A Lesson in Engaging Customers from March Madness

In offices across the country this month, millions of co-workers will enter the March Madness fray, furiously filling out their brackets for the 2018 NCAA Basketball Tournament. Hoping for dramatic defeats like last year’s upsets of perennial favorites Kansas and Duke is part of the fun.

It’s the very definition of engagement. Consider this: Even people who don’t know the top-ranked team in the country get involved, and not just half-heartedly. You have to believe at least some of those get hooked on college basketball enough to pay closer attention next year.

How are you hooking your prospects? In today’s world of information overload, marketing is all about engagement. How do you stand out? We’re not just talking about a viral video or a well-timed social media post a la Oreo during the Super Bowl.

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

(Look at Oreo’s ongoing social media success for inspiration, with 10s of millions of followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube – for a cookie.)

Content marketing, in the B2B world in particular, is about developing resources that speak to your customers’ needs – that provide them value and keep them coming back for more, day after day and year after year. March Madness satisfies people’s primal needs for community and competition, which drives them to get involved. What needs does your business satisfy, and how? Are you providing sustainable value by translating your expertise across your channels, making you the one that customers go to when they have questions (rather than Google)?

I thought of this recently as I read a report on Real Results Marketing research showing that end-users in industrial and construction markets tend to go to a manufacturer’s website to shop before they go to a distributor’s website. That says everything. That says that distributors, despite their deep expertise, aren’t engaging their prospects enough online to be seen as the place to go to get the resources they need to make a buying decision.

That’s what it’s about in the end: attracting prospects, and then engaging them (read: not annoying them) with content like blogs, whitepapers, technical specs, application knowledge, infographics, video and maybe even your own version of a March Madness bracket.

Let us know if we can help! Give me a call at 970-581-1752 or email us at info@3aspensmedia.com.