Ads tattooed on your head

I hate ho-hum marketing. You know; when organizations rest on their laurels, doing the bare minimum to spread the word with little energy invested to stand out.

Yet some efforts demonstrate real imagination, like:

  • The conference where the bald keynote speaker appeared at dinner with a (temporary) Rotary logo tattooed onto his head.

  • The steamroller pressing ads into beach sand.

  • The ads painted onto a parking lot’s white stripes.

  • The URL chalked onto the pitcher’s mound at baseball games.

Each vehicle is atypical and transitory. Each one grabs attention, driving traffic to a website for more information.

Von’s supermarkets’ bright red conveyor belts touting curbside pickup service are more permanent, but have the same impact.

And have you looked at the shopping bags in your trunk lately?

Virtually any medium can be used as a marketing tool. Any kind of clothing, furniture, or household item can promote your organization.

ALL HAIL THE END OF THE HO-HUM DYNASTY!

Rather than going the easy route (pens, mugs), consider what appeals to your audience so you stand out a bit. If they all like camping, give them a flashlight suggesting buying from you offers brighter alternatives. You’re in rhinoplasty and want clients to pick you? Give away chocolate nose lollipops.

Look it up…that was a funny joke!

And if all your prospective clients like cannabis, invest in edibles looking like your company logo.

True, some ideas will fail. They may lack sufficient ROI, or like CVS’ paper receipts inevitably bowing to the environmental movement, fall to social pressure.

Every marketing question today is seemingly answered with another post on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. The simplicity of this move makes it challenging to remember the value of giving away branded merchandise.

Furthermore, businesses frequently cut marketing corners, saying “Damn the results!” Yet, anxious to maintain visibility, they continue giving away those same boring pens, mugs, and shirts.

They’d be much better off investing effort to determine what customers might REALLY want, keep, use, and remember them by.

Taking the effort to really understand your customers and to do something different virtually guarantees you and your brand will instantly jump to mind when the customer is ready to buy your product or service.

And ultimately, isn’t that what good marketing is all about?

With that said, I wish you a week of profitable marketing.

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Free marketing advice. www.marketbuilding.com.