Making Impact on Your Visitors is High Priority

For a decade now, marketers have been focusing more on the visitor experience and user engagement.

Yet the first part of experience and engagement is the impact your content and brand makes on visitors.  You may have some great product shots, a nice-looking webpage, and a couple of great offers. But who cares? Everyone else has the same thing.

The result is bounces and they never come back. You had your chance to make an impact, however your content just didn’t achieve a lasting effect.  So what was missing?

IMPACT, is a multifaceted outcome in the mind of a customer.  It’s an effect you create via your content.

And its role in the customer creation process needs to be respected.

Impact is about emotions. It’s not just amazing visuals. It’s about the full response of your visitors and prospects to prepare them for engagement and purchasing. IMPACT is the first phase of building resonance with visitor’s real desires and values. And as you’ll learn in this post, emotion powers up attention, engagement, and memory.

If the visitor isn’t emotionally affected by your content (which to them is your brand), they will leave. IMPACT helps grab your visitors and keep them long enough for you to get your UVP and messaging across.

IMPACT elevates the rest of your marketing too, and can actually determine whether leads are converted. Those initial seconds, minutes and pages of the visit can generate to a lasting outcome — unforgettability and repeat sales.

IMPACT – Determines Success More than Anything Else

Let that message sink in as you’re planning your marketing budget. Research from Harvard (HBR) showed that emotional impact is a better gauge of future customer value (LTV) than anything else.

Impact Definition: The customer’s state of attention, emotional readiness and openness that they experience when they view your marketing material.

Creating a Shockwave of Attention

IMPACT is a shockwave of attention that puts your product/brand first and foremost in the prospect’s mind. The shockwave clears competition and moves noise out of the way (out of their mind). It’s often part of a blitz marketing promotion because it clears a path for your brand to enter, which puts your product top-of-mind.

“It is the feelings we evoke in others that have a true, lasting impact. A feeling of inspiration, connection or fun create an inner resonance, memory and desire for more” — Vince Gowmon

What Kinds of Content Pieces Generates Impact?

There are many drivers of IMPACT, and any one of them might work. And this is more than just images and web design. You may want to pack in a cluster of impact drivers to reinforce the value of your content piece and offer. Because it’s not easy to engage and motivate people online. That first 30 seconds is really important.

Here’s a few items to use:

• a hook which is a statement, visual, slogan, promise or image that visitors believe is strongly associated with their ambitions, values and beliefs
• a first paragraph of text that draws them further into the idea you’re presenting
• a solution or claim that looks like it could be successful
• relevant images that tie your promise to their real-life needs
• blogs, pdfs, videos, charts, and inserted social posts which reinforce your brand strength
• a topic people currently are interested in and would like to promote further conversation on
• has proof/support from an authority they recognize and respect in it
• a major, recent news story with commentary that supports your product/idea/brand

What About Visuals?

There’s no doubt visuals such as photos, illustrations, charts, videos, color palettes, logos, videos, and design elements are a part of the IMPACT equation. Videos tap into the whole non-verbal realm and grab more complete attention. Visuals increase comfort and hold attention.

Visuals are their own language. They lend support to the text message and give it color. Building a branded visual theme can help convey credibility, trust, and stimulate the visitor. It builds a consistent message and avoid confusion.

Great visuals are shared more and this encourages others to link to your website. Definitely pursue a relevant brand visual design with your graphic designer, after getting guidance from a branding consultant. The visuals must be right or they can actually create the opposite effect.

Below is the homepage video of a property management website. A stunning and unexpected view of Los Angeles, California gets the point across about beauty, and worry-free relaxation, with lots of properties in view.

Sometimes it’s just simple things that can do it. In this graphic below from Oda Creative, the font overlaps the image. That’s enough to create distinctiveness, suggest sophitication and elevate the site beyond millions of competitors.

Visitors Buy Your Brand

There’s an important note about impact and viral sharing potential — it’s that branding is powerful.

In essence, people don’t buy your product, service, marketing piece or whatever — they buy your brand. In essence, impact is the power in your brand.

Try to sell anything with a shoddy brand, you’ll see how the difficulty increases. Your brand affects whether visitors will be willing to be impacted and listen further to your messages. The brand is the giant standing behind everything your business appears to be. Your brand is your UVP and your credibility, and if they don’t like it, nothing you say and do will matter.

Top brands drown out any new competitor entering the marketplace because they’ve established IMPACT.

Big marketing results are often achieved through brand power itself, and they can sometimes launch content that isn’t particularly strong. Check out most blogs/content from big successful brands, and you’ll see they’re thin, slanted, and not very helpful.

For your SMB company, you must create impact, be memorable to overcome their advantage. Keep producing great content and over time, you can build that impactful brand. Then you’ll find the same content you’re producing will be 3 times more effective — accepted and engaged by customers because now it’s wrapped in a brand they like.

Creating Positive Values and Associations

It’s what your content conjures up in the visitor’s mind that grabs them. Your content connects them right away to something powerful they feel or believe in. This is building the connection between your offer/brand and their ideals.

Buyer’s emotions are their first response to your brand, but also their attitude after getting to know your company and product. This means the impact we really want isn’t a 7-second effect, but instead, something that’s profound and lasting. After all, that’s what it takes to win a customer now.

Companies who Make IMPACT

One example of impact is shown by Hotel La Jolla’s website. The visuals are stunning, and the first heading says “The Seashore is Calling.” That connects the hotel to the ideal vacation experience for La Jolla lovers. They quickly back that up with visuals of comfort, sumptuous food, and expansive Pacific Ocean views. It’s all about luxury relaxation in La Jolla California, one of the most beautiful locales on the west coast.

