Timing is Everything: Why You Should Think Twice Before Buying a Christmas Tree on Sale

As a kid, my Uncle Bill was nicknamed “the book” by my dad and his siblings because he was a fountain of knowledge. He was smart enough to get a free ride at M.I.T. and was successful enough in his career to retire early. While he’s definitely book smart, his street smarts are debatable. 

One winter when he was in elementary school, Uncle Bill dragged an enormous Douglass Fir Christmas tree home and proudly recounted how he shrewdly negotiated a great deal for the tree. The problem? It was December 27 and to pay for a Christmas tree after the holidays is kind of silly (to put it mildly).

  

Best Times to Reach Your Customers?

In the rapid-fire, real-time era of the digital age, there’s lots of debate about the best times to reach your target audiences – and how this can vary significantly by digital channel. Here are some of the theories out there:

• Blog:  Timing is all over the map and depends on who you are trying to reach (B2B vs. B2C). KISSmetrics and others have treasure troves of data to analyze (link)
• Facebook:  Mondays between 1:00-3:00 p.m. ET according to bit.ly (link)
• Twitter:  2:00-5:00 p.m. is the best window to get retweeted says HubSpot (link)
• Email (B2B):  Tuesdays between 8:00 a.m.-noon, based on a report from Pardot that MarketingProfs published (link) 

Alternatives to Following the Herd
On the face of it, a lot of these recommendations seem pretty straightforward. But you can also miss some fantastic opportunities if you spend most of your efforts trying to reach your core audiences during these peak times. Successful search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns, for example, look beyond the most popular keywords to also cast a wider net of alternative terms.

So, if you are a consulting firm that helps companies improve their sales operations, you might not be able to unseat global firms like Bain for the top search engine rankings for popular search terms like “sales force effectiveness.” This keyword phrase has a high search query volume and is highly competitive. Global firms have the content, site traffic and other requirements to garner the top search results for this phrase. But you can try to rank for terms that aren’t as popular – such as “sales operations” and “sales operations strategy” – to reach people who are searching for alternate, less popular terms.

What lessons can we draw from this? Like rush hour traffic, social media channels also become highly congested during peak times, and this increased competition could cause your content to be overshadowed.

So think beyond benchmark best practices and better understand when your key targets are the most responsive. Tools from Sprout Social and other companies can help you analyze your social media activity to better identify when your audiences are typically the most engaged. Flexibility and experimentation regarding the timing of your content are keys to improving digital engagement and outmaneuvering your competitors.

Who knows, maybe you’ll score the equivalent of selling a Christmas tree after the holidays. After all, timing is everything.

(Image courtesy of Dream Designs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

3 Reasons Valentine’s Day is Like Content Marketing

“She loves me, she loves me not,” can be a fretful refrain of both lovebirds and exasperated marketers struggling to keep fickle consumers. Just like in dating, brands that are overbearing (or too self-centered) may be left out in the cold as the consumers that they’re trying to court may look for a better match elsewhere. 

But what’s the right mix of showing your brand’s good side without coming on too strong? Try these three lessons from Valentine’s Day to help get content marketing right and build long-lasting relationship with consumers. 

1. It’s All About You, Not Me:  Red roses and jewelry are selfless gifts for that special someone – there’s nothing in it for you aside from seeing your mate smile and having the satisfaction of a job well done. (But chocolates that you can share can make it seem like you have an ulterior motive). Similarly, instead of focusing your brand’s messaging on specific features, spotlight the benefits that are the most important to your customers. So rather than promoting the new management capabilities of your cloud-based IT solution, specifically outline how this upgrade will save customers time and simplify their business operations. And use case studies/customer testimonials to demonstrate your value.
   
   
2. Start Hot and Keep it Up:  In the early stages of a relationship you typically try to pull out all of the stops to make a good impression. And it’s not that your effort wanes as the years go by (ok, sometimes it does), but the nature of your relationships change. Just because you’ve already given a number of big gifts over the years doesn’t mean that your loved one isn’t still expecting a token of your affection, even if it is a small one. Customers are always looking for something new, and those needs change depending where they are in the sales cycle. A longstanding customer may find a few specific tips as valuable as a prospect looking for a detailed analysis of a specific market or technology. So think through the path from prospect to customer, and create informative content to help entice buyers through this process.
   
   
3. Your Valentine Never Forgets and Neither Will Your Customers:  Gifts are just one way to show that you pay attention to someone’s likes and that you truly understand them. But be prepared to face significant wrath if you don’t pick up the hints that your significant other leaves for you. (In my case, my wife definitely does not like roses. And by no means can I celebrate her birthday and our wedding anniversary together – even if they are only three days apart!). The more consumers engage with you, the more they expect you to remember their interests and pain points. So provide them with specific content to help make their jobs easier. After all, they are expecting it.

Although Valentine's Day is overhyped, it is a good reminder to pay special attention to the people closest to you. And for marketers, it’s a good way to remember what customers are looking for and how you can help keep them coming back for more.

(Image courtesy of Master Isolated Images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)