Tag: likeonomics
Are old school ‘useful links’ pages good for Likeonomics?
In the olden days millions of website owners included a Useful Links page on their site, full of handy links to interesting and relevant places.
Then the practice faded away as people realised perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to artlessly send valuable visitors off-site.
But has the advent of Likeonomics, the new marketing theory from Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargava which says it benefits businesses to be human, made Useful Links pages relevant again? If you want to give your brand a Likeonomics-focused boost, it might be a sensible way to help showcase your business’s human side.
A links page is probably most relevant to small businesses, whose owners have a higher personal profile than the owners of big corporates.
Take me. As a freelance writer I’m an individual selling my skills. An outbound links page seems like a cool way to get my personality across without creating a blog roll, which for a business site feels a bit too ‘in your face’.
Obviously you need to exercise common sense. If you’re a kitten-hating BNP member and rabid climate change sceptic who’s hell bent on riot, anarchy and chaos, you’re more likely to drive people away than win friends and influence people. But a page of links to useful, relevant, fun websites can help you express who you are without resorting to overt trumpet blowing or an excess of self-aggrandising copy.
Bear in mind that Likeonomics isn’t about just looking the part. It’s based on genuine honesty, the real deal. So you’re missing the point if you fill your links page with friendly, appealing stuff when in actuality you’re nothing more than a greedy, amoral, hard-faced hard-sell whore with a customer service record Al Qaeda would be proud of.
If you can honestly position your business as responsible, kind, authentic, helpful, unselfish, engaging and generally delightful, a percentage of site visitors will respond positively. And in today’s wobbly economic climate, every little commercial advantage is worth having.
I’ll be setting up a useful links page later this week and will report back on whether it depresses response, has a positive effect or does absolutely bugger all for my visitor, responder and conversion rates, time spent on site and whatnot.
If you want to know more about Likeonomics, here’s a link to an excellent article about it: Likeonomics: How to make your brand more believable. Or go to http://www.rohitbhargava.com/ and get the story straight from the horse’s mouth.
PS. Rohit’s book ‘Likeonomics’ is in the shops from 22nd May 2012.
A great marketing quote to kick-start 2012
Thanks to Marc Mathieu, Senior VP of Marketing at Unilever, for his excellent Marketing Week quote about achieving marketing success in today’s tricky economic climate:
“Success requires people who are human beings first and marketers second to do marketing for people who are human beings first and foremost, not just consumers”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Happy New Year!
The truth always sells…
Direct marketing genius David Ogilvy maintained that the truth always sells.
If your marketing campaigns are masterpieces of exaggeration and bullshit, you’re not doing your business any favours. Especially right now, with Likeonomics a huge marketing hit and the general public fed up the the back teeth with being misled.
Be angelic instead. Here’s how to survive the marketing minefield and take your competitors by storm:
- if you’re a one man band, say so. Don’t pretend to be a big business when you’re small
- if you’ve made a mistake, admit it. Research proves honesty is wonderfully disarming in a marketing context
- speak plain English, creating an appealingly human tone of voice to help make your business more likeable
- drop the small print and cut out caveats. Be loud and proud instead, turning negatives into positives
- write plain language Terms and Conditions. Don’t settle for the crappy legalese most businesses use. Plain English T&C are a legal requirement in Britain too, so keeping it simple helps you stay on the right side of the law
- display your street address, land line telephone number, limited company number and registered address, VAT number etc on your home or contact page to promote openness and comply with EU distance selling regulations
- cut out the gumph, removing unnecessary verbiage to make your site and marketing materials leaner, cleaner and more user/search engine friendly
What is ‘likeonomics’?
I love this. It’s the next big thing. And unlike most next big things, it’s a beauty. Likeonomics is predicted to take marketers by storm. And quite right too. So what’s it all about?
According to its inventor Rohit Bhargarva, “We all want to do business with people we like and choose products that we have personal affinity with”. Likeonomics taps into this simple yet revolutionary insight by consciously adding ‘likeability’ into the marketing mix for the first time.
Where has likeonomics come from?
Likeability has always had a role in marketing success. But it suits the Zeitgeist perfectly. Times have been tough for years. The economic landscape is bleak. Our trust in the way the world works has taken a massive knock thanks to the banking crisis. We’re feeling wobblier than we were before things went dog-shaped. We want reassurance. We value genuine, warm human connections and commercial relationships with firm foundations. We want to be able to trust organisations not to let us down.
At the same time the MPs’ expenses scandal knocked our waning faith in politicians into a cocked hat. We’re sick to death of never getting a straight answer. Our appetite for a ‘say it like it is’ approach is stronger than ever.
How do you do make your communications (therefore your brand) more likeable?
Bhargarva gives three clear crystal clear clues:
- total honesty
- simplicity
- being human
Why do I love likeonomics so much?
As a freelance copywriter I’ve always erred towards the ‘no bullshit’ school of marketing communication. It’s never a good idea to pretend you’re a big business when you’re small. I always recommend sole traders use the first person on their website rather than ‘we’. I believe in being honest and straightforward because I know it has the power to disarm and differentiate at a fundamental human level. I ditch jargon, legalese, small print and any form of arse-covering, turning negatives into positives instead of hiding important information. I write the way people speak instead of sounding like a corporate manual. And I always use plain English.
Do I consciously use likeonomics to give my clients’ copy even more oomph and help boost their profits?
You bet!
