What marketing strategies can you use to make your company stand out from the pack? In order to answer this question, many marketers push the envelope seeking to gain mindshare by humoring, shocking, or in some cases, offending their audience. Known as Controversial Marketing, these efforts do just that: they seek to spark awareness and dialogue through sensational, controversial content.

While often considered a guerilla tactic, best saved for fledgling companies in need of a “big bang,” controversial marketing and advertising initiatives have recently been adopted by many large companies such as Clearasil, Dove, GoDaddy, and Carl Jr’s.

But before Carl Jr’s made the decision to put a large cheeseburger in the hand of a scantily clad Paris Hilton, or Dove posted large billboards above New York City featuring un-retouched images of unclothed women without makeup, these companies had some strategizing to do. While a well-executed, controversy-laden campaign can be just what’s needed to push brand awareness or sales through the roof, the mantra “no publicity is bad publicity” is not always the case, and missteps can send marketing teams back to the drawing board, and that’s only after they’ve groveled for public forgiveness.

Before you decide to put your company in the line of fire with a controversial advertising or marketing strategy, there are a handful of things you need to carefully consider. First off, you must have a crystal clear understanding of who your customers are. If you can design a campaign that speaks directly to them in an honest and direct fashion, you are on the right track. Understanding their wants, needs, fears, and desires will help you to make decisions that don’t accidentally alienate any part of your target market. For instance, in the case of those racy Carl Jr’s ads, the company had an unwavering desire to address the 18-35 year old single male. They didn’t care if they alienated or offended the family market that companies like Wendy’s or McDonalds so eagerly pursue.

Secondly, you must always consider what the backlash might be. Not that this should deter your efforts, but upon creating a campaign, step back and ask the questions: “How many customers might we lose because of this?” This is the time for expert risk assessment. If you determine that you’ve positioned yourself to gain many more than you’ll upset, then its okay to go full steam ahead. No matter what, you must make sure you’re business is prepared to navigate whatever the repercussions may be.

The last and most important tenant of controversial marketing is to know when to pull the plug and apologize. There are times when companies overstep their boundaries, offending the good taste of those they didn’t mean to offend. Efficiently issuing genuine apologies can be the first step in repairing any bruised customer relationships.

For the growing business, the implementation of carefully targeted, high-quality marketing initiatives can make all the difference. The world of marketing, however, consists of a broad amalgamation of techniques and sub-disciplines that should, ideally, work harmoniously to convey what people need to know about your business. How does a company ensure that they’ve maximized the variety of options that marketing can provide?

Guerilla Marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson recently wrote his thoughts on the most frequent mistakes companies make with their marketing initiatives. Through a list of 11 missteps, the problems are effectively boiled down to three main misconceptions:

1) The heart of marketing lies in the superficial, the “whiz-bang”, or the punch-line.

2) A business only needs one marketing mechanism at a time.

3) If the marketing is good enough, the results will be quick and earth-shattering.

The first of these errors takes hold when marketing executives lose site of their main purpose, which is to motivate people. Distracted from the primary mission, they might aim for a clever or humorous marketing stratagem. This is a trap. While humor or cleverness can successfully engage a potential client or customer, chances are those elements will overshadow the product or service you’ve set out to promote. Similarly, too much emphasis on entertaining your audience can eclipse your product or service as well. The job at hand is to make the truth fascinating – not to entertain for the sake of entertaining.

The second common mistake, especially in the case of many small businesses, is under-executing-- implementing only a pinch of the marketing ingredients at your disposal. Marketing areas such as direct mail, telemarketing, brochures, or phonebook advertisements, when executed properly, can provide a fantastic ROI for the growing company. Any of these elements alone, however, is just a drop in the bucket and can prevent you from reaching the full breadth of your target audience. Diversifying your marketing initiatives isn’t an extravagance – it’s a necessity.

The last, and arguably the biggest, misconception is that marketing is a “panacea” for the business; one that results in customers breaking down your doors moments after the launch of a campaign. It is true that strong marketing efforts will (and should!) correlate to increased profits, but it’s seldom overnight, and it’s wrong to expect miracles. As will many other aspects of growing a business, patience is a virtue.

So if these are the misconceptions, what is a true picture of marketing? As stated by Levinson, "Marketing is an opportunity for you to earn profits with your business, a chance to cooperate with other businesses in your community or your industry and a process of building lasting relationships."

The marketing plan describes your strategy for penetrating the market, delivering your product, and retaining your customers. This video explains how to create an effective marketing plan.

 

 

Last night I went to the art fair at my kids’ elementary school. My son, Max, who’s in 2nd grade had created a picture of his ideal city (see below). 

 

 

I was thrilled to see that the Growthink office made the picture. :)  (It’s also funny to see that the city just had to have a video store in it).

Interestingly, there was something in the picture that I noticed, that I bet no other parent noticed. Can you see it? What I’m referring to is the fact that the Growthink office is the only one with double-doors. Clearly, my son has been schooled in Consumption Theory, which states that the more frequently your clients consume your products or services, the wealthier you become. So, by having double doors, Growthink can let in and serve more clients and create greater wealth (so I can buy my son more video games of course).

