Content marketing and 2 sociological principles

Aloha! :)

I could not feel happier after my last meeting with the dissertation supervisor, fall in love with sociology even more and decided to write something very academic today. So here are some thoughts on the content marketing.

In one of her recent articles Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School Anita Elberse suggested the two principles formulated by sociologist William McPhee on consumer behaviour, to work in Digital Media environment today as perfectly as they did 50 years ago. The first principle claims the most popular products to only attract ‘light’ consumers or those who are not ‘the biggest fans of your brand‘, but simply buy it occasionally. The second principle, in McPhee words, is that ‘the larger the proportion of the people [unfamiliar] with a given alternative, the less likely are those who are familiar with it to like it especially’ (says McPhee).

When applied into digital realities, you will see that niche products are less rated and appreciated than popular ones. However, those who order relatively unpopular products usually buy more items. As a result, the most popular products are chosen by the least loyal customers, or, in other words, the least loyal audience makes you products popular.

I don’t suggest you stop worrying about loyalty, vice versa, focus on content marketing. If we think about loyalty as the last step in the Awareness-Familiarity-Consideration-Purchase chain, than the most aware customers are your most active buyers. So, the more you speak and write, and post, and share the better.

Secondly, 68% of people spend time reading about brands, which means your articles, blog posts, newsletters, infographics and other forms of content are theoretically effective. For the remaining 32% make your content valuable and interesting by adding useful information without direct advertising and purchase offers.

Thirdly, do not emphasize your niche products in the online content because this will disadvantage their uniqueness and distract loyal and the most familiar customers. Finally, evaluate your results to be sure those two principles actually work.

PS. as for me I would not trust sociologists that much - they also say birthdays are very useful. Like the more birthdays your have - the longer your live. That`s a very engaging statistics. ;-)   

Enjoy your day guys! I will write to you tomorrow.