Most new business owners already model marketing strategies; but not very effectively. They tend to model the activities of their competitors; using similar advertisements, websites etc. While this ‘shortcut’ is probably useful to some degree, some of the very best marketing strategies I have ever employed have come from modeling OTHER INDUSTRIES.
Years ago I owned an IT company in England and I had a number of competitors. We all tended to advertise in the same places and use the same basic telemarketing strategies.
And then I thought about it: What works on me? What kind of marketing has caught my attention? When I had those answers I found that I was modeling the marketing strategies of banks, airlines, restaurants and many other industries. Not everything we tried worked but many of the strategies we employed were GOLD to us.
We once employed a subtle change to our direct mail strategies that I learned from a letter I got EGG card (Visa) — it more than doubled the already great responses we were getting.
We once employed a customer-loyalty trick I learned from a restaurant in Vancouver; it was wildly successful.
We completely rebranded our business after meeting and reading about Richard Branson; that changed everything for us.
We once employed an online solution that we learned from a large courier company and landed over a million pounds of new business as a result. Oh, and changed our industry.
Look outside your industry for outstanding marketing concepts and see how you can employe them. Large companies are spending huge budgets to come up with novel ideas and we get to learn from them.
Over the next month, pay attention to the marketing strategies that catch your eye and give some thought to how you might use them in your company…