{"id":114499,"date":"2015-11-10T13:30:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/sex-sells-but-so-do-cats-content-marketing-lessons\/"},"modified":"2024-12-23T00:36:35","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T05:36:35","slug":"sex-sells-but-so-do-cats-content-marketing-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/creative\/sex-sells-but-so-do-cats-content-marketing-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"Sex Sells\u2026but so do Cats! Content marketing lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote recently about the most important thing in content\u00a0marketing still being <\/span>reaching and persuading people<\/span><\/a>. Sometimes acknowledging that as a primary focus can make it awkward pitching ideas; for agencies pitching to clients or for clients pitching to their upper management. <\/span>Why?<\/span><\/i> Because people enjoy and engage with things that are easy to write off as trivial. Because as people we often are trivial. We like silly jokes, we like cute animals, and we\u2019re not averse to looking at someone attractive.<\/span><\/p>\n

Why embrace the trivial?<\/b><\/h2>\n

The thing is, nobody wants to be the first one to suggest making use of any of these observations, for fear of seeming trivial themselves. However, understanding what content might make your audience tick and how to leverage it isn\u2019t trivial. That phrase, \u201csex sells\u201d, comes from the advertising industry and Hollywood learning from each other over the years. That made sense – they both had to be able to get an audience\u2019s attention and to get them to part with their hard earned cash.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>What\u2019s the digital equivalent? Well, nobody\u2019s saying your brand has to turn into Buzzfeed\u2026 but it probably wouldn\u2019t hurt to take a look at what they\u2019re doing right and seeing how your brand could learn from it:<\/span><\/p>\n

Make your content easy to read – put it in a list<\/b><\/h2>\n

\"Buzzfeed<\/p>\n

Buzzfeed blazed a trail for oddly numbered list articles and it\u2019s a trend that\u2019s still being followed today. Why? Because even once the \u2018fashionability\u2019 of the approach wore off, it just makes sense – it taps into what are people looking for in content.<\/span><\/p>\n

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  • Value<\/b>: If somebody\u2019s gone to the trouble of putting together 23 different examples of something, that does represent a certain level of value.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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    • Readable<\/b>: The web is full of weighty tomes written by top academics\u2026 but most of us mere mortals would struggle to read them. When information is broken down into small chunks it\u2019s much easier. With lists you know <\/span>exactly <\/span><\/i>what you\u2019re getting!<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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      • Relatable: <\/b>Most of us have worked in retail at some point, and I\u2019m sure we all had things we <\/span>wished<\/span><\/i> we could say to customers. Even if we\u2019re the rare type who haven\u2019t, we\u2019ve all been customers. Who <\/span>wouldn\u2019t <\/span><\/i>want to know what retail staff <\/span>secretly<\/span><\/i> want to say?<\/span><\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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        • Entertaining: <\/b>Let\u2019s face it, there\u2019s nothing we\u2019re going to learn from the example article, but there\u2019s a good chance it\u2019ll make us laugh. Even utility blogs can make readers chuckle!<\/span><\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
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