Chapter 7
Create Messages That Resonate
Communications in recent years have been transitioning, from rational features and benefits that marketers promoted to include more context, emotional content, and imagery that customers and prospects desire. This evolution is an important reason why social media listening has begun playing a larger role in message creation: to generate insights for communications that resonate with, and within, customers and prospects at a deep level. Harvesting and analyzing conversations around product categories, specific products and services, and issues of all sorts can unmask the motives, drivers, emotions, and images that move people today. Resonant messages help marketers and advertisers move away from old-school “tell and sell” toward connecting, engaging, and building their businesses—as we'll see shortly.
Winning Plays That Create Resonant Messages
Four winning plays emerged from our analysis of cases:
- Listen to the people you are interested in, and locate the conversation hubs where they talk about your product, service, or category. These are the places you'll get the strongest and clearest signals. Be specific about whom you listen to, and organize comments, topics, or themes according to groups that are most pertinent to your business (see Chapters 1 and 3 for discussion of these listening research principles). For Harrah's Casino, this meant people considering trips to Las Vegas—particularly their hotel, entertainment, and restaurant properties—as ...
