically answers our use case, so that I can put myself in the position of the person who is the story hero or protagonist. If I’m able to do that, I’m significantly more bonded emotionally to that cell because I can see myself. I can already envision myself going through the process. Then it’s just a matter of pulling my wallet out and then going from there.
That’s why you see ‘as seen on TikTok, TikTok made me buy it’. The root of it is your body is looking for excuses for dopamine and you know if you buy something, then you have that dopamine of, it’s coming, then I get to unbox it, then I get this new shiny thing. Imagine if on top of that dopamine, you have something that feels like it’s perfect for you. That’s a high. That’s an incredible human instinct, I just have to have it. So that, I find, is the stuff that drives conversions. You have to create like this guttural desire that is stronger than the friction that is a part of that process. If my desire is not stronger than the friction, I will quit.
We’ve all been in that process where you’re like, oh I really want that? That’s really cool and then by about the third or fourth page, filling out information, you’re like, ‘nah’. We see this with job applications. Found my dream job. This looks amazing. I have to write a cover letter. Guess it’s not my dream job. Guess I’m done. I’ll pass. Your desire has to be greater than the friction. If you can create that balance, then they’re going to close the sale.
Joe: I think the reason I was smiling quite so much as you were talking through all that is I so recognised myself and when exactly that happened. Let me tell you this, Christina, after this chat, you are 100% going to be served an ad for a Pixar box set and the book, Hero of a Thousand Faces.
Christina: 100%. And if they do it, well done. I will probably buy it. If you heard me, understand. I’ll just have to tweet them, well done, you got me.
Joe: Well done, Lasseter. This is quite a tricky one, I think. Where there is so much content and so much noise on all platforms now, how can you make your content stand out above that noise and be seen by the right people?
Christina: That is a hard question. At the end of the day, it needs to feel like you are not creating and not publishing to publish. If you over time, going back to consistency, if you set up content that I know you’re going to be pushing, I know what you are known for, I know why to come to you, then that’s going to create this thought leadership trust where if I have any concerns or I’m wondering who to go to, I know exactly who it would be.
I think that’s why the whole like the riches are in the niches conversation is because by niching down, you establish yourself as an expert. So are you going to get everybody’s attention? No, but you’re going to get all the attention from the people who need information about that specific content. They want to come to you. They’re going to make a beeline straight for you. I think that, that thought leadership creates those relationships where you don’t have to compete in the feed because I’ll go directly to you.
So a great example. My daughter’s favourite YouTuber is Safiya Nyagaard. So I am always on the lookout for a new video from her. I don’t have to wait for YouTube to serve anything to me from her, because that’s our mommy/daughter date. We will go specifically to her feed and see if there’s anything new. Because of that, because we know exactly what kind of content to expect from her and what that’s going to look like, there’ll be times when we’re just hanging out and she’s says do you want to see if there’s anything new from Saf? Absolutely. Let’s look. So just things like that.
If you create that connection and that relationship with the people who are looking at your content over time, you don’t need to worry about the algorithm because they’ll come straight to you. You will be the destination instead of like, oh, it’s a nice little like algorithm roulette. You don’t have to worry about that, if you create that. But the sad thing is that that takes time, that takes expectation, things like that.
Great example is there’s an Instagram account called Sunday Scaries that I absolutely adore and every Friday they have a meme from pop culture, from TV shows, there’s a lot from like Succession and stuff like that and it basically says like slams laptop shut till Monday and I do a story of it. I post my favourite one from the collections, there’s usually 10 different ones. It goes from someone’s hungover to someone’s drunk to someone’s partying to someone’s covered up in their blankets and hiding from the world. It has all the variation, the full gamut of what your Friday afternoon existential crisis looks like. You pick the one that resonates. You pick the one that’s like, that’s me. That’s me. That’s going off in my story. That’s getting shared. But it always comes down to that, I know what to expect from them. It’s this recipe, it all coalesces together.
Joe: It’s funny, you mentioned the YouTuber and the relationship, it’s now an event for you.
Christina: Yeah.
Joe: We had James Gayle on a webinar and podcast recently who runs Shogun Social, it is a social media agency and it sounds very much like what he was discussing, which was the power of creating what he called a parasocial bond. The content creator doesn’t necessarily know who you are, but you feel you have an intimate relationship with that person and it is that much more powerful, particularly if you see their face, videos and that sort of thing, it breaks down layers upon layers upon layers. I think that’s probably quite a powerful example that you’ve mentioned there.
Speaking of podcasts and videos and audio, how do you use different formats and mediums to reach a wider audience and better engage them? We’ve mentioned TikTok haul videos and that sort of thing. Are there any other sort of tips and tricks that you can offer to our audience?
