Back in the ’70s, Carly Simon’s song “Anticipation” was a hit…and a commercial. It was the soundtrack to a Heinz ketchup ad, married to video of ketchup slowly coming out of the bottle. It was the embodiment of the phrase “good things come to those who wait.” And it is this concept that is at the heart of the 2 lessons we can learn from technology and marketing giants Google and Apple.
1. Create Anticipation – Creating anticipation can be an effective way of generating interest in your business or product.
When Google rolls out a new product, they talk about it, then slowly send out invites…creating a sense of anticipation as users clamor for those coveted invites. This is how they introduced G-mail. Those who were part of the first group of invites would talk about how wonderful it was, and their friends would lobby to get one of the limited number of invites users had at their disposal.
Apple has created the same kind of culture but on a grander scale. Apple users are highly loyal and devoted customers and eagerly look forward to every new announcement from the company. They speculate on what new products will be introduced and scour the Internet for clues. And when the new iPhone or Mac computer is introduced, the count down the days until they can actually purchase the item. It’s almost as if they would buy anything on which Steve Jobs decided to slap the Apple logo.
But this brings us to the second lesson.
2. The payoff must be equal to, or greater than, the anticipation – More often than not, the anticipation associated with a Google or Apple campaign is met with a strong reward. People loved G-Mail and Google Voice, among other things. The iPhone is a smash. But…every once in awhile, there seems to be a letdown. While the results are still not in, the day the iPad was announced there was a lot of hoopla, but the talk seems to have died down a bit. Oh, sure, the iPad will probably still sell like hotcakes, but even some of the most dyed in the wool Apple-holics seemed to be underwhelmed.
Not every hit is a home run. And you better believe that Apple and Google will bounce back from any gaffes, either real or perceived, but if we are going to create anticipation, we have to make sure we give our audience the appropriate payoff.
Are you creating anticipation in your marketing plan and use of Social Media? If not, how CAN you create anticipation and keep your customers coming back for more? How can you tap into the marketing genius behind Google and Apple?
