![\"Note](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/note1-clean-1024x565.png\")
<\/p>\nEvery few weeks for the last three months, I’ve received a type of\u00a0email that I hate to get. The emails all\u00a0contain a message like, “I think you have a typo on your site.”<\/p>\n
The first time I got a\u00a0mail like this, I went into full response mode . You know the feeling –\u00a0elevated heart rate, embarrassment, self-castigation, etc.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But on a re-read of the mail, I realized what the sender flagged wasn’t a typo at all. Rather, it was an inside joke, a meme to be specific – a reference the reader didn’t get.<\/p>\n
Allow me a brief pause to share the “typo” pointed out by our visitor. It is an in-page\u00a0headline on our site introducing a matrix of\u00a0social channels we analyze in our product.<\/p>\n
![\"Our](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/old-channels-1024x713.png\")
<\/p>\n
The headline was a play on the “all your base” meme<\/a>, born of a bad translation from\u00a0the\u00a0\u00a01991 video game, Zero Wing. You can find “all your base” in everything\u00a0from signs to\u00a0EDM remixes<\/a>\u00a0and more<\/a>.\u00a0“All your base” is a common meme\u00a0in the programming world. Yet,\u00a0I’ve learned\u00a0that isn’t the case among marketing professionals.<\/p>\n A few weeks after the first mail, I got a second from a site visitor telling me, again, that I might have a typo on my website. Eventually, a third mail came. And a fourth.<\/p>\n Finally, I received an email from a former colleague. She, too, had found my “typo.”<\/p>\n Now that I had the attention of someone whose opinion I trust, I took the opportunity to explain.<\/p>\n I should have expected her concise response, but somehow, I didn’t.<\/p>\n Somehow, her point seemed so obvious when surrounded by so much whitespace. Of course the reference is obscure!<\/p>\n I spend considerable time thinking about\u00a0my audience.\u00a0Yet, I’m usually thinking about what they do at work.\u00a0At least in this case, I’d forgotten to think about my audience in a broader sense,\u00a0as the whole people they are. #MarketingFail<\/p>\n Let me back up for a second. As a founder of Rival IQ, I’ve had either one or both hands into our marketing efforts from day one. I like to think that we’re fun, witty people, and I want our brand to feel fun and witty, too.<\/p>\n I don’t dedicate enough time to ensuring our branding is cheeky on a consistent basis. But\u00a0I do try to have fun every once in awhile, whether that’s in emails, our website, or a live presentation.<\/p>\n I’d love to tell you, as a company, we have an\u00a0up-to-date style guide and messaging framework. \u00a0I’d love to tell you our documents\u00a0guide\u00a0every word we write.<\/p>\n But I can’t.<\/p>\n What I can tell you is we have no real style guide and an\u00a0out-of-date messaging framework. Yet, we do have a diligent\u00a0enough team that we peer review content most of the time.<\/p>\n As I worked\u00a0on our channel matrix, I iterated\u00a0through succinct ways to state the following.\u00a0“We have analytics for all\u00a0the social channels you care about, here in one place.”<\/p>\n “We have all the social channels you…”<\/p>\n “All the social channels…are here…”<\/p>\n ” All the channels are here…”<\/p>\n “All the channels are…belong to you!”<\/p>\n This is clearly\u00a0where my genius lightbulb moment occurred. As a guy with a PhD in Computer Science, a lifetime of nerdom has cursed me.\u00a0Anytime I see the phrase “all the fill-in-the-blank,” I think of the\u00a0Zero Wing meme.<\/p>\n A younger, more stubborn version of me would have fought to keep my (not that clever) headline. It turns out the my younger self was often an idiot. I’ll make no statements about my current self, as this is why blogs have comment sections.<\/p>\n After the concise\u00a0back and forth with my former colleague, it was clear that my obscure reference had to go. Perhaps with a different audience, this would have been a great bit of work.<\/p>\n Rather than try to use this headline\u00a0to do something brilliant, I decided to cut my losses. I went with\u00a0something more direct and clear.<\/p>\n After all, I still have the fun responsibility of writing everyone’s bios on our About page<\/a>. Can you find the pirate?<\/p>\n Let me cut to the chase. You’ll create a better connection with your audience if you do the following two things.<\/p>\n First, you have to understand as much about them as possible. Who are they? Where do they work? How old are they? What causes them pain? What do they do for fun? What is their life experience?<\/p>\n Second, keep everything about your audience in mind when\u00a0communicating with them.<\/p>\n It sounds easy when I say it like that. In the end, this is just one of the many ways in which marketing is hard.<\/p>\n Using obscure references in your marketing is fine. But, you have to do so in a way that\u00a0doesn’t leave your audience thinking less of you in the process. Many of my readers must have thought English wasn’t my first language, at best.<\/p>\n Recently,\u00a0I found a new favorite example of how to use an obscure reference in an unobtrusive way.\u00a0Close.io<\/a>\u00a0uses references from a\u00a0cult-favorite TV series,\u00a0Arrested Development<\/a>, in their homepage screenshots. If you don’t get the reference, the names of people and places don’t distract from the message.\u00a0\u00a0If you do get the message, you’re amused, intriuged, and happy.\u00a0Well done, team.<\/p>\n Have you ever had such a complete miss in your work? Please share. Misery, however temporary, loves company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love when I encounter fun copy where I least expect it. As a marketer, I love to give our audience that gift of unanticipated fun. Yet sometimes my attempts go awry. This was one of those times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,22,26],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"All](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/all-your-base.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Note](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/note2-clean-1024x902.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"My](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/note2-resp-clean-1024x410.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"Final](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/note2-final-clean-1024x289.png\")
<\/p>\nHow Did That Reference End Up on Your Site, Anyway?<\/h2>\n
So, Did You Change It?<\/h2>\n
![\"Before](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/side-by-side-1024x1015.png\")
<\/p>\nWhat Did You Learn? Know Your Audience.<\/h2>\n
![\"Close.io](\"https:\/\/www.rivaliq.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/closeio-1024x938.png\")
<\/p>\n