Christina: Yeah, the way that you distribute the content, think about how that creates those bonds and what that actually looks like. So with a podcast, I can hear you, but I have no depth of understanding what you look like, or what you look like when you’re making a joke, or if you’re mad but I can’t tell because your tone doesn’t sound any different. But if you put that video on YouTube, now I have this secondary layer. Now I can hear you, but now I have the additional context of seeing your face and are you like me? Do you like to wave airplanes in while you’re talking?
It creates the secondary understanding of, okay, that’s what you look like and that’s what you look like when you’re telling a joke or this is what you look like when you’re thinking or trying to figure out what to say next. The more people get to know you, the deeper the connection feels. Whether that’s true or not, whether the person who’s doing the podcast even knows you exist, the more time you’re spending with them. That’s what you’re doing is when you’re creating content, you’re asking someone to spend time with you. I want you to read this blog I wrote. It’s going to take you about 10 minutes. Or I want you to spend time with me. This podcast is 30 minutes.
If you can’t get them to care about you, you can’t get them to spend that time with you. So thinking about the distribution points, it isn’t just a matter of like, here are all the different channels. I think that’s a big trap that people fall into is they try to be everywhere instead of being where they need to be in order to create the emotional bonds that they want to create. Where do I need to be to make people understand like she’s funny or she’s stupid or she’s silly or I could learn from her. Versus no I prefer her in written form, I prefer her when she’s just writing. Really thinking about how people connect with you and understanding the user behaviours. People who listen to a podcast are going to look that very differently than YouTube.
For example, how many podcasts are you going to listen to that’s two hours long? But I could go on YouTube and there’s video essays on there that are so well done, you have my you have my full two hours. You do a video essay on Lord of the Rings, I am seated. I am here. Give me all of it. But if you put that two hour video on Twitter or Facebook or TikTok, I’d be like, no, absolutely not.
Absolutely not. It has nothing to do with the content. It has to do with the fact that my user behaviour is very different there.
That’s why I think it’s really interesting to see what YouTube Shorts is doing and how they’re competing with TikTok. They’re basically like the trusted version of TikTok. My kids know they can’t go on TikTok, but they’ll go on YouTube Shorts. And so they can see G-rated content. So they know trends. They know what trending audio is happening. I’ll mention a meme. They totally get it. I know that they’re not seeing it on TikTok. They’re seeing the ones that were brought over to YouTube Shorts.
But if you put a two-hour thing, if TikTok said like we can watch a whole movie on TikTok. I don’t know how many people would do that because it’s the ephemeral nature of it, the quickness of it. I need it to be in multiple things. That’s why you have accounts that will be like story time and it’s eight like it’s eight pieces and I know you can be more concise, but you’re going to get me to watch eight videos because you’re going to pull me and I’m just going to be, wait, where’s part two? Where’s part two? They never do them back-to-back either. If you see something that has a really compelling video, they have that hook of ‘to be continued’. Then it’s like a Dickensian serial. You have to actually wait a couple weeks. And it’s like, why? In the year of our Lord, 2023, why do I need to wait? Upload it!
Joe: Why did I have to wait this long to see why you think they didn’t just take the eagles?
Christina: Exactly! Give it to me now! Give it to me now, but I’m expecting it in multiple videos. I’m going to give you the views, but it’s that user behaviour that’s so wild but you have to understand how people behave there.
I think since Elon took over Twitter, we’re seeing that too. A lot of people have tried to find an alternative and there are plenty of alternatives, but honestly, none of them scratch the right itch. So it’s user behaviour where it’s like, I guess I’m staying on Twitter until it burns to the ground because there is no alternative that truly supplements or completely covers it up. So things like that.
You have to know that user culture. You have to know the user’s behaviour and what that does for them. Why are they getting something different from you? If I put it on YouTube versus Spotify versus somewhere else, how is their experience different? Are they any different in how they’re doing it? Are they watching it on their computer versus their phone versus their TV? Even that’s a different experience.
We see this all the time. Martin Scorsese would have you go to the cinema every single time to watch his movie. You’re not watching that on a Netflix app on your phone, how dare you? It’s the same thing, it’s how are you placing it and how does that change the experience? Because it changes the experience, it changes how they relate to that content.
Joe: 100%. I completely agree with you actually, particularly with podcasts. Because podcasts tend to be a passive thing, you tend to be doing something else while you’re listening to a pod. I know there’s certain podcasts that I save specifically, so it’s for when I’m doing the housework because it then motivates me to do the housework. What tips can you offer to help make content more shareable? I guess it’s difficult to say anything broken down platform by platform, but do you have any general tips on that, Christina?
