A Small Amount of Content Can Have a Big Impact
In which I find some examples of why it doesn’t take a lot of words to engage with your customers.
I always get a kick of moments like I had while working with a client this week. That moment that you see something they have done with their content that makes the lives of their customers easier. Often those moments are just small things that I hadn’t seen anyone else do, but that can make a big difference.
This week’s ‘what a great idea’ moment involved something as simple as an airport code.
We were taking a look at the upcoming events section of the client’s website and I noticed that each event listed also had links to the hotel venue, and the code of the nearest airport - right there on the highest level notification of the event.
I go to a lot of industry events and conferences, and two of the top items on my list of criteria around attending are:
Where is it being held?
How easy will it be to travel there?
And in the vast majority of cases I have to hunt through the event website to find that information as it's often buried several pages deep.
Just including something as small as the code for the nearest airport (an icon and three letters) on every listing immediately removes a lot of potential frustration and makes the decision making easier.
A small piece of content with a big impact on the customer experience.
Talking or airports, I was also impressed by SouthWest this week while waiting for my flight out of Baltimore (BWI).
I wasn’t flying with them, but they did have several gates on the opposite side of the terminal from where my flight was departing. At the time I was there most of those gates were unoccupied. And that’s what caught my attention.
SouthWest used a combination of the digital signage at inactive gates and fun on-brand content (like the one above) to engage passers-by and bring them into their space.
As I watched I noticed people smiling and stopping in the SouthWest gate to either recharge their phones, or as one other message suggested, recharge themselves by stretching out.
Even better about every 30 to 40 minutes I noticed that a SouthWest employee would walk past those gates and engage anyone who was there in conversation. If they were flying SouthWest they would help with flight and gate information, if on other airlines they would make sure they were comfortable and answer any questions about the airport - like location of a nearby coffee shop.
Great customer service, and a great way to drive brand engagement and loyalty. All done by leveraging some existing signage and a few words of content.
A small amount of content with a big impact.
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I had a fun time on the Content Matters podcast earlier this week chatting about applying storytelling techniques to customer-facing content.
Thanks to all that watched the live feed.
A fully edited video and audio version will be available soon and I’ll be posting links here and on my various social media channels when they are available.
Thanks to Barb Mosher Zinck for being a great host and asking some excellent questions, and to Ingeniux Corporation for sponsoring.
Alan
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Weekly Thought
Marketing content isn’t (or shouldn’t be) aimed at an organization, it’s aimed at people within that organization. Good business marketing is about giving people information that helps them do their jobs better or makes their lives easier.
Content Discovery Workshops - Now taking bookings for Q3/24
THE CONTENT POOL is offering a special discount on our two-day Content Discovery Workshops for newsletter subscribers and readers.
We are now taking bookings for Q3/24, and we wanted to make sure that as a newsletter reader you got an early opportunity to lock-in a date.
As a reminder during these on-site in-person workshops workshop we will:
Develop your content vision
Identify opportunities to leverage your content in new ways
Map out the path to transform your enterprise content.
It will be followed by two deliverables:
Key observations document
High-level content transformation plan
A quick overview of the standard workshop format can be found at https://the-content-pool.com/workshops/
If you would like more details, or you like to discuss reserving a date for yourself and your team to benefit from a Content Discovery workshop, just email us at ajp@4jsgroup.com
In The Bookstore
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Till next time - have fun paddling in The Content Pool.
Alan Porter
The Content Pool™ is a division of the 4Js Group LLC