Hi there! It’s Matt with MessageUp.
How good is your memory?
Are you a short-term specialist or can you recall amazing details from years ago? Or perhaps both, or neither, of the above?
I’d describe my short-term memory as erratic—how well it works depends heavily on context, concentration, and commitment.
What my long-term memory chooses to store and serve up is a constant source of amazement and disbelief. I pull random stuff out of my ear that should have been overwritten long ago, while seemingly having nothing of significance to recall before Middle School. Meanwhile, my wife happily rattles off the names of her earliest teachers as if she just said goodbye to them at the schoolyard gate…
Wherever you sit on the memory spectrum, one thing is certain: those memories fade over time.
This is especially true for short-term memories, where new experiences are constantly displacing older ones which, if not judiciously added to long-term memory, get discarded and lost.
So how do you improve your ability to recall something important?
Repetition, right?
The success of flash cards and those countless hours of pre-exam revision and practice are testament to the effectiveness of repeat encounters at strengthening memories.
It should therefore come as no surprise that the same holds true for prospects’ ability to recall a brand and correctly associate it with a particular solution.
The more frequently they see the brand and are exposed to information connecting it with a desirable solution, the more easily and clearly they can name the brand when asked.
Conversely, the longer it has been since they saw relevant content about a particular brand, the weaker their memory becomes—as well as their ability to correctly associate the brand with the type of solution it provides.
In this week’s post on the Framework blog, Thanks for the Memories - Why Familiarity is Key to B2B Content Marketing, I explore the importance of producing memorable content, our propensity for recency bias, the negative impact of memory corrosion, and what B2B marketers should be doing to ensure their brand remains uppermost in their prospects’ minds.
Give the post a look at messageup.com/framework and let me know what you think.
There is, of course, a steady stream of new information to ingest, process, and selectively store.
Scrolling down to What We’ve Been Reading, you’ll find this week’s CliffsNotes on some articles we found memorable—covering high-converting SEO keywords, the differences between Bing Ads and Google Ads, Universal ID as a replacement for 3rd-party cookies, and using B2C holiday tactics for B2B marketing.
Although I’m always intrigued by B2C tactics that cross into the B2B marketing domain (it’s all H2H, after all), I spent more time this week thinking about the demise of web cookies and the dissatisfying alternatives that have so far emerged. I’m all for privacy—and would prefer complete control over how and when my data is shared—but there needs to be a way for vendors to serve me relevant content and offers. Otherwise, we will all be forced to endure the same generic crap because personalization becomes too fraught. Sigh.
Wrapping up this week’s edition, my One Step actionable tip breaks from tradition by inviting you to remember, rather than think. You won’t be surprised to hear that it relates to the memorability of your company’s content.
In case you didn’t remember, I’ll be sending you the next edition of the MessageUp Newsletter a week from today—provided you’ve subscribed, of course (and it’s free, so why risk missing out?)
Cheers!
~ Matt
Our Latest Posts on The Framework Blog
Nov 29, 2023 - Thanks for the Memories - Why Familiarity is Key to B2B Content Marketing
Nov 15, 2023 - Marketing Your B2B Business (For M&A, Not Product Sales)
What We’ve Been Reading
Here are some articles we’ve been reading this week that we hope you will enjoy and find valuable:
What SEO Keywords Convert the Highest? (2023 Analysis)
The dataset used by Grow & Convert's Meg Riley to produce this piece wasn't huge (a mere 95 articles that attracted 123,000 organic pageviews), but the conclusions offer some helpful hints as to what types of keyword might convert best in your B2B content marketing—including some "hidden gems" that many brands miss.
Bing Ads vs. Google Ads: Which is the Best for You?
If you're trying to understand the intricacies of PPC advertising, this piece by Rebeka Meszaros at Brafton is for you. She explores the differences between Bing Ads (encompassing Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL platforms) and Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords, facilitated by Google Display and Google Search Network).
What is Universal ID and How Can it Help Publishers?
With third-party cookies—the only flavor many of us really understand—heading for extinction, what comes next? This helpful article by the team at Publift explores the situation and explains one of the most promising and popular alternatives: Universal ID.
How 3 Leaders Use B2C Holiday Marketing Tactics for B2B Businesses
Rhett Power, writing for Forbes, polls three marketing experts to find out how they adopt B2C-style tactics when planning holiday season marketing for B2B clients. Unsurprisingly, their answers center on messages that resonate, relate to your customers' seasonal needs, and cut to the chase amid the end of year chaos.
Books on B2B Content Marketing
If you haven’t done so already, secure your copies of Content Marketing: Mission Critical, a guide for B2B CEOs, and Content Marketing: Making the Magic Happen, a guide for B2B marketing leaders, in paperback or e-book format, by visiting www.messageup.com/books. There you’ll find discount codes as well as details on limited edition boxed sets that include a copy of each book signed by the author.
One Step…
Today’s One Step actionable tip bucks the trend set by recent editions, asking you to recall instead of asking you to think.
The subject of today’s newsletter and this week’s post on the Framework blog is memory. Specifically, how we can earn and retain mind share with our prospects by creating memories that link our brand to a solution they will eventually want to buy.
This begs a simple question: How memorable is your company’s content?
Pick a content channel with which you’re familiar—perhaps a company blog or social media channel—then take a pen and paper (or open a Google Doc, if you prefer) and write down as many recently published articles or posts as you can.
Don’t sweat over the exact title or headline; just write a short note describing what the piece covered, including any key takeaways.
Keep going until you’ve filled the page or exhausted your memory banks.
Then, check your work. Open the channel in question and scroll back through time.
Which pieces did you recall most clearly and completely?
Which ones did you miss?
Can you spot any patterns in what makes your content memorable, or not?
If you form an hypothesis why one or more entries were memorable, how might you test that theory by constructing another post along similar lines?
For bonus points, try the same exercise with your colleagues to test whether any pieces were commonly more memorable.
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