If you don’t understand these 3 communication principles and 9 creative techniques, your content won’t be popular

The essence of marketing is communication. If the principles and logic of communication are not clearly understood, then no matter how high-quality the content itself is, it will be difficult to gain widespread recognition and dissemination. How can we attract users' attention most effectively? How can we make the content touching? How can we make the content persuasive? These 3 communication principles and 9 creative techniques may give you the answer.

1. Information filter principle: Grasp user attention

In the modern commercial world, consumers are exposed to massive amounts of information every day, but they do not accept all of it. There is an invisible information filter in the brains of consumers. It is like a gate that helps people intercept and filter out irrelevant information and only process and handle the remaining parts to avoid information overload.

As a marketer , you don’t want the information you output to be regarded as useless noise and lose the opportunity to be received and digested by consumers. So, what is the correct posture to allow information to pass through the filter smoothly? I summarized four elements.

1) The relevance of information to people

As Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said: People care more about a dying squirrel on their doorstep than a refugee in Africa. People tend to be more sensitive to information that is highly relevant to themselves and are unwilling to miss it. This is why some copywriting can quickly attract widespread attention and spread, such as "There is a new poison that is popular now, and it may be in your refrigerator", "Putting these things at the bedside will cause you to be grouchy when you wake up", etc. They are all things that consumers are familiar with and are closely related to their lives.

After all, for most people, the bacteria in the refrigerator are indeed more frightening than Kim Jong-un's nuclear bombs. So next time, when you want to write a soft article or plan an event, you might as well look for an entry point that is more relevant to the target audience. Before disseminating, you need to do more homework, fully understand the audience's knowledge and experience, and use them to arouse the audience's attention, so that your information can pass through the bottleneck of the filter more smoothly.

2) Credibility of the information source

This is easy to understand. No matter how many times the beautiful female star in the commercial says to you "XX essence can make your skin spot-free", it is not as good as hearing your best friend say simply "This essence is very effective", especially when you see that she, who is not good-looking, has become much more radiant recently.

The higher the consumer's trust in the source of information, the easier it is for the information to pass through the filter and the greater the chance of influencing consumer behavior. This can also explain why KOLs in vertical fields have an increasing influence on consumers. The WeChat big account "Mr. Bao" can sell out 80 Givenchy handbags with a unit price of 14,900 yuan in 12 minutes. The fundamental driving force is the fans' trust in his aesthetics and character.

3) Novelty of information

Old, mundane information is definitely at the top of the list of things that get blocked by filters. Consumers have a natural response mechanism to the stimulation of new and novel information, which is also the foundation of the news industry. If you were to plan an event for a supermarket chain with the goal of promoting the supermarket brand and attracting more potential consumers, what would you do? Taiwan's PX Supermarket recently launched an alternative fashion show.

White-haired old people replaced the charming models, PX Mart plastic shopping bags replaced the luxury handbags, and simple white T-shirts were printed with interesting copywriting. This time, PX Mart's interpretation of its "aesthetics of life" was more novel and humorous.

4) Ease of use of information

The human brain naturally resists complex information because it costs more to process it. If you don’t believe it, ask yourself, when you are faced with two pieces of information at the same time, “the lambda phenomenon and Bose-Einstein condensation of liquid helium” and “read 100 years of physics history in 100 seconds”, which one will your brain involuntarily resist?

2. Psychological needs principle: Make communication hit the mark

Communication experts believe that there are three main types of social and psychological needs of the public:

If you want your content to be more spreadable, you must first plan its function: what kind of consumer needs can it meet? For different types of consumer groups, which psychological needs are most needed or easiest to satisfy?

1) Cognitive needs

People obtain information, knowledge and recognition through the media, which essentially means they are constantly improving their understanding of the world and themselves. If your content is to meet the user's cognitive needs, then the key is to have "information increments", that is, to tell consumers some information they didn't know before.

So how can content attract users’ attention? It's not enough to just create suspense. If your content wants to meet the user's cognitive needs, a practical technique is "clear interest points + creating suspense". "Clear interest points" are very important because it actually tells users that I have a lot of knowledge here, while "creating suspense" tells users that you don't know this knowledge yet. In this way, the user's "curiosity gap" is actually opened, making them curious and interested in acquiring knowledge. For example, content such as "5 iron laws for startup CEOs to select talent" and "99% of new media people are trying to catch the trend, and he used these methods to create the trend" meets the principle of "clear interest points + creating suspense" and can effectively attract the attention of the target audience.

