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Creative
Marketing Will Grab Your Prospects' Attention
Imagine for a moment that
you manage the marketing activities for a relatively well-known,
non-alcoholic drink. You’re competing for buyers’ attention at an
upcoming industry trade show. How can you take on Coca-Cola®, Pepsi®,
Maxwell House Coffee®, Lipton Iced Tea®, 7 Up®, Gatorade® and all the
other mammoth brands? They have huge booth spaces, monstrous marketing
budgets and worldwide distribution.
Is there any hope for you?
Not if you try to compete
on their turf. You simply don’t have the resources available to you to
make a difference. Your only hope is to battle them on the fields where
you have a distinct advantage. Here is where you can use your most
effective combat weapons – creativity and imagination.
Because the big brands have
so many resources at their disposal, they rarely rely on “thinking
skills” (most small business owners don’t either because they’re too
lazy). And that is precisely how you attack them and win.
Suppose your brand on the
trade show floor is Yoo-hoo®, the delicious chocolate drink. You don’t
have name recognition like the big brands and you certainly don’t have
their advertising budgets. To grab the attention of the attendees at the
show, you decide to out-think the other guys.
As visitors approach your
booth, you pop open a bottle, pour it into a specially designed
boot-shaped cup, put a straw in it and serve a “Shoo-hoo”. You
immediately put smiles on their faces and create a constant buzz on the
show floor as everyone walks around drinking their “Shoo-hoo”. You’ve
got thousands of walking billboards for your product. Great results for
very little money.
This is the essence of
creativity.
Perhaps you're thinking….
”Well, that worked for
those guys…but…
…I’m not in the beverage
industry.
…I don’t market at trade
shows.
…My product is a
high-dollar item.
…I sell a service not a
product.
…That just wouldn’t work
for me.”
You’re missing the key
point here. Don’t focus on the specific marketing technique and
application. Think in terms of how you can morph the idea – tweak it,
modify part of it, add to it, reverse it, substitute something, combine
a related idea, create something similar, use it in a different way,
whatever.
In other words, what is
your version of the “Shoo-hoo”?
Hopefully you can find a
Shoo-hoo idea in the marketplace and adapt it as-is and run with it in
one of your promotional campaigns. But ideally you shouldn’t focus on a
singular idea, rather, arm yourself with a method of thinking that will
allow you to solve marketing issues from a “conceptual” perspective.
You’ll achieve better and
more profitable results when you pay attention to all the creative ideas
that surround you, and develop your ability to strategically think about
solutions. Is there more to learn by discovering how someone else faced
and solved an individual challenge? What can you adapt and gain from
their experience? Are there other and better ways to approach your
individual situation?
There’s nothing wrong with
morphing someone’s specific idea, but so much more to gain from the
entire process.
So keep your creative
antennae on full alert....always looking for the next great idea. And
use it to grab your prospects’ attention.
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Larry Baltz runs a company called
More Sales – More Profits. He works with small business owners who
want to get more clients and sell more products and services. Larry
is a Certified Guerrilla Marketing Coach and small business
marketing expert. For his free report, “Knock-Their-Socks-Off”
Promotion and Marketing, go to
http://www.moresales-moreprofits.com
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