How to Craft Marketing Content that Brings Meaning and Engagement

What's your pillar of meaning? According to Emily Esfahani Smith Dameron, author of The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters, and contributor to The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic, we all want to be needed, understood, seen, heard, and loved. That's because we all have a deep-seated need to belong.

Drawing from psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists, as well as literary and historical figures such as George Eliot, Aristotle, and the Buddha, Emily posits that cultivating connections with others, identifying and working toward a purpose, telling stories about our place in the world, and seeking out mystery can deepen the sense of meaning we feel in our lives.

In her book, she presents her four pillars of meaning: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. The idea is that we all lean to one of these four pillars to find meaning in life, with some leaning on certain pillars more than others.

In fact, she even has a quiz – to help us all discover our “pillar.”

To take the quiz, click here. (It takes only 90 seconds, or so.)

According to the author these four pillars are defined as follows:

Belonging: when people feel valued by others, they rate their lives as more meaningful, and they treat you like you matter, you feel like you matter, too.

Purpose: this is a top-level goal that involves contributing to others.

Storytelling: this is taking our experiences and weaving them into a narrative that defines who we are and where we come from. Storytelling helps us understand others and ourselves.

Transcendence: is something we feel when we feel connected to something bigger than ourselves.

So, what does all this have to do with engaging marketing content?

Well, when it comes to successfully engaging with our intended audience, it will serve us well to strategize our marketing message and craft our brand or product story around these pillars of meaning.

For example:

Belonging: instead of just incentivizing them to buy with bonus and free somethings, invite them to join your community of users. Incentivize the belonging, introduce a human side to the benefits of the user group. It’s not about them. It’s definitely not about me. It’s about us.

Purpose: when you know your persona, what drives them, their KPIs, their interests, and their watering holes – you can tap into their sense of purpose. Create assets around the themes that touch upon their sense of purpose – whether that’s driving a major data management transformation, ensuring compliance with new regulations, or even simply decreasing costs.

Storytelling: I really can’t say too much about storytelling. Stories are noted to be remembered 22 times more than facts alone. Telling a story activates more parts of the brain than listing off bullet points. Tell a story and they will remember you, they will experience your message, and they will more likely convert.

Transcendence: this is a bit of a tougher one. It’s definitely not easy to connect individuals on a transcendental level to marketing automation, or enterprise data lakes, or robotics process automation – but with some data-driven, persona-based, creative content creation – you will most certainly get there!

Want to bring some meaning to your audience with your marketing message? Get in touch, and let’s do great marketing together >>