Modern Marketing and Your Business
Within the world of modern marketing, the most important aspect to keep in mind in order to achieve your goals is to reach your customer base. This seems like an obvious statement, because reaching and growing your customer base is the entire purpose of marketing campaigns. However, actually knowing how to reach them is not as obvious.
Because people are bombarded by advertisements hundreds of times a day through various media – social media platforms, print advertisement, YouTube video advertisement, audio advertisement on Spotify, etc. – the majority of consumers have become numb to traditional advertisement methods.
This means that a company needs to be incredibly creative and innovative with their marketing in order for it to be effective and actually reach and engage its market base.
Thinking Outside of the Box
In an attempt to engage people with marketing and advertisement tactics that are actually effective instead of ignored, companies and marketing firms have had to get incredibly creative and have had to start thinking outside of the box. This has led to the development of various guerilla marketing tactics, meant to shock and awe, which have changed the face of marketing.
These are: ambient marketing, ambush marketing, and viral marketing
Ambient Marketing
Ambient marketing is achieved through placing an advertisement in unusual places and on unconventional items. Because these are places that you wouldn’t normally see an advertisement, it captures your attention.
Ambush Marketing
Ambush marketing is when a company associates itself and product with an already occurring event that is widely promoted and has official sponsors. So, for example, associating your product with the Olympic games or the FIFA World Cup.
Because people are already excited about and tuned in to this event, the advertisements are more visible and effective than they would be outside of the context of the event itself. See this Business Insider article on some creative ambush marketing campaigns.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is exactly what it sounds like, marketing tactics that create a big enough buzz and harness the power and potential of new media to “go viral” on the internet. Viral marketing is so effective because it facilitates the ability to pass the marketing message along in a way that encourages people to do so.
The market base is actually fully engaged and acts as willing participants in perpetuating the marketing campaign. Often this is in the form of an engaging video that people find funny or touching and they pass it along because of how they feel about it.
Principles of viral marketing, then, centre around forging a personal connection with your market base and reaching them on some emotional level – whether it’s excitement over a free product, an emotional pull over a charitable cause, or an amusing and funny advertisement that they simply have to pass on to their friends.
Ultimately, in order to grow your business, you need to grow your customer base, and the only way to do that is to capture their attention and give them a reason to visit your website and try out your product. This can only be achieved through really creative and innovative marketing tactics that make your business stand out from the rest of the competition.
