Consumers see a nearly constant stream of advertisements and other marketing efforts. Companies are hard-pressed to make decisive choices about the marketing strategies that represent their products so that they can cut through the noise and busyness of it all. This article will shed some light on the things that innovative marketers who consistently get it right do differently:
1. Manage Innovation Effectively
Today, a novel idea isn’t enough to guarantee success. Any innovation must be followed up with appropriate management to gain traction. Good marketers understand that innovation needs to be managed — both to generate and implement new ideas. For instance, a study cited in an article by Ohio University identifies four variables that affect the innovation rate of a company. These are scale, frequency, engagement, and diversity.
The study suggests that innovation programs need a lot of participants to be successful. Secondly, companies will be more successful if they regularly generate idea challenges. Thirdly, engagement is important. As stated in the article, “Idea generation is only a part of the process. The ideas need other people to review them and help determine whether they are worthy of moving forward.”
Diversity Drives Innovation
Finally, an innovation system thrives on diversity and needs input from different members of the organization. In fact, the study found that “The more diverse the innovation system, the more likely an innovation is to appeal to everyone.” Innovative marketers understand the variables that affect idea generation and are able to leverage these variables so as to come up with a successful campaign.
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2. Pay Attention To the Details
Innovative marketers know that the details matter. So in any marketing campaign, innovative marketers will go the extra mile to make sure even the little things are aligned with overall goals. For instance, consider the act of creating content for marketing purposes. A regular marketer might create a content strategy, outlining the different forms of content and topics as part of a marketing campaign.
On the other hand, innovative marketers will take a closer look, and pay attention to more intricate details within the strategy, like how color can impact brand image. It is paying attention to these little details, and the willingness to explore new ideas; that separates the average marketer from an exceptional one.
3. Disrupt Traditional Marketing Strategies
In today’s dynamic world, traditional marketing can only get you so far. Innovative marketers know this, and are not afraid to disrupt the status quo and explore non-linear marketing trends. Guerilla marketing is one such trend, and has proven successful for many, such as the famous artist Banksy. The best part? It doesn’t even require a large budget.
An article on Entrepreneur that talks about different ways to market a business explains guerilla marketing as marketing that “leverage(s) creativity, imagination and originality in place of a big budget.” Some examples of guerilla marketing include creating eye-catching chalk art to market a brick-and-mortar location, or organizing a flash mob to boost brand awareness. Guerilla marketing is one example of thinking outside the box — an asset that is essential for any marketing success.
4. Create Entire Customer Experiences
Innovative marketers know that a great product is just one part of the journey from ideation to implementation. To fully realize success, marketing efforts need to create entire customer experience ecosystems. An article on the Harvard Business Review uses the example of the first e-reader to be developed, the Sony Reader. Even though the product was technologically advanced, it failed in the market because Sony didn’t partner with the publishing industry to provide content readable by the e-reader. As stated in the article, “Sony hadn’t tapped the customer and customer experience orientation inherent in marketing to ensure the ecosystem around its product would be as well-developed and well-designed as the product itself.”
On the other hand, when Amazon launched its Kindle device later, it offered an “integrated experience of hardware, software, service, and content that made it seamless for the customer to buy and use it — thus producing a successful launch.” Thus, innovative marketers will work to create not just a campaign, but an integrated customer experience as part of their marketing efforts.
Read: 8 Surprisingly Simple Ecommerce Content Marketing Tips
5. Stay One Step Ahead
Marketing success is closely associated with current and new forms of consuming content. Innovative marketers are up to date about the best and most relevant ways of spreading awareness in terms of their product; and make every effort to stay ahead of the curve. Most of these marketers enroll in an intrapreneurship course, which will help them learn about different marketing strategies.
For example, in today’s digitally-driven world, a marketing campaign with no presence online is unlikely to catch consumers’ attention. So even though it might not have been the norm a few years ago, today it is extremely important to leverage social media channels for marketing success. In an article on marketing strategies you can learn from social media rockstars, experts at Amsterdam Printing recommend various strategies to excel at social media marketing. One such strategy includes being extremely active. The biggest names in social media tend to be very active on platforms of their choice. For businesses, this means interacting effectively with one’s audience through a few (or even just one specially selected) social media platform of choice.
Social media engagement increases loyalty
Additionally, Social media engagements can have a positive impact on your business. While social media stars don’t necessarily need to look through analytics to gauge their reach, businesses and marketers definitely do. That’s because a social media star’s reach is usually so massive that a quick glance at user profiles usually suffices to gauge reach. For marketers, however, it is important to be mindful of analytics and numbers to properly estimate impact and make subsequent changes to any social media changes.
The article on Entrepreneur also promotes the use of social media in marketing, citing a study from the Pew Research Centre that shows that nearly two-thirds of American adults use social media — a tenfold increase since previous decades. Even though social media is all the rage today, innovative marketers know that new channels of spreading awareness will soon begin to emerge. Be it mobile apps or virtual reality, innovative marketers make it a pint to stay one step ahead and creatively explore new trends.
With the onslaught of various marketing efforts, true marketing success is hard to come by. Yet, with the right marketing mix, it is possible. Using these strategies, innovative marketers continue to revolutionize the way we understand marketing, and tend to consistently get things right.
