Owner of Criterion.B, overseeing client strategy and company culture.
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Launching a new product? Offering a new service? Looking to target a new audience? Ready to try something new or simply feeling like your marketing strategy has become lackluster?
Whatever the reason, there’s no better time than now — during the most unpredictable year of the 21st century so far — to get out of your marketing comfort zone and be more creative.
We have four suggestions for you to run and have some fun with. These aren’t big, complex marketing strategies, but single, bold moves that you can weave into your current plan.
The beauty of these is that your competitors likely aren’t doing anything similar, and if they end up not working for your audience, you can move on without it affecting your whole marketing plan.
1. Get To Memeing
Have you ever considered creating and sharing your own memes that are highly relatable to your audience?
Memes are currently the pinnacle of humor and relatability on social media, and they aren’t going away anytime soon. So it’s time to join in the fun.
By using a simple meme generator, you can upload your own image and add your text over top of it to make it look like a true meme. This way, you can freely share it without worrying about copyright infringement. You can choose to target a multitude of feelings, experiences and moments your audience is likely to relate to.
This idea also has an ulterior motive — to increase the engagement on your social media channels. For example, one of our marketing clients is a software provider for service-based businesses, and its audience responds incredibly well to memes. In fact, memes are the company’s top-performing social media posts, receiving 30% more engagement (likes, comments and shares) than any other posts.
One meme the company shared was a photo of a contractor standing next to the grim reaper with the caption, “The attic temp just hit 150. Do you want to climb back in there or just come with me now?” This post ended up being shared over 150 times.
Obviously, it’s not the cleanest or most aesthetic content, but it’s not supposed to be. This is a means to rack up your engagement, stand out in feeds and drive more people to your social media pages.
2. Make A Spotify Playlist
Spotify allows individual users (including businesses) to create playlists that other users can listen to. As cool as this is, not many companies have taken advantage of it that I’ve seen — which means it’s an untapped opportunity for you.
It’s a great move to spread brand awareness and name recognition. If a user who has never heard of you likes your playlist, they may be curious and look you up. For someone who has heard of your business, you are getting your name in front of them again in a way that doesn’t feel pushy or salesy.
Here are some Spotify user statistics for reference:
• There are 286 million monthly active users.
• 55% of Spotify users are ages 18-34.
• 44% of Spotify users are female, and 56% are male.
• A third of all Spotify listening time is spent on user-generated playlists.
This is an easy and creative idea to test out. Plus, it’s not a time-consuming or expensive task. As well, there is no limit to the number of playlists you can create. And if you can somehow tie it to your brand, that’s a bonus.
3. Start A Seasonal Subscription Box
The exact parameters depend on your budget, available time and product accessibility, but starting a small subscription box is a way to reengage current or previous customers. We recommend that the box be free with a purchase, but if you can’t afford that, charge a small subscription fee, and open it up to any customer.
For example, my company is a marketing agency with a strong focus on design, and we started a seasonal T-shirt subscription box that we automatically enrolled all our prospective, current and past clients in. Every three months, we send them a new fun shirt that we design and produce. We include our branding as well as relatable phrases and creative imagery.
We’ve heard from multiple clients that they look forward to receiving their box, and it really brightens up their day. That’s a goal accomplished.
4. Make A Big Banner
Sometimes the phrase “go big or go home” is good advice to follow in marketing — especially when you want to get the word out about something to do with your business, such as a new product or service. These days, most marketing is focused online, and while that makes sense, we can’t forget that traditional marketing methods still work.
At our core, human beings haven’t changed much even though technology has. We are still influenced by the things we see in the physical world.
So be bold and go big by printing ultra-big banners that you hang in strategic places where you know your target audience is. While banners are not a new type of marketing, many businesses settle for too-small sizes. Print as big as you can afford, and make sure the design stands out.
It’ll be even better if you can place it across the street from your main competitor.
2020 Is The Time To Be Bold
This year hasn’t held back any punches, and neither should you. At this point, why play it safe? How is that serving you? How is that accelerating the growth of your business?
It’s OK if these ideas don’t work for your industry or target audience. I just hope that they inspire you to market outside of the box this year and find creative ways to hit your business goals.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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Author: Jon Simpson, Forbes Councils Member
