Ben Franklin once wrote, "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I will understand."
This was proven in a recent Harvard Business School study that showed that a client or prospect is likely to retain only 10% of content that they read or hear. If the content is more visual - watching a video or presentation - the retention rate jumps to 50%. However, if you can get the prospect to truly engage with your content, the retention rate can jump to as high as 90%.
The goal of sales and marketing is simple - rise above the noise and get people to react to your message. Engagement is one the keys toward making this happen.
Getting someone to engage with your brand can take on many variations. It may just mean presenting the content in a unique way that drives the person to physically (or digitally) interact with your content. It can mean message customization and personalization where people are segmented (sometimes to the individual level) and providing targeted and unique content that is more interesting and applicable. It can also include the concept of gamification where people are rewarded (in a variety of ways) for doing things that the brand wants - watching videos, posting comments, etc .
Let's take a look at a few interesting examples of companies that have done this successfully.
Siemens - On-Line Campus Application: www.siemensplmcampus.com
Siemens is typical of many large technical companies - challenged to find ways to creatively market their wide range of products and services. If you explore their primary web site, you'll see that even with the rotating banner images at the top of their main page, their site often feels like a text heavy on-line brochure.
Their PLM (Product Lifecycle Management)) software team wanted to find a way to create a more engaging environment to showcase their B2B software solution - ideally in a way that spoke to the customer and the way their business and people run. What resulted was an "on-line 3D campus" application that helps showcase their products in real world contexts to show how they are used by key stakeholders. Not only do people spend more time on the site, but the site created a more effective tie between marketing and sales.
Microsoft - Office 2010 Upgrade Campaign: http://www.enverdenuden.dk/en
Social Media offers many unique opportunities for marketers looking to personalize and target their messages. Microsoft ran this campaign as a way to demonstrate what the world would be like without MS Office - a fate that was created by you the viewer. By agreeing to connect to Facebook Connect, the video and headlines are actually personalized with information from your profile - images, your school, etc. For the B2B marketers, similar campaigns can be run leveraging LinkedIn like this campaign done for Vestas that targeted C level executives specific Fortune 500 companies.
Saxo Bank - Demand Generation Campaign: http://bit.ly/IYdJSJ
Any effective sales person who is "engaging" with their customer should be listening to their key requirements and modifying their pitch accordingly. In the digital space, companies are more likely to build a single landing page that generically presents their solution or product and leave it to the sales person to qualify and personalize the opportunity at a later time.
However, as Saxo Bank demonstrates, it's possible to take the "engaged salesperson approach" by providing a quick elevator pitch followed by interactive questions or prioritization sliders. As the customer provides more information, the content presented is customized based upon the prospect's interest. Not only does this make the information more applicable, but it provides better qualified information to the sales person.
These types of campaigns, programs, and applications require careful thought about who you're targeting, what unique message you want them to retain or action to take, and how you can rise above the wave of other marketers fighting for mindshare. However, as Ben Franklin realized a long time before the modern advertising age, the results will be worth the effort.