Tips for More Creative Marketing

In the world of marketing, original thought is a depressingly rare commodity. More often than not, businesses within a certain industry copy the marketing campaigns of other enterprises, and the result is a mass of generic advertising that says nothing about the actual business, or what it can do. Although creative thinking in the marketing world is rare, it is incredibly powerful and in this article, we take a look at some of the ways you promote creative thought within your marketing department.

Ask an outsider

Quite often, professionals entrenched in a particular industry develop a kind of tunnel vision and are only able to think within the confines of their professional experience. In situations like this, getting input from an outsider can bring a breath of fresh air to stagnant ideas and help marketers see where their concepts are succeeding or failing to gain traction with the layman. Getting in an outside perspective can also challenge professionals to look at an idea from the layman’s perspective, and thus free up their creative thinking.

Explore beyond your industry

If you really want to stand out from the crowd, then you need to step away from the way your industry markets things. Research the way that other industries successfully market products and services, and then see if you can adapt them to serve your own marketing needs.

Get experimental

If things feel like they are stagnating, don’t be afraid to mix up the innovation process by bringing in new people, approaching challenges from a new angle, or even holding meetings in a different location.

Be accepting of failure

Failure is an important part of the creative process and the marketer’s fear of failure is the reason why so much modern advertising fails to gain traction with the target audience. Recognise that failure is part of the business growth process, and take the time to develop a marketing budget which is robust enough to absorb failed campaigns.

Mix different types of thinkers together

Tension is essential to the creative process but a common problem with marketing teams is the ‘groupthink’ phenomenon where individuals are reticent to express their ideas or disagree for fear of appearing unsupportive of the group. Create friction in you marketing department by bringing in individuals with different perspectives, try building an innovation team comprising of professionals from different areas of your company, who will each have a different take on how something should be marketed.

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