Creative marketing is a must for companies in all industries, including industries that you may not think need creativity. The truth of the matter is that everyone has increased choice in today’s marketplace. In order to get anyone’s attention, even in so-called “boring” industries, you need to make your business stand out. What is the best way to do this? Creative marketing!
If you are in an industry that is not known for taking risks in marketing, then you may fear being the first one out of the gate to do so. Here are some tips for you to invoke more creative marketing without losing any of the professionalism or gravitas that makes your business a serious contender.
Define Your Audience and Constraints
Before you try a bold idea, write down who buys, who signs, and what they fear. Pull themes from support tickets, sales emails, and common search queries, then map them to real problems. Note any compliance, safety, or brand rules so creativity stays practical.
Tone
A great deal of creative marketing is about tone. For instance, you do not have to invoke a ridiculous comedic accent in order to convey humor. It is much better to create subtle humor through understanding the nuances of your industry. This is the essence of the “inside joke,” and it is much more effective than trying to be a professional comedian when you’re not.
Use correct terms to signal you know the work, but skip jargon that clouds meaning. Keep sentences active and clear, and match your brand style so the voice stays steady.
Many of the best creative marketing efforts in boring industries have come from content that only insiders would understand. If your target market is limited to the insider anyway, why would you try to create some sort of general comedic ad? There is no point to it. You can keep a serious tone while adding a dash of humor by sticking to the material that your target audience appreciates.
Exciting Information
Who said that you had to try to entertain your audience with something outside of your industry? There is no need to hire celebrities or weird performers to get the attention of your target market. You can do the same thing in an even more targeted way by simply presenting exciting information.
Run short polls or surveys, then share the top findings with plain charts or summaries. If you have aggregate usage data, anonymize it and explain how you compiled it. Protect customer privacy and any confidential details while highlighting the trends your audience wants.
Do you have the finger on the pulse of your industry? What is the burning question that everyone has been trying to solve? Do you have another perspective or a solution to this problem? This should be the general focus of your next marketing campaign, not trying to build some kind of outlandish presentation. Your target market will be much happier to receive information that it has been waiting on than it will be to look at some entertainment that you have paid for.
Leading Your Industry
Everyone has to take a risk in order to grow or expand. Your creative marketing campaign can be based around growth and expansion, and your target audience will appreciate it even if it does not work fully. If you have built any sort of “political capital” with your target audience, now is the time to use it!
Take baby steps, not huge leaps of faith. Your creative marketing should be based on educated guesses. There are ways to gather data directly from your target audience – social media, focus groups, surveys – that give you insight information as to what they are looking for. You no longer have to guess when it comes to delivering a marketing campaign that hits. This is the way to lead your industry. You do not have to wait on someone else to bring you the courage to move forward – become the catalyst. Once you see other people copying your ideas, you know you are on the right track.
Measure and Iterate with A/B Testing
Test one change at a time, headline, call to action, or image. Track results with consistent links, like UTM parameters, and compare conversion and engagement across variants. Keep the winner, retire the rest, and log what you learned for the next test.
The best practices above will help you build a more creative marketing campaign without giving up the core values of your company. Keep in mind that you may need to go outside of your comfort zone in order to achieve this, but you do not have to go outside of your core values.
