Cadence - It’s All About Timing

Part three in the 4C’s of Brand Messaging introduction series.

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“Create another flow”, “add an email blast”, “more social media posts!” All the things we do to keep the content engine humming. Sometimes it feels like the only way to compete in this saturated marketplace is to saturate more than the competition. In reality, we’re not only creating heaps of digital pollution, we’re at risk of turning customers off. The difference between being a brand people love and a lifeless e-commerce funnel is just a drip-campaign away.

It’s all blah blah blah until we’ve actually got something new, something relevant, or something interesting to say. Think back to all those work meetings with the guy who just had to ‘contribute’ his 2-cents, no matter what. The meaningless piling on, bringing nothing to the table, just wasting your precious time and attention. Now think about all the brands doing this exact same thing, to millions of people, who aren’t being paid to listen.

No one really cares about what we’re saying. Aside from the slight chance they see a relevant personal benefit. What if all the pushy emails only encourage people to click the unsubscribe button? That our social media posts are so frequent and all over the map that customers just end up confused about what our brands stand for. When cadence drives content, the messages come out forced and everyone suffers.

The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.

The goal of cadence is to establish conversational rhythm. Proactive cadence sets tone and reinforces brand attributes, while reactive cadence scrambles to catch up.

Cadence should be used to create, meet, and occasionally exceed audience expectations. This is no different from how we communicate in our personal lives. For example, what’s the right cadence for that phone call with great aunt Milly? Every day, once a week, once a month? How often do we actually want that conversation to happen? Achieving proper cadence is the difference between picking up the phone, and pretending you’re not home.

We’ll explore more in the final installment of the introduction to the 4C’s of Brand Marketing, Content.

Find me at: www.njmclain.com

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Content - More than a Sum of Parts

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Channels are the New Practice Areas