When looking to market your business or product, you will often discover the reality to be much harder than you had expected. Marketing programs can take years to complete, and may or may not end up providing any greater level of success than when compared to creative ideas. In trying to come up with creative marketing ideas, people typically often give up trying to look for original ideas and start looking instead for prepackaged ideas that are already laid out and are easy to implement. The same is true of your Flash website; some people look at such things as being just another online media format, but others see its potential as a marketing asset to either personal or business agendas alike.
Some of the most helpful marketing ideas come from people who have already successfully completed some kind of marketing campaign. These out-of-the-box marketing programs can provide an outline of tried-and-true marketing efforts that can be a strong basis for your own campaigns. Although many of these methods may seem outdated or lacking, many of them are helpful in reminding people of how certain fundamental ideas hold across various industries. The most beneficial out-of-the-box marketing campaigns focus on your customers, promotion, and communication.
List Your Business
One of the best out-of-the-box marketing strategies is to list your business in any available venue. This strategy says, “If your customers are there, promote!” Market your business in the yellow pages, Google, Facebook, the local Chamber of Commerce, and any other place your customer might potentially be looking. You might think about the Yellow Pages as being antiquated and ineffectual, but if your customers are going to pick up the phone book, it is better to be there for them to find your number versus finding the number of a competitor. If you have an ad versus just a number listing, be sure to include your portfolio website address so that potential customers can view it and see what you are all about.
Listing your business doesn’t always mean simple contact information, and often means advertisements in the local paper. As helpful this might be to some businesses, keep in mind that if the goal is to be where your customers are, your out-of-the-box marketing strategy should be to anticipate where your customers are going and what they are doing. This means that you might want to think about listing your business and portfolio website on Facebook or Linked In if your customers are there.
Be Personable
Although it seems quaint and even a little antiquated, a great out-of-the-box marketing strategy is to ensure that you give your customers a reason to love you and your products. Apple Inc. and other businesses place an incredible focus on ensuring their customers will remain loyal to their brand. When applying this marketing strategy to your own business, this out-of-the-box idea can take on many forms, including customer satisfaction surveys, encouraging customer feedback, customer comments, and even the occasional discount special for loyal customers. Engaging your customers is a great way to make sure your customers become your biggest promoters. Making use of a free website photo gallery is another way to engage clients and customers and keep them coming back for more.
If you are already good at getting customers, a fantastic way to be more personable is to create a relationship with another business. This out-of-the-box marketing strategy can help you by leveraging the strength of two businesses to help build better customer relationships for both companies. Partnering with other businesses can be facilitated by utilizing another popular marketing idea: producing brochures that highlight your products, or by creating business cards that reflect your brand, service offerings, and contact information.
Provide Products that Inspire
Although you might be already producing and selling incredible products, you might also want to expand the ways in which you promote your business. Pharmaceutical companies often utilize an out-of-the-box marketing idea by providing pens, pencils, and other office products at no charge to their clients. Although you might cringe at the thought of pencils with your name on it, look to artists for inspiration. Artists and designers can produce small, low-effort works for minimal cost or possibly even for free to some of your customers. A free gift to your favorite customers says a lot more than a thank you card ever will; more importantly, those works can be a non-branded product that potential clients will see and inquire about.
Think about an artist who has many artwork examples that are a reflection of the artist, but may or may not be for sale. If these works are given to friends, family, or even exceptional return clients, the artist now has free advertising! Similarly, you can create small works such as sample products or samplers that you provide to others which will help promote your products without having to actively seek out new clients. Free website photo galleries are another great way to get your name and information out there for the world to see and admire.
