Keith Bates Blog

November 9, 2017

Introducing Activation…the latest strategy in accelerating lead generation.

Traditionally messaging/content/ads (regardless of the media) have been created primarily to get a prospects attention. Hopefully the creative was done strong enough to be memorable and inspire future action. And that was enough. Today it’s not enough. Today you need to do more than offer reading. You need to inspire action…memorable, emotional action, which leads to sales much quicker. And the directions for doing that can be found in The Activation Imperative by William Rosen and Laurence Minsky.

From the back cover comes a clarifying thought, “(the book) provides a straight forward guide for marketers to move beyond building brands to activating them—from simply projecting what a brand is to optimizing what it does—to move people to a transaction.” Marketers need to offer opportunities for touch and feel, and to be a spectator of the product in motion

B2B is particularly well suited to enhanced activation efforts.

And from experiential and content marketing, (one of the marketing disciplines within a marketing ecosystem), people with no previous connection to the brand would be engaged with compelling information or experience of such value that they would happily opt in to receive future communications, creating the foundation for  personalized content going forward. This results in the revenue-generating content of earned media revenue (per Joe Pulizzi’s Kill Marketing book).

As an example one passion area for many is protecting the environment. So building on their equity in their polar bear icon and advancing a relationship they had in place since 2007 Coca-Cola enabled their consumer interest in advancing social good, and therefore created value for them and engagement that went beyond their enjoyment of a soft drink.

Once opportunities like this—those that create value and engagement in a way that is consistent with the brand—are identified and aligned with the key behavioral inflection point, the next challenge is how to deliver the right offer to the right individual at the right time.

The above edited copy presents one of the challenges faced by marketers who chose to embrace activation. It’s not easy, and you better be pretty damn creative to pull it off. For details you really need to read the book.

As brand strategist Adam Ferrier points out, “action changes attitude faster than attitude changes actions.”

One of the final steps in the Activation process requires the selection of creative leaders with strong conceptual abilities, as the outputs of this brief will be program ideas with tactics and themes that drive true participation and involvement. The outputs could include cause-related programs; games, contests, or sweepstakes; access to branded experiences; sampling events; content  programs; added-value offers of utility, personalization, or customization; stunts; or sports and entertainment sponsorships.

A major challenge suggests that wherever possible look for opportunities to match the engagement offer with the needs and wants of the recipient for maximum effect.

For a free copy of “Creativity—the critical gap between Messaging & Media” simply visit www.kbates.com home page for the link.