BE MORE football

Want to know how to be more football in your content marketing?

​Happy to read an article that is utterly shameless in its bandwagon jumping? That is full of the most tenuous links to football you can imagine? But that contains some top tips about how to get better results from your marketing efforts? Of course you do...

​We don’t follow football in our house; we’re all rugby fans.

The first clue that something big of the round ball variety was going down was when my Rington’s Tea Man brought the delivery a little earlier than usual this morning.

He said he’d started early and was trying to get his round done quickly so he could get home to watch the football. I smiled, nodded vaguely, paid for our tea bags and thought no more about it.

Then my four-year old son, Henry and I met with his new Reception Class teacher for September and he was telling her all about his shenanigans at Didi Rugby. And she replied, “So you’re a rugby player, are you? You won’t be interested in the football then!”

We laughed about it being the wrong shaped ball for anyone in our house and the conversation moved on. Again, I thought no more about it.

I’ve now just seen a satirical post about every marketer on the planet trying to shoehorn something to do with football into today’s marketing activity.

I decided to Google it to see why everyone kept mentioning football today.

Ahhhhhh! Now I understand!

Goal!

And now I’ve managed to join every other marketer on the planet in shoehorning something to do with football into today’s marketing activity.

But that’s the way of it. Things happen. Sometimes you know about it and can plan for it. And sometimes things catch you by surprise. 

Either way, there’s always fodder for your content marketing and you should try to make the most of it.

But that’s only the first half…

I imagine that millions has been spent pushing out content to promote this tournament. Yet I’ve picked up on none of it. Literally none. Zilch. Nada.

Not. A. Single. Thing.

Nothing has stood out from the background noise and grabbed my attention. 

But that’s as it should be. Because (as we’re already established) I’m not their target audience.

We don’t buy papers. When the morning news coverage switches to sports coverage, that’s when I tend to go and make a cup of tea. And as for social media, I don’t like or follow anything to do with football, so why would they want to waste their efforts putting targeted posts or sponsored ads about it under my nose?

How to score

Is your content marketing effort like kicking balls everywhere and hoping one of them finds the back of the net?

Stop. Focus more on shooting only in the direction of your goal and you’re far more likely to win.

Get your talent spotted

The next time you think that content marketing doesn’t work because your activity isn’t driving any traffic to your site, remember that just because it feels like you’re doing a tonne of stuff, it’s easy for other people to blink and miss it. 

Or perhaps you’re not getting any further forward because you’re not playing in front of the right people. If you want your target audience to stop swiping by and start stopping to buy you’ve got to get their attention first.

And to do that you need to keep playing. You need to keep putting the right content in front of the right people, in the right places, at the right times. Then repeat, re-use, refresh and re-purpose. 

The more of it you do, the more it will be seen. And the more it stands out, the more it will be noticed.

Bring zing to your game plan

Many of my friends will, I’m sure, have posted something about the World Cup on social media. But I still hadn’t picked up on it.

This just goes to show that if you’re not interested in something, the human brain is highly efficient at blocking it out. Any messages about it just become part of the background noise.

So if you’re marketing to people who don’t even know they need what you offer, you have to bring the zing.

Be a beautiful symphony. Be a catchy pop tune. Be a rock anthem that will have people whipping out their hairbrush microphones and busting their best air guitar moves.

Be whatever style is right for your business and your target audience. But be something. Be less blah. Be anything but the background noise. 

And keep playing!

It’s a team effort

Want a strategic approach to your brand’s content marketing and tone of voice? 

What a plan to start driving up your engagement and convert more likes into sales? 

Want to be free to do what you do best instead of pulling your hair out trying to keep on top of content marketing that you either don’t understand or don’t have time to do justice?

Then please check out our content marketing and copywriting services and give me a call. Always happy to chat content and I’d love to be part of your squad.