Using Familiarity to Engage a Non-Techie Audience
Most tech companies will be familiar with the technology adoption curve, and understand the struggle of leaping the chasm from getting the early adopters to moving to the mass market.
For tech companies that work with a non-techie audience such as business owners or consumers, struggling to appeal to a wider market can really hinder growth.
One of the ways that successful tech companies overcome the difficulty of getting users to purchase, is by using the concept of familiarity.
Familiarity is about taking something from a person’s daily life, and using it to bridge the gap to make your tech less intimidating or scarey.
We Can Learn From Apple
Apple and the release of the iPod is a great example of using something familiar to bridge the gap to get consumers to buy in to the new iPod.
The iPod advertising campaigns did not feature many details about the device, only using the simple strapline “1000 songs in your pocket”, but the advertising sure showed off the music.
Music is something familiar, we all have our favourite artists and a majority of people enjoy listening regularly.
I’m an 80s music fan, if I hear the sultry tones of Depeche Mode, my ears pick up and I start paying attention. It’s something I’m familiar with, something I easily recognise.
Apple used this in their ads, showing silhouettes of people dancing to some great tunes, and then later showcasing popular artists like Eminem and Coldplay. In some ads, the iPod is barely shown.
By using music as the main selling point, it made the iPod a little less scary. The audience thinks “ah ok, I love this song. I know it well. Looks like this iPod might be a good thing to play all my favourite tunes on”.
The Many Forms of Familiarity
Familiarity can be created in so many different ways, and it doesn’t even have to be exciting. The customer just needs to know that you ‘get’ them.
Good ways to bring familiarity to your content:
- What do your customers like to do? What are their goals and aspirations? How can your tech fit into their lives and make it better?
- Show customers, you understand their issues and put yourself in their shoes. What are their pain points every day?
- Use examples of people like them. For example, if you want to market to accountants – make sure your imagery and text talk directly to them, about their work and their issues. Also, show stats and testimonials about their industry that back up your argument.
- What benefits can you add? For example, I just popped on to the Airtable site, the platform is designed to help organise your business, and spotted a blog “5 tips & tricks to cut supply chain chaos with Airtable” – this is great, they are showing they understand that supply chains can be messy and that their product can solve the pain.
Adding familiarity does need some legwork, as it means that you need to understand your audience and really get to the crux of what their life is like.
The result of this will be better performing content and marketing, plus if your customer really understands your product it’ll probably reduce customer service enquires too!
You may also like