Castello di Amorosa in Napa Valley, USA shocks its visitors with a video of a stunning, authentic Tuscan castle in California’s wine country. It presents the culture and experience of wine better than any website in the world. Travelling visitors get the full experience from wine tasting to hotel rooms to tours of the castle’s authentic Italian architecture and vast wine storage rooms all built in stone.

The opportunity to visit and explore a castle definitely keeps your attention. However, it’s not just the initial impact but instead the prolonged emotional engagement with winery features packaged in an amazing branded experience.

IMPACT Powers Your Customer’s Journey

And there’s more they want. To take your company seriously they need to be emotionally impacted — registering a strong influence at a gut level on their attention and intent. This is well beyond web design and visuals. It’s the immediate and lasting impact of the value proposition they receive. It makes yours the most significant and unforgettable solution, making others fade away.

It’s not an easy topic to comprehend which is why most avoid it. IMPACT is different for each type of product category, customer profile and channel so it requires some mental dexterity. However, this gentle introduction should help you move forward on using IMPACT to create many marketing benefits for your campaigns.

10 Key Benefits of Making IMPACT

1. creates strong attention and more receptiveness to your unique value proposition
2. overcomes prospect’s resistance, prejudices, and misguided beliefs about products
3. eliminates noise, distracting messages that erode your sales conversion process
4. generates substantial long-term loyalty and sales revenue (LTV)
5. increases engagement
6. keeps you top of mind longer
7. lowers cost of marketing and lead generation
8. creates brand ambassadors who will promote your company
9. helps you compete against wealthy, market-leader brands
10. puts you on a path to market leadership

Heightening the Receptiveness to Your Value Proposition

It’s exciting, significant, timely content and promises that grab them — which opens them to your pitch and propels them toward purchase.

Creating an emotional impact on visitors means understanding what your visitor’s experience is, what they want, what’s missing, and what will make them open to your unique value proposition.

Removing Material that Detracts from Impact

If you’ve done everything right, but have some words, images, messages or features the visitor doesn’t like, and it can lower impact. Customers have ingrained attitudes and preconceptions cloaked in negative emotions. That can cost you leads. Find out what these preconceptions are (sales team may have insights) or what they don’t like. If you fail to do this, you won’t get past their iron curtain to engage them in conversation.

As you prepare your impact strategy, you’ll realize you need to get all of your materials optimized and synchronized. A poorly described offer, bad web design, hard-to-read font, low-quality photos, lack of charts and proof, and a fuzzy goal for the customer can sabotage everything. A lack of authority or popularity can be one such detractor. Make sure you and your brand are credible and likable.

Anything that detracts from IMPACT could ruin the lead. Let’s be perfectionists!

In this graphic, HBR shows how uniqueness, confidence, comfort, joy, security, and belonging play into choices. These deep-seated needs along with urgency, significance, hope, awe, and exhilaration and more drive purchase decisions.

How do You Generate Emotional Impact?

Be the ultimate solution or provider. Be the most significant. Demonstrate that and showcase it in a way they can enjoy. Examine your competitor’s welcoming of their visitors and how they generate a wonderful experience for them.

Yes, prospects have a vision of who can fulfill their pains and needs and you need to embody those characteristics. You’re starting with what the market respects and wants first, then through your messaging, show how you’re much better than their current ideal.

Don’t Follow Competitors

If you do what most companies do with the “here’s our stuff” promotion, they will leave. Here’s our stuff may only work for well known companies that already have a well established brand, or for big companies who are leveraging the “big corporation promise” — the big money and a slick product backs up their ability to deliver (eg. The new Apple iPhone, or the New Disney Cruise Ship experience).

12 Key Assets that Build Emotional Impact:

• professional quality website design that makes visitors feel comfortable
• excellent marketing pages that lay out services and value clearly
• excellent graphics, visual data, informative blogs, interesting stories, relevant photos enhance the experience
• a personalized, unique value proposition that is transparent and clearly presented
• what you say and how you say it — the copywriting voice that speaks to them
• choosing the right benefits to focus on and how easy it is for them to respond
• services are aligned to each of the prospect’s pain points
• build credibility, accomplishments, credentials, staff, other clientele you’ve served
• case studies, ebooks, surveys, research, interviews
• transparency about you and your staff and how their experience supports your offer
• company purpose clearly stated (why you do what you do)
• links to websites that validate you or your company

What’s Your Wow Factor?

Understand the exact impact you want to make and the emotions you’re trying to stimulate. What’s your WOW factor? Why are they impressed? Why are they emotionally invested?

Could it be a statement, a quote from a customer, a splashy photo or video, a new feature, or a funky design?

Credibility, Trust, Significance

Credibility is important. They may be impressed with your consultancy or travel company, but if your credibility is lacking, the impact will be reduced.

Online, a high-quality, slick but conservative website generally equates to trustworthiness and credibility for most visitors. Brand trustmarks don’t work well anymore because they’ve been us d by scammers. The size of your company, key staff’s skills and experience, and how solutions are slickly presented can help register strong impact.

Redesign your content marketing strategy using new content, case studies, and highly informative and helpful content. Rewrite employee bios, show accomplishments, and perhaps consider hiring new talent to give your significance a big boost.

With a focus on high impact, engaging and helpful content, I know your digital marketing strategy will be impacted when you bring me on your team. Call Gord now at 416 998-6246.