Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Marketing Your Uniqueness


Marketing Uniqueness


Referencing Mr. Kelly O’Keefe for the third blog post in a row should help convince you how much his speech opened my eyes. For this post in particular, I am going to focus on one of his more impressive quotes from the session:

“Instead of marketing what makes us unique, we market the same, boring things that everyone else does.” 

Ironically, this topic also comes up in our reading for the week: chapter six (“Marketing On A Small-Business Budget) of Sam Calagione’s Brewing Up A Business. The chapter discusses “Making Your Marketing As Unique As You Are,” which is something important for beginning branders to understand. According to Calagione:

“Three truisms apply to any effective marketing agenda.
1) Your marketing should have a unique and consistent voice that is distinctively yours and plays off the brand identity you aspire to achieve for your company.
2) Your marketing should center around the benefits and advantages that your product or service offers, and you must truly deliver on these benefits in order for the marketing to have a worthwhile impact.
3) Your marketing should motivate your targeted customer to do something. In other words, it needs to have some value beyond entertainment.”
Be different!

Fast Company's Tips For Good Advertising


Now that I’m aware of the key “unique marketing” points, I decided to do further research on good marketing campaigns. According to Fast Company, there are a few ways that can help you better promote your product or service:

1) Make it believable. (People want to believe in what they see)

2) It’s not about how much you spend. (“You don’t have to pay more to get more”)

3) Focus on content, not traffic. (Your content has the potential to drive traffic later)

4) Create an inherent reason for people to share. (For example: voting on videos, sharing with friends, all get other people involved and viewing your ad)

5) Don’t underestimate the power of content creators. (“Some number between 1% and 10% of user base of any social network are the active content creators,” but those people can affect many others)

6) Give your promotion a shelf life. (Your work will make more of a dent to the world if you do not think of it in terms of making money)

Do you talk about these issues in your marketing?

2008's Most Innovative Companies: Examples Of Leaders


Looking at another Fast Company article (“The World’s Most Innovative Companies”), you can see that the top companies use all of these points in their advertising, which has made them extremely successful. Although this article was written in 2008, most of the “most innovative companies” have not changed:
1) Google
2) Apple
3) Facebook
4) GE
5) Ideo
6) Nike
7) Nokia

A few examples of innovatively-different companies


Google has found a way to differentiate itself within the market and is widely used. Apple found connection with their technology-loving “Apple nerds” and continues to become one of the most impressive and successful companies in history. Facebook connected with the consumer by advertising easy communication that was made for a young target market (originally), and Ideo is one of the most creative brands of all time. All of these companies have created quality marketing strategies that advertise their most unique points while also explaining the benefits of using their products over other competitors.

Simply put, these companies (at one point in time) related to their consumers. They motivated their target customer, pointed out their unique points, and emotionally appealed to many. Up-and-coming companies are going to have to make their marketing even more unique and even more motivating to customers if they want to beat out brand monsters such as Apple and Google.


Resources:
Brewing Up A Business by Sam Calagione
http://www.fastcompany.com/1308374/6-lessons-best-marketing-campaign-ever
http://www.fastcompany.com/703052/worlds-most-innovative-companies

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