My favorite examples of consumption theory in action are Prell Shampoo’s use of the word “REPEAT” in it’s directions to get customers to wash their hair twice (and thus consume twice as much shampoo) each time they bathe. Adding the words “Use Daily” to the directions may have doubled Prell’s consumption again. My other favorite example is Colgate toothpaste, which dramatically increased consumption in an even easier way; it simply increased the size of the opening from which the toothpaste comes out.

How can you get clients to consume more of your products and services?

There are many companies that can thrive following the tried and true methods of traditional marketing initiatives. If you are one of those companies, it makes sense to place yourself in the most familiar arenas, where potential customers expect to see you. That is, if your intention is to compete with Coca-Cola for mindshare, it is probably in your best interest to utilize bold advertisements in print and television media.

But many other companies are learning that traditional approaches are no longer sufficient to convey their message and effectively convert the casual shopper into a paying customer or even better, a brand evangelist. It used to be that you could distinguish your company through lowest prices or a sparkling slogan. Now, however, these old silver bullets will barely leave a dent in the mind of the modern consumer. What can your company do today to stand out above the noise and clutter?

Enter: Educational Marketing

Education-Based marketing is the act of creating marketing materials and executing on strategies that distinguish your company as a knowledgeable authority and resource in your area of expertise. Notice the inclusion of "resource", as it is uncharacteristic to antiquated marketing approaches. It follows the revised premise that to be an active and valuable participant in the information age, one must become an information center.

With multiple, seemingly identical solutions popping up everyday in various industries, those that will shine are those that can lend a hand to their audience, rather than using that same hand to bludgeon their audience with an exhausted sales pitch.

Author David Frey has outlined not only how the average customer has become numb to the sales pitch, but also the underlying goals and burgeoning techniques of Educational Marketing. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to flip the script, and focus on the questions of customers rather than the sensational hype associated with a typical sales pitch.

Say you were the owner of an oil change store. A standard approach to market your business would be to place ads that say:

“Get Your Oil Changed Here for Just $14.95!”

By integrating educational marketing into your marketing arsenal, you might instead try:

“A new study finds that changing your oil every three months adds $1,437.81 to the resale value of your automobile. Come in to find out the effect of oil changes on the resale value of YOUR automobile.”

The information and help you can provide your customer is the new hype. The emphasis of such techniques revolves around the establishment of trust. By assisting in the open sharing of information, you become an ally to your consumer, rather than the oft-avoided vacuum cleaner salesman.

One main concern that can come with Educational Marketing initiatives is "How do I monetize these new informed shoppers?" Frey goes on to map out the packaging of one's educational message through multimedia options such as video tapes, email courses, and seminars which can extend the dialogue and thus your marketing window of opportunity. Such long-term, or “drip” campaigns can have a tremendous impact on the duration of your trust-based relationship and the lifetime value of your prospective customers.

What is your educational message?

Over the past few weeks, I've spent a lot of time studying a field called Landing Page Optimization. It's a fascinating field that deals with improving landing pages, which are the pages of your website that visitors come to either organically or through paid marketing initiatives. The goal of Landing Page Optimization is to maximize conversions (e.g., sales, newsletter signups, etc.) of these visitors.

One of the guiding principles of landing page optimization is that landing pages need to be simple. If there is too much information on the page, the reader gets confused and either clicks the back button or closes the browser.

This principle is the same as a guiding principle of business plan development; mainly that the plan, and particularly the executive summary, needs to present the business concept concisely so that the audience quickly understands it. If not, they will simply discard the business plan.

Interestingly a concise message might not only improve your business plan and your landing page, but your entire business’ success. Consider the case of Google. The Google homepage has always had very little text on it. In fact, if you go to it, it doesn’t even say that it is a search engine. But, by having a big empty box in the middle and having a button underneath it that says “Google Search”, it is pretty intuitive that Google is a search engine.

Now, when someone was referred for the first time to Google over the past few years and came to Google.com, what do you think they did? Well, due to its simplicity, I think we can assume that nearly all people who came to Google.com typed in a search term and hit the search button. Then, they instantly saw high quality search results and were sold on the fact that Google is a great search engine.

So, by keeping their landing page and business concept/proposition extremely simple, Google was able to get people to try its product. Because the product is high quality, those trials resulted in loyal users.

While there are many examples out there, one interesting company that I think could really improve its business plan, landing page, and thus chance of success is SpinVox. I first read about SpinVox in this Guy Kawasaki post in which he says, “This service translates voicemail to text and then sends a text message to your phone and/or an email to your computer.”

While Guy Kawasaki does a great job clearly explaining SpinVox in this 22 word sentence, I don’t think SpinVox does. On its homepage, SpinVox has the following text:

"SpinVox captures spoken messages and cleverly converts them into text. It then delivers your message to a destination of your choice – inbox, blog, wall or space. Right in the moment. Giving you the power to Speak Freely... Simply put, we do one thing – turn voice into text. But it's one thing that can be applied to the many ways you communicate, from your Voicemail to your Blog. Use the finder below to find the right one for you."

If I were to come to this page without Guy Kawasaki’s clear explanation, I would most likely leave without trying the service. It neither clearly explains the most common use nor the value proposition of the service.

To sum up, KEEP IT SIMPLE. Use simplicity to hook the investor, the customer, the partner, or whoever else you are trying to influence. Once hooked, over time (which could be as little as 2 minutes later), you can tell the full story.