You Won't Believe What They Found When They Opened This Old Box!

By Simon  |  11 Oct 2016 11:00:00

In the bottom of an old cellar, in a house which had been boarded up for years, the authorities found this old box hidden amongst a pile of old clothes in the corner of the room.

They put it in a bag to look at later on along with the clothes and some other items.

It was the next day, when they examined the items in the bag and one of them took out this small box.

Although it was quite old, it was in good condition and clearly had not been opened for many years.

They opened the clasp on the front of the box, raised the lid and peered inside.

All that was inside was a single word, etched into the wooden base.

The word was - 'Clickbait'

Yes - this is a post about Clickbait, which is such a marketing phenomenon it has now been added to the Oxford English Dictionary despite being around for only a few years.

If you are active on Social Media, then you'll have seen this type of story everywhere. If not then you'll have seen it at the bottom of new sites and other web pages.

It's a fascinating type of marketing - as it's entirely dependent on the headline. The company behind the story is unimportant, and the text of the story is often lifted from another source (the original author should be attributed at the bottom if this is the case).

The article will usually be made up of lots of different pages, for example in the story about the box above, each sentence would be on a different page with a different image, and there would be a 'next' button somewhere to get to the next page.

However - the key thing is that every page will be absolutely full of adverts which is how they make their money.

This type of marketing is a form of social engineering. Many people find this type of story impossible to resist, even though the contents are usually mundane. Scientists have worked out that the chemical reward in the brain of clicking on such a story is worth more than the mundane reading of the actual story.

So how can Clickbaiting be used to help an ecommerce shop make more sales?

Most merchants try and get to the top of Google for their marketing, however in this instance that's not important as no one will actually be searching for this type of story. Instead you need to get it shared on social media and hopefully it will go viral! Failing that you could pay for it to appear in Twitter and on Facebook.

Having said that, the best use is simply to take on board how important the headline is for any form of marketing. Clickbaiting is an entire industry built around headlines.

The next time you send an email, maybe use a bit more click baiting in the subject line. Perhaps instead of

"Take a look at our new products"

it should be ...

"You won't believe what we are selling now"

But watch out for words that will trigger spam filters such as 'Free' and '!'

Hmmmm I wonder what was actually inside the box?!

I fully expect this blog post to sail to the top of the 'Popular Articles' section! Let's see!

Simon