Marketing is anything but a paint-by-numbers endeavor — if you’re serious about making lasting impressions on your most valuable prospects, at least.
No matter how you’ve fashioned your company or what it sells, these five innovative marketing ideas will almost certainly raise its brand’s profile. Here’s how to deploy them effectively.
Old-Fashioned Outdoor Advertising
Wait a second. Billboards? Innovative?
Yes, and yes. Billboards and other outdoor displays remain one of the most common and effective forms of advertising in existence. That’s pretty remarkable when you consider how long they’ve been around, and how low-tech (LEDs notwithstanding) they really are.
Paul Suggett of The Balance Careers has some killer billboard advertising tips. Among them:
- Keep your message brief
- Don’t be too clever
- Find strength in numbers (i.e., more than one billboard)
- Avoid repetition
- Don’t get too cute (or big) with your logo
3D-Printed Marketing Collateral
Use cost-effective 3D printing technologies to produce eye-catching, three-dimensional marketing collateral for display at fairs, conventions, demo days — wherever you have reason to believe you’ll run into prospective customers. There’s no better way to differentiate your products from the competition (or anything else on the market) than to show off futuristic facsimiles.
Scale Models
Another form of physical product marketing: scale models. Sure, scale models can be 3D-printed, but let’s not limit ourselves here — any lightweight, durable material will do. Scale models are ideal for products that are too large, cumbersome, or heavy to show off in the flesh or are otherwise unsuitable for full-size display. If you’re planning to complement a direct or digital sales model with experiential retailing for big or cumbersome products, make scale models the focus of your in-person efforts.
Pop-up Stores
What’s cheaper than a fixed-location shop that runs at a fraction of its potential most of the time? A pop-up store that appears at just the right time and melts away when it’s no longer needed.
Your pop-up store doesn’t have to be fancy, and it certainly doesn’t need permanent walls. A cart or repurposed truck will do just fine. At fairs, farmers’ markets, and other temporary public venues, a collapsible stall is probably your best bet. Bear in mind that you don’t even need to sell anything at your pop-up store; simply getting the word out counts as a major victory.
Guerrilla Marketing
If you make tangible products, give (some of) them away! Judiciously, and in a targeted fashion, of course.
Guerrilla marketing is a brutally effective means of putting your brand in front of its most tantalizing prospects. It’s all about meeting prospects where they’re more likely to be: at fairs, in stores, even on the street. If you’ve been in business for a while, you probably have a good idea of where to find your prospects; if you’re just starting out, spend some time gathering data about prospect behavior before seeking them out.
HubSpot has a great roundup of successful guerrilla marketing ideas. See any you like?
What’s Your Go-To Marketing Secret?
You know your brand better than anyone else. While that doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to market it better than anyone else, far be it from anyone to tell you that you don’t know what makes your customers tick.
Don’t let naysayers hamper your creativity. If you’re committed to a particular marketing course of action, by all means, pursue it. Just watch your marketing spend like a hawk — and be prepared to call it quits if things don’t break as you’d hoped.