Lottery marketing, like its gaming counterpart, is easy to identify and can be just as addicting.
Put simply, lottery marketing is putting a few dollars and lots of time into every marketing related activity you can think of and hoping, fingers crossed, that one of these activities will work. And they do, just often enough to keep you chasing the next marketing guru idea or content marketing fad.
The rise of social media has decreased the odds that your lottery marketing strategy will work. You may not be spending the kind of money you did with old-school advertising, but your time-sink factor has risen by 1000% because social media outreach is a hungry beast that needs to be constantly and consistently fed to provide even a small return on your investment.
Lottery marketing does not have to be fatal. Here are the top five traps of Lottery Marketing that you need to avoid:
Produce. Produce. Produce. Content and more content: A never ending torrent of content and social media postings. That kind of fire, ready, aim philosophy is the premise of lottery marketing. It will cause you to latch onto the latest hot marketing idea or gimmick without asking important, fundamental business questions like: What is the focus of our content? Is this really the best distribution channel for us? How does this help us reach our goals?
Over Amplification. A second cousin to overproduction, over amplification sends your content out through every possible distribution channel or customer touchpoint in a frantic effort to “get some results” in likes, shares, tweets, etc. Imagine the gambler racing from Mega Millions to Scratchers to Super Lotto Plus to get the winning ticket and, well, you get the idea. The trouble with lottery marketing is that it works just well enough to keep you hooked on the frantic activity.
No Target Audience. That’s lottery marketing in its truest form. This philosophy believes that content marketing is really just a “numbers game.” So, your team sends out thousands of emails, populates your social communities with tons of content, crosses its collective fingers and hopes your number comes up.
Wrong Target Audience. Targeting the wrong audience can be even more expensive than having no target because you are courting people who don’t need or want your services. If you can’t clearly state who your audience is, what your value is, and why they will buy from you rather than someone else (in 25 words or less) you’ve got a targeting problem.
Spending Without Tracking. Gamblers never want to look at their losses because the next one will score big. A content marketing lottery player will “double down” on the production engine, spend big on systems, tools and techniques without ever checking their metrics or investing in an analytics dashboard. Don’t let that be your team. Track your results so you can measure your ROI with confidence.
The best way to avoid the trap of Lottery Marketing is to have a content marketing strategy, process and implementation plan in place and stick with it. It’s easier than you might think, and it will save you time and money in the long run.
What’s your story? Are you a Lottery Marketing victim? Or have you got a solid content marketing strategy to share? Please comment and let us know.