“If you build it, they will come.”
The famous quote once uttered in the 1989 Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams immediately entered the lexicon of pop culture and has since enjoyed massive staying power over the last 30+ years.
Never mind the fact that the actual quote is “if you build it, he will come.” We can thank the Mandala Effect for that. But I digress.
In the movie, Kevin Costner’s character, Ray, a corn farmer, hears a voice whispering the now-famous quote and has a vision of a baseball diamond where he sees Shoeless Joe Jackson. Ray feels the call to adventure and decides to plow part of his cornfield and build a baseball diamond in its place.
The ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson reappears and asks if some of his ghost buddies can play too. Ray and his wife fall on some hard times and almost lose the farm, but in the end, the call to adventure pays off, and Ray gets some long-awaited closure between him and his father.
The underlying moral of the story is to follow your dreams—no matter how bizarre or misunderstood they are.
As such, the mantra got adopted by business owners and entrepreneurs seeking to find the intestinal fortitude to plow ahead despite hardships and setbacks to see their vision come to fruition as Ray’s did.
And while I admire anyone who’s relentless in pursuing their dreams, I think subscribing to the “if you build it, they will come” mode of operation is insufficient.
This model fails to ask two critical questions:
Once the people come, what will they do when they get here? And why should they come back?
You see, building something is only half the battle.
Creating a Content Experience
As business owners and entrepreneurs, I’m sure you’ve already spent a lot of time answering these questions. Or at least attempting to. You’ve likely put a lot of thought into the UI of your software and spent countless hours thinking about the flow of foot traffic in your shop. And you’ve probably stayed up late at night considering the placement of signage and all the other things that go along with creating positive interactions between your customers and your brand.
So why do so many businesses stop doing those things when it comes to creating content?
Too often, I see websites that lead to nowhere, images on social that lack intention, videos that won’t withstand the test of time, and missed opportunities to go above and beyond for the customer.
For example, I wanted to download a case study the other day. The ad was decent enough, and I was in the market, so I gave this company some of my info. At the very least, I would have expected a pleasant thank you for downloading and a heads up on what to expect next.
But once they got what they wanted from me, there was nothing. I was dumped back on their home page, and oddly…I never got my case study. It probably goes without saying, but I don’t trust that company now. I occasionally see them in my digital world still, but I don’t open their emails, and I just scroll past them on social. Eventually, I’ll unsubscribe, and they’ll give up on showing ads to me.
A missed opportunity on their part. What if, instead, I got:
“Hey, we’re sending your case study to your inbox, but in the meantime, here it is. Oh, and here’s some other content for you to check out too, and if you have any issues, please reach out to this person.”
That would have been a way better content experience. Even if their delivery email were broken, I still would’ve been left with a better taste in my mouth and probably given them a second chance to market to me.
You see, they built it, I came, but then they lost me because they didn’t consider the rest of the equation.
Everything we do as marketers needs to be optimized to capture attention…that’s marketing 101.
But we also need to make sure we’re considering the experience that comes with the content we produce. We need to ensure that we’re delivering on our promises, giving people ways to continue to interact with us, and thinking about what our content is doing to keep people coming back, again and again, to spend more time and money with us.