2) Emotional needs

"A survey in the United States in the 1940s found that many housewives listened to radio dramas just to get a chance to cry. Audiences have a strong motivation to satisfy their emotional needs in media contact." (Communication Psychology)

Human emotional needs vary. In fact, people not only pursue pleasant and aesthetic things, but are also fascinated by things that trigger sad emotions. Younger groups like to seek a sense of identity from funny, cute, and sad emotions.

According to a data report released by input method company Kika, the most commonly used Emoji expression by global mobile Internet users in 2016 was the "laughing and crying" expression, which was also the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year 2015. Why is this emoji so popular? The most crucial point is that it is ambiguous and can express a wide range of emotional meanings: crying with laughter, laughing through tears, the helplessness of not knowing whether to laugh or cry, embarrassment, self-mockery, crying because of stupidity... It can be called a panacea for online social interaction .

In the current marketing environment, users have long been accustomed to a single emotional expression, while more complex and subtle emotional expressions can resonate with them more and are more likely to trigger more interpretation, discussion and dissemination.

For example, the Japanese casual clothing brand Lowrys has shot a series of short films, the protagonists of which are a group of nervous and slightly weird girls. They do the following actions: swimming on stones, spinning wildly on the streets, walking backwards in front of temples, dancing strangely on bridges... subverting the image of delicate, elegant and perfect girls in past fashion advertisements. However, it is these carefree girls who easily remind people of a silly friend around them, or even themselves. This is exactly the emotion that the brand wants to convey, to impress consumers with interesting, cute and a little weird emotions.

3) The need for social integration

Social integration needs are simply social needs. Consumers strengthen their connections with family, friends, colleagues, etc. by sharing information. Content related to horoscopes, food, entertainment, jokes, and comedy are often used for this purpose. If the content can meet the user's needs for social integration, it is more likely to be widely disseminated.

3. Weak stimulus principle: improving the persuasiveness of content

Human senses can only respond to stimuli within a certain range, which is called the "sensory threshold". For example, it is difficult for you to feel a speck of dust falling on your face because it is beyond your sensory threshold.

So, for marketers, the more stimulating the content is to users, the more persuasive it will be to consumers? It is true that if the content is too weak or lasts too short a time, it will be difficult to attract the audience's attention. However, if the content is too strong or lasts too long, exceeding the limit that the audience can bear, it will instead trigger adverse reactions in users.

Since last year, the world's top advertisers, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Coca-Cola , have begun to cut the number of creative agencies and advertising budgets because they have realized that too intensive advertising bombardment will put consumers in a state of "saturation", which will reduce the input-output ratio.

From another perspective, in an era of information overload and increasingly savvy consumers, it is becoming increasingly difficult to generate and exert strong stimuli. At this time, weak stimuli become a more effective means of persuasion. For copywriting, using a calmer, gentler, and more objective tone of voice to persuade consumers allows them to make more rational choices between the contradictions between their existing ideas and new ideas. The essence of this strategy is to give users the initiative to change their attitudes.

At the same time, the formulation of stimulation and persuasion strategies cannot be generalized, but should be based on the attributes of the target audience. Depending on the target group, persuasion strategies can be divided into two types: one-sided persuasion and two-sided persuasion. This strategy was first proposed by American psychologist Hovland and others in an experimental study conducted for the U.S. Army Department during World War II. Its effectiveness mainly depends on the education level and experience of the information recipient.

1) One-sided persuasion

"One-sided persuasion means presenting only the position that the communicator agrees with, keeping silent about opposing viewpoints, or simply emphasizing their shortcomings and flaws."

For those audiences with lower education and less experience, one-sided persuasion is more effective than two-sided persuasion and is easier for them to accept. If you tell them the opposite point of view, they will be confused and even misunderstand your content. For example, if you want to sell the Redmi phone to this group of people, you don’t need to compare it with OPPO and vivo in terms of various parameters, nor do you need to expose Xiaomi’s shortcomings to appear objective. You can just say that it is fast, saves money, and is durable.

2) Two-sided persuasion

“Double-sided persuasion means that the disseminated information contains both positive and negative positions and viewpoints, acknowledging that the opposing viewpoint has merits, but cleverly and tactfully expressing that one’s own viewpoint is superior.”

This method of persuasion is suitable for audiences with a high level of education and rich social experience. By making both positive and negative statements, your content will appear more objective and more credible. Taking Xiaomi mobile phone as an example, when facing users and enthusiasts in first- and second-tier cities, they will bring out a lot of detailed evaluation content, and make comprehensive and detailed comparisons with competitors from multiple angles such as operating system, processor, lens, battery, appearance, etc., and convince users with rational facts.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

This article was compiled and published by @乌玛小曼(Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map