Experimentation in Marketing

By Adam  |  7 Aug 2015 15:00:00

Some people think of marketing as something you need to do 'by the book' and will do a few generic things (posts on Facebook, the odd tweet, a newsletter) and usually just repeat the same old marketing lines about their business over and over across different platforms. If you’re persistent, this kind of thing can work. It's the standard marketing affair and the sort of thing that people have begun to expect. However, as it is so generic, that also means that it will not be effective as something more unique. You need to remember that marketing is actually a creative action and if you have an unusual marketing idea, go for it!

Take, for example, my recent blog post "The Content Market Ear" (which, if it's not obvious, is a play on "Content Marketer") which is, honestly, the strangest thing I've written here so far. I knew it was a weird idea, but I thought "what the heck?" and wrote it anyway. As it turns out, it was one of the most popular blog posts from the past few weeks! Now that I know that that was popular, I have a few follow up posts planned which I hope will be equally popular. If people didn't get it, or barely anyone had read it, I'd likely have left it at that. The point is that experimentation never hurts. So if you've got a slightly atypical marketing idea (be it a blog post, a social media post, or anything else) give it a try. If the reaction is positive, you know people would like more of that kind of thing in future. If there is no real reaction, or a negative reaction (rare) then you know that there’s no point in doing something similar again and you can just come up with new experimental ideas.

Of course, you should experiment within reason though. If you post something which could clearly be viewed as being offensive, then that's not going to be a good marketing idea. But other than that, try whatever you like; if you do something that nobody has tried before, maybe you'll find a new way of marketing that everybody wants to copy! Every idea has to come from somewhere, after all. So try whatever you like and remember that the more unique your marketing, the more likely it will stay in the minds of your customers and prospects.