We had an amazing opportunity this week to attend a crash course by one of our mentors Titan, a veteran in Growth Hacking and Social Media Marketing. Titan began by getting us to break down the basics of marketing. He posed a question that encouraged us to consider the tenets of advertising. What is the main objective for launching ad campaigns? The first thing that comes to my mind is the word, manipulation. Whether an ad is trying to convince you to buy something through fear, happiness, love, sadness, “the fear of missing out”, also known as FOMO, they are all attempts to elicit emotional responses. The take away here was,
“The stronger the appeal to your target audience’s emotions, the more likely they are to take action”
Besides diving into the psychological aspects of marketing, Titan taught us about the few most common types of advertising platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads. Important to note, Google ads are intent-based while Facebook ads are interest based. To run effective ads we have got to determine which track suits our needs respectively. Additionally, we were given valuable tips for running ads on social media platforms and direct email marketing to maximize our budget in hopes to acquire customers. Our primary goal is to keep acquisition costs at the minimum through well-planned ad placements. With this intention, identifying our target consumers and their behaviors are critical to the success of our advertisements.
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Another crash course we had this week was conducted by our coach and mentor, Fred, a Thinking Coach from Think Solutions, on Effective Persuasion. Very much like designing our ad campaign, our ability to influence and persuade through investor pitches requires us to be tactful. We covered the basics of using the power of emotions to convince our audience to act on our message.
Key points:
- Establish relevance → Create trust → Identify loss or gains
- Introducing a loss typically drives people more than gains
- Give people a call to action
- Presenting your solution first is the most common approach, however, it is not the most effective way to present. It is largely seen as ego-driven
- Effective flow = Relevance →Pains → Benefits → The Solution
Equally important, Fred also provided some tips on deck designs. The most overlooked component of putting together slides is text layout and spacing. Merely adjusting character and line spacing can have adverse effects on how a presentation is perceived by the audience. For some of us who are not adept with the fundamentals of visual design, the topics covered by Fred this week are invaluable indeed.
Till next week.
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