Dreaming up ideas for marketing your business can be very difficult. Dreaming up creative, innovative, new ideas is even harder, especially if you’ve been established for a while.
There are many, many sites which will give you “70+ blog post titles to get you clicks” or “Sure-fire, creative ways to increase Instagram followers”. Some of these articles are useful, but a lot approach your business - and hundreds of others - as if they were the same.
They’re not.
Many seem to think every business of a certain type has the same objectives and audience.
They don’t.
And many try to use a one-size-fits-all solution to coming up with great ideas for marketing your business.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to coming up with great ideas for marketing your business. There’s no easy route.
Instead, there’s lots of thinking and experimenting and testing things out with your customers. They take work and a clear understanding of your target customer and your objectives.
How to Come Up with Great Marketing Ideas for Your Business
Here’s my guide on coming up with great marketing ideas for your business which you can tailor to perfectly fit your objectives and your customer. It’s based on a recent lecture I delivered at London College of Fashion to MA students designing sustainability projects.
Before you start, make sure you’re really clear on your marketing objectives and who your customer is. Without those, you’ll struggle to come up with relevant, successful ideas.
Download the guide to take you through each part step-by-step with clear (and fun!) activities.
Split your marketing into three parts
Research suggests there are three main bits you need to consider when you start coming up with new ideas:
- Components (the content and ‘stuff’ of your marketing)
- Configuration (how that ‘stuff’ is put together)
- Customer need
Thinking about your marketing in these broad terms splits up your marketing into three areas which often get squashed together. Separating the parts helps you think of new ideas for each, and when you start to combine the bits, you start to get really great marketing ideas.
An example of some components might be product images, product details, customer stories or lifestyle content. An example of configuration might be YouTube videos, podcasts, Twitter chats or LinkedIn group updates.
Combine new and old parts
Combining different bits of your marketing together - some old, some new - is when you start to get innovative (and even better) ideas. Start by brainstorming some ideas to add to you ‘components’ and ‘configuration’ areas - how about running an Instagram competition, or adding lifestyle content to your blog?
Once you’ve got a few ideas, there are three ways to combine the different parts of your marketing:
Mixing new components with an old configuration is called modular innovation.
Mixing new configurations with old components is called architectural innovation.
And new parts of everything is radical innovation.
Here’s some examples:
An ice-cream business that starts using video content on their existing Instagram account would be a modular innovation (new ‘stuff’, old way of putting it together)
A bricks-and-mortar jewellery business that opens an ecommerce site would be an architectural innovation (old ‘stuff’, new way of putting it together)
A local furniture business with no online presence that starts producing YouTube tutorials on how to care for your furniture would be a radical innovation (new ‘stuff’, new way of putting it together)
These examples are a little obvious and extreme; innovative ideas can be very, very small and some of the best ones for your business, especially if you’re already established, may well be much subtler.
(Fancy giving it a go? Get the guide to great ideas right here.)
Understand and consider your customer
A really important part of coming up with great marketing ideas for your business is understanding your customers’ needs. Without considering those as a key part of the thinking process, you won’t be dreaming up things which they’ll engage with.
It’s also important to consider your marketing objectives carefully. A great idea could be completely new and innovative, and totally pointless as it doesn’t fit your customer or your aims.
Use your customer profile to work out what your customer wants and needs from your business. If you’ve made sure your customer profile is compassionate, you’ll be able to answer that more quickly.
(Find out how to make a compassionate customer profile here).
The examples of new ideas above could all fulfil a customer need - but it’s also easy to come up with ideas which don’t, just because you haven’t spent some time considering it.
Bonus idea: Be radical
If you feel like your business is in desperate need of something really different, then experimenting with radical innovations for your marketing can be very helpful.
Radical innovation is when there are new components and a new configuration which fulfils a customer need. Coming up with these sorts of ideas isn’t easy at all; to start with, it’s very hard to think of something completely new. Plus, working out whether an existing customer need will be fulfilled by something brand new is tricky.
So these sort of ideas are high risk. Radical marketing ideas often feel the most exciting (because they’re new) but if they’re poorly thought through they can be seriously damaging to your business, because you’re plunging a lot of resources into untested waters.
However, despite being high risk radical marketing ideas can also give high returns, so it can be worth dedicating some time to thinking of more radical ideas.
This is hard work!
Yes, it is. It’s much harder than using a ready made list of marketing ideas. But it’s much more likely to help you come up with great marketing ideas for your business which are tailored to your objectives and your customer.
Get some extra help by using my free, step-by-step guide - there are loads of activities in there to support your idea creation!
Summary
Here’s my way to think of new, great marketing ideas for your business:
- Split your marketing into three parts - components, configuration and customer need
- Combine new and old parts to make great ideas
- Understand your customer needs (and your marketing objectives)
- Experiment with being radical to find something unique
Don’t forget to download the guide to help you come up with your very own great marketing ideas for your business - the activities will only take about 90 minutes, and you’ll end up with some great content for your future marketing.
Thanks for reading.
If you’d like extra support coming up with marketing ideas, or actually getting those ideas done (one of the most difficult bits of marketing for any business!) then get in touch. I’m an experienced, creative marketing consultant and copywriter dedicated to helping businesses and people fulfil their potential, and I’d love to see how I can support you.
Email me [email protected] with your marketing challenge, and let’s see what we can do.