Christina: I think it helps to be a voracious consumer yourself. There’s a book called The Creative Curve by Alan Gant. I think it’s Alan Gant. It’s Alan something. But it’s all about, he talks about these great creators. He talks about Netflix. He talks about all of these companies that we know now that are hyper-established. But if you look back at their history, they were hyper-consumers. They were ravenous at creating content. That tends to be, for me, the greatest unlock because I’m constantly looking at other people’s content and really thinking about what makes me stop, what makes me want to learn more. Is it the person? Is it the hook they used? Is it the story they were telling? Is it the brand that they were talking about?
If you dissect, like, what’s making you feel the way that you do and what’s making you share things and what’s making it so that it’s not so much that, I liked it and consumed it, I need to share it so that others can enjoy it too.
Understanding that is incredibly important. Then when it comes to your customers, having an incredibly strong feedback loop, talking to them and being customer obsessed. What do you like? What are you looking for? I think it’s really telling because if you look at webinars, events, especially since post-COVID, everything’s doing a webinar, everyone’s doing an event. But is there really any difference in a lot of the content that’s being shared? Or is it kind of all homogenous? Because I see tons of events but I could put them all in one room and say you all should battle it to the death. You’re all doing the same thing. Just give me the winner. I’ll take the winner.
But it’s true. You have to be very thoughtful and you don’t know that if you have your head down and you’re myopic. So being a consumer, being customer obsessed and wanting to learn. I find that curiosity is honestly the best unlock for creatives. Because if you are curious, then there is a part of you that understands that you don’t know everything and that you need to constantly keep learning, you need to constantly keep doing, and that keeps you humble, but it also keeps you ambitious. You’re going to constantly want to do more, you’re going to constantly want to learn and so that really needs to be at the heart of what you’re doing.
I find that that’s going to make you see those patterns. It’s going to make you realise what’s working and what’s not working and then you’re able to create that plan for really successful content.
Joe: So what you’re saying is essentially, perhaps a useful exercise might be just to watch yourself, watch yourself, watching content. So like literally as you do stop, think what was it that made me stop on this particular piece of content? What was it? Really focus on, was it the heading? Was it them saying, hey, check this out for a second? What element of that content made you stop? That’s fantastic.
Christina: And also continue doing it, because once you have that answer, you’re also going to see patterns. There’s a thing on TikTok where people have their captions and then a lot of people are starting to do the exact same types of captions, where it turns bright yellow or it turns bright red or they’ll have an icon instead of the word. That’s amazing, but the problem that marketers have, that we are all guilty of, is we find something that works and then we as an industry literally kill it by every single person all doing the exact same thing. We just act like the consumers are always going to love it and are always going to get it. There’s a reason why they teach pattern recognition in elementary school. It’s not hard. But if every single video has the exact same tricks and tips and tactics, even though it used to work, my brain’s going to be like, now this isn’t any different. Now I don’t need that.
Joe: It doesn’t take that long. Yeah.
Christina: It does not take that long. And I think we forget that. It’s the whole growth hacking mentality of the 2000s where we’re going to find these tips and tricks and then we’re going to use them and the consumers are never going to figure it out. They’re figuring it out. Gen Z is huge about that. Gen Z gets it. They grew up with digital. So their understanding and seeing trends before even some marketers are. By the time the marketing establishment has embraced it and started creating content around it, Gen Z is like, you are lame.
Joe: It’s out of date.
Christina: Yeah, out of date. It’s too late. It’s too late. So it’s just very interesting. But I think that that’s why you need to be that constant consumer, you start seeing, you can spot like, nope, that trend’s dead now. When it gets to Facebook or when your CEO mentions it, it’s gone around the world enough that you’re like, no, it’s not fresh anymore. It’s just not. It’s done.
Joe: Christina, this has been a really, really fascinating conversation. I’ve really, really enjoyed chatting to you and I hope that our audience watching this has as well. If there’s one top tip you would like to offer everybody watching this today about the power of emotion and creating content which converts. What is that one key takeaway you’d like to offer everybody?
Remember that the work you’re doing is human. What you’re trying to create in people is human. So there’s a lot of conversations about AI. There’s a lot of conversations about automation. But the core of what you’re doing is human and human behaviour, human psychology. No matter what tools and tips and tricks that you’re using, no matter how advanced that technology is, at the end of the day, you’re still trying to make humans with tons of variables that you cannot control or even know about, you’re still trying to get them to do specific behaviours. So at the heart of what you’re doing, you can’t lose sight of that.
Joe: Christina Garnett, thank you so much for joining us for this week’s Essential B2B webinar.
Christina: Thanks for having me.
