One of the biggest nightmares for many small start-ups today is competing with the already established brands in the marketing world. Unlike bigger brands, small businesses don’t have big money to spend on marketing strategies. But, worry not, all is not lost! There are various other unconventional ways to make your brand visible to others, pull interest, and obtain new customers.
There is no denying that PPC, SEO, email marketing, content marketing and such are excellent strategies that can actually improve your conversion rates. PPC, Google AdWords, or Social Media are great channels and are worth spending the money, but they are already crowded. So, where should you spend your rupees? Or, what should you do to stand out?
Well, here’s where the unconventional marketing strategies kick in and come in handy. It doesn’t really require spending a bag of money for effective marketing. Making smart moves, a little imagination with some creativity, thinking weird at times and the courage to try new things can really help you spread the word about your brand and attract new customers.
Here are few unconventional marketing tactics that can help your brand reach bigger crowd.
Be creative, be weird
You stand a great chance to make your brand a hit with some catchy content. Try to think from a completely different angle and come up with a striking line as what Snickers did with the campaign tagline in India “Who are you when you are hungry” (https://www.exchange4media.com/advertising-news/snickers’-massive-new-campaign-targets-millennials-in-the-most-unusual-way-87136.html). With a little creativity, you can come up with something that can benefit your business and community simultaneously and do wonders to your business.
Do not hide the truth
A few months ago McDonald’s performed an action where they made their customers to send them questions, to which McDonald’s answered (https://yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca/). Imagine what if McDonald’s just released a detailed article or a video explaining their production process. It would have just been a one-sided conversation. A one-sided approach never can have a mighty impact as two-sided communication does. Clearly explains why transparency is important, regardless of the size of the organization.
Be different
Be imaginative, be different, be bold, however you choose to market your brand. In order to stand out from your competitors, you must give your customers something that your competition doesn’t. If you are willing to take a few calculated risks, act smart at tough situations and leave no stone unturned, you can convert every idea into an essential part of your marketing strategy.
Give free things
This might sound a bit controversial rather than unconventional marketing strategy. But, it can really be effective.
Giving away stuff for free can mean two things. One, organizing contests on social media with prizes. This can be used to drive customer engagement.
Two- giving away for free, literally. Have a look at what Netflix does. They offer one month free subscription for new users. So, how exactly does something like this benefit a business? It’s simple. By giving away things for free it is very easy to convince people to join you. If they like your product or service, your customers increase and if they don’t you can ask them for feedback and improve based on that!
Unconventional Campaigns
The ongoing campaign “#ProudToBelong” (http://www.luxottica.com/en/proud-belong-2019-ray-ban-celebrates-emotions) by Ray-Ban is a clear example of how unconventional you can get with your social media campaigns. The campaign pushes everyone to be daring, to stay true, to laugh, to cry, to love, to celebrate emotions, ultimately to discover and be yourself.
In this article, we covered a few unconventional approaches to marketing strategies that can really boost your business at minimal cost. All of them include a fair bit of thinking outside the box. Although unconventional marketing may seem a bit risky, the return can extremely outweigh all your imaginations because customers like brands to approach them with new and exciting ideas.
