7 Principles of Marketing That'll Make Your Business Stand Out
We all want our businesses to stand out, but the problem is that our tendency is to only try what we know. I want to open your eyes to these tried and true, yet sometimes hidden marketing principles to help you get your business out there!
1. Create a remarkable experience
Marketing is about creating remarkable experiences. A remarkable experience is something people don’t forget. It’s something so exciting, curious, interesting, mind-boggling, physically transformational, emotionally powerful, or spiritually impactful that people just HAVE to tell their friends about it. But, when we put so much time and energy into our services and products, it’s sometimes hard to think about how to present those services and products in a truly remarkable way. So, how can you make what you do memorable and conversation-worthy?
Here are a number of ways:
1. Passion
Your natural enthusiasm for what you do is contagious. When you speak or write about it with excitement or deep knowledge, others will perk up to hear what is going on.
Apply it: Genuine enthusiasm isn’t the same as exclamation points. Often we can feel bogged down about work. It’s up to you to dig deep and unclog the spring of your passion about work. When you do you’ll attract people like a magnet.
2. Creativity
When you drop into a creative mindset you open your mind to radically new ideas. Here you’re willing to try things until you find the experience that really lights up your people.
Apply it: Get into brainstorming, critiquing your work, and asking others to test out the experiences you’re creating. If passion is the wellspring, creativity is the hose you connect to funnel the water in the directions you want.
3. Perspective
Spend time in other people’s brains. Get their honest feedback. Tweak and improve. You’re not a sell out because you listen to other people, you’re a genius. I spend my time surrounding myself with people much smarter than me. My inner circle doesn’t let me put crap out there. As a result, the work I put out is extremely high quality.
Apply it: Surround yourself with 3-5 people who’s perspective you highly trust. Additionally, ask clients, audience members, and anyone else related to your work for feedback at strategic times.
And of course, when you get stuck and feel like you just don’t know where to start, hire a business coach like me. Our jobs are to get you unstuck, re-inspired, and back into a creative flow as you grow your business.
2. Build it to be shared
Make your offering easy to share. Make your marketing easy to share. Remember the whole point of marketing is to promote yourself to more people. It’s easy to forget that large scale marketing is just word-of-mouth marketing beyond the usual Dunbars numbers of intimate community. So make it easy to click, easy to say yes to, easy to share on social media, and easy to talk about to friends of friends. Then go one step further. Make sharing more than easy, make it built in.
Here are some ways to do that:
Gather people together, because sharing is inherent when people come together.
Give away samples or swag with way too much for one person.
Build your course ON social media, not referencing social media.
What other ways can you come up with to make it easy to share?
3. If you don’t think marketing is storytelling, you don’t understand marketing
How do we define what a human is? Some say it’s that we tell stories. Storytelling is one of the oldest, richest parts of our human heritage, it binds us together, it creates safety, it teaches us, and it heals us.
Now what is marketing? Marketing is simply people telling others about something. It’s storytelling. Let me actually take that back, there’s plenty of “marketing” that is actually just one person screaming at others - that’s not storytelling. That’s not even marketing.
Marketing involves emotion, connection, authenticity, and heart. Like storytelling, you must work to make people care about your company, product, or service. You’ve got to understand how people think, what they’re looking for, what they’re afraid of, and what can help them. You’ve got to take them through the whole arc of the heroes journey. It’s then that they’ll feel a connection to you and your business.
4. Turn something they need into something they want
A great example of this is the company Me Undies. They took underwear and socks, a common necessity and not only created super fun designs but have used every creative tool available to turn something we need into something we want.
Here are some examples of what they’re doing that works:
They use not only fun designs but also sustainable fabrics and are very comfortable to wear. Their products are all high quality.
They created a highly discounted membership service where every month they come out with new fun designs that are affordable if you’re subscribed.
Their messaging is playful, silly, and a little irreverent. All their play and creativity is a thrilling contrast to the world of serious black underwear being worn by stylish elite models. They show off their uniqueness very well.
They pull models from the community, running challenges for people to post pictures of themselves in the underwear and get selected. It’s a genius move to create an exciting and genuine way for your customers to do marketing for you.
Even I’m promoting them without having any affiliation to them, and I’m pretty picky about companies I recommend! Which companies that you like do a great job turning things you need into things you want?
5. Find your evangelists and love on them
I learned by teaching yoga that even if you don’t market yourself very well, a trickle of people will still find you, and become loyal to you and your work. For whatever reason, those people will frikkin love the crap out of you, they’ll invite other people to your events, tell them about your offerings, and will spread the good word without any prompting from you.
In my consulting practice I help clients identify why these evangelists are finding them and how to systematize that process, but for now I want you to forget about “why” and just embrace the people who love your business. I want you to identify them and reward them. It’s about time you send them a little thank you note, a free shirt, or appreciate them in some way.
Then make a clear welcoming process for new loyal clients, where you open the door for them to gain more VIP access to you or your business. When you build this in to your business more folks will become loyal and develop a joyful or positive relationship with your business. They will come for your services, but they’ll come back for you. This is specifically where to practice generosity.
6. People like us
People like us is a concept I first learned from the yoda of marketing, Seth Godin. It’s the realization that we naturally form identities with groups we perceive to be like us. Think of any time you’ve ever thought, “I like Jamal because he’s such a Harry Potter geek and just seems to get me,” or “I like this group of salsa dancers because they so understand how cool it is to learn new body movements like me.”
The ways we identify with groups is so important for marketing because the most successful examples of marketing all began by serving a specific group of “weird” people, and I mean weird in the best way. Weird means the people obsessed with something, whether they’re tech geeks, beauty geeks, baseball geeks, art geeks, or reading geeks, everyone is weird, and should be honored in their weirdness. That’s what marketing is: honoring people in their weirdness. Getting them excited about their specific geekdom. Solving problems that help them be more themselves. That’s an exciting thing to do.
7. Gamification
What’s your favorite game or type of game? I absolutely love treasure hunts of all kinds. I love solving them, making them, and hanging out with people on treasure hunts. Gamification is the process of making something into a game, and it’s an extremely powerful marketing and sales tool to use in your business.
In order to gamify your business, think about people:
Getting points
Gaining badges
Completing fun tasks
Receiving expected rewards
Receiving unexpected rewards
Now I bet you’ll see gamification everywhere you look. Gamifying your business can seem like a daunting process at first, but start small. Can you give rewards on your newsletter? How about giving something away on Instagram for the number of people who engage a certain way? When you’re ready two up level start thinking about ways to make them want to keep coming back. Gaining points can make people very loyal if they love your products.
If you feel stuck, what are your biggest obstacles to gamifying your business?
In conclusion
I hope these tips are helpful in growing your business through a well thought-out marketing strategy. Keep experimenting until you find gold!
