If I have learned anything about marketing since 1975, it is that if you want to suck at marketing, be boring. Boring marketing content is like giving your customer Ambien and expecting them to pay attention. Zzzzz.
How can you avoid this fate?
- The company whose on-hold message has a different joke each day – that’s not boring.
- The luggage shop that greets you with a hug isn’t dull. (The owner always asks, “may I give you a hug today to say hello?”)
- The golf course that organizes a picnic and mini-festival for underprivileged child children four times per year on the 18th green isn’t boring.
- The pet shop that organizes a bus from a senior citizen home for those who would like to play with a puppy for a few hours isn’t boring.
- The restaurant has random acts of lime pie dessert for everyone when the spirit urges – they too aren’t dull.
Boring Marketing is the Enemy
How is your business fighting sameness, and that feeling of meh?
What tactics are you going to employ in 2021? How will you not only get noticed but get a little extra love for breaking through the blah, blah, blah of most afternoons?
Most businesses don’t realize how much they blend into the woodwork. What are you doing to stand out from the category by bringing an idiosyncratic, human element to your company? Can you get someone to stop and notice you – instead of blending into the wallpaper?
Let’s face it, and most businesses are boring and way too serious. A little fun goes a long way to make a customer want to come back.
Koch’s Deli – Lessons in Sampling Pastrami
When I was in college, we used to go to Koch’s Deli for lunch in West Philadelphia. It was always ridiculously crowded. The lines were out in the street. Louis or Bobby would walk around the line with slices of pastrami in hand that they would share with the waiting guests to make they’re wait a little more tolerable. The business has new owners today, but they still give away samples while people wait because it’s fun and you are family.
I haven’t eaten pastrami in over twenty-five years, but the memory of these experiences still lingers like the smell of pickled meats. I don’t remember any experience like that from any other restaurants in the neighborhood. Koch’s was genuinely remarkable and never dull or uninteresting.
Five Tips for Anti-Boring Brigades
- Have each employee create a strange but wonderful list of silly ideas that might make a customer smile. No limits or guidelines on the list, except it, must not offend your audience.
- Find a local high school or college class and ask a teacher if they would give this assignment to budding business or arts students. Provide a small reward or gift for the best ideas. Kids don’t care about your rules or what is proper – they love fun stuff, and their ideas might be just the antidote your business needs. The assignment – get customers to laugh with you about your business, products, or marketplace. Or, how can we bring joy to our customers and employees?
- Create a meet up with a smart marketing facilitator who could take several small business owners through a brainstorming session to create dozens of great ideas together. What works for the dry cleaners might also work for the take-out deli or a light manufacturer too.
- Call the owners of companies who are in the same industry/business as you in other cities. Create your mastermind group to share ideas that have worked for others in different markets. Someone may have some fun, anti-boring ideas that you can borrow and that won’t interfere with their business if it’s one thousand miles away.
- Create a contest online that allows anyone to submit an idea on your website that suggests ways to bring some fun to your humdrum marketing. Create an anti-boring committee made up of folks from improv, sales, and marketing. The goal – make your brand more approachable and add a little smile to the prospect’s day.
Companies have both internal and external customers they need to engage with every day. Bringing an anti-boring mentality to those relationships means being thoughtful, intentional, and acting like a human being.
How are you fighting the scourge of boring marketing?
You can set up a time to chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com Call me. 919 720 0995. The conversation is free, and we can explore if working together makes sense.
Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
