Eps 1: What Zombies can teach you about digital marketing?
— Future of Digital Marketing and Trends
| Host image: | StyleGAN neural net |
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| Content creation: | GPT-3.5, |
Host
Leon Knight
Podcast Content
When it comes to content marketing strategies, zombies are real, and they are terrifying. But if you want to succeed in the world of content marketing, consider this important truth revealed in the latest study Learning How to Deal with the Zombie Horde. You don't have to be a zombie to get ahead in this world.
In the world of content marketing strategy, zombies are more than just unsuccessful content plans. They are the most popular monsters today, and as a result they can teach us something about marketing. I bet if you had asked me ten or twenty years ago what the most popular monster in the world would be, I would have been sorry that zombies are what they are for want of a better term, but that says something by the way.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an expert on zombies and have never had to fight a hungry horde of them, but it doesn't take an expert to see that there are at least five zombie companies in parallel. What you may not realise is that zombies can actually teach us something about small businesses. At first glance, zombies seem like mindless carnivorous creatures, much like nightmare zombies.
Next time you watch The Walking Dead and see zombies, think not of brainless walkers, but of the creatures that have driven modern marketing practices. Whether you're a creep or a swarm, there's something surprising about applying the best practices of being a zombie when you connect with your customers, expand your reach and close more businesses. These rules for surviving the zombie apocalypse have practical applications for anyone struggling with their business, digital upheaval, or a better career path.
In our opinion, zombies are a prime example of how to improve your marketing techniques. It's understandable that zombies can be stiff - you know they're stiff and cramped, and companies can send mixed messages to their customers.
If zombies are one of the primary focuses and you are not careful you can get into a vicious circle of using the same marketing tactics over and over again. If you can find a place that can swim in an era where zombies you can't find, like a house or a boat, or be sure they can't, you should be able to survive without doing much of anything. If you do things without a plan, this is the safest way to catch the zombie bug, but the contents of the zombie infection should not be excluded.
When it comes to surviving in a zombie apocalypse, content marketing is your best chance to figure out how to play it. Digital marketing teams can help you wake up your audience with tailored content. Stop treating email as zombie marketing and start treating it as your magic sauce.
It would be hard to find anyone who hasn't heard of AMC's hit AMC series The Walking Dead, a show that has become a cultural phenomenon because of life during the zombie apocalypse. As social media becomes a necessity for any successful marketing plan, the show's marketing team has not missed a beat, boasting an impressive following on Twitter and Facebook.
The zombie coffee metaphor speaks to how young tech-driven professionals use a combination of social media and informal offline meetings to pick the brains of those who have become the norm. Starting with documents that offer ideal prospects for outbound teams, then using data to create targeted, short, mobile personal emails and driven introductions, zombie coffee meetings are increasingly leading to qualified leads.
Not a week goes by in our industrial marketing agency without me - CEO, Chief Spokesman and our managing director - taking part in a zombie coffee chat to pick the brains of those I can pick up and turn around. It starts with a simple e-mail request or LinkedIn message to people we don't know or don't know about. The best email marketers tell stories and share industry principles while keeping their tone talkative, not saleable.
Zombies appear in movies, and that's why a lot of people tune in to watch. They are trying to eat people against the will of the zombies, and people will support them. You could argue that this analogy is a bit too close to home, but it seems that big data and ubiquitous Internet tracking are a bit of zombie apocalypse, the way they try to eat your brain and know everything you care about, your privacy and everything you know about your life.
In any case, the zombie story, regardless of its subject matter, is a human story. For marketers, eliminating the zombies for the better is crucial. They are not beautiful creatures like honey badgers, and they don't care.
This proves that zombies are an old-school tactic that is resistant to error. It is as if they have overcome their nature and developed their own will, an issue that moves us on autopilot in our lives, only to wake up in a new world where we need to regain control. The fascination with zombies can be recalled as a six-year-old watching the Night of the Living Dead, preparing for the inevitable zombie apocalypse, and finding and comparing the various things zombies can do to judge who will survive in a particular place.