With all the different traditional marketing methods available to any seller these days, why should we do something different? I think the simplest answer is that for those in the business of selling handmade and hand crafted products, the traditional methods of marketing are not producing the results most of us would like to see. In fact, for some sellers, they aren’t working at all. My goal in this post is not so much to tell you how to do something as it is to help you start a thinking process.
It has been said that there really aren’t any new ideas, just modifications of ideas that someone else has thought of before. I don’t know if that is really true or not. I do know that I have seen some very wild marketing done in the last few years and just a few years ago, no one would have ever thought of doing some of the things that are done today. Maybe it is that the changes we are seeing in our society make these unusual marketing techniques acceptable today. No matter what the reason, they seem to work. Isn’t that what counts anyway?
What we as business owners need to do in today’s market place is not necessarily scrap the old traditional marketing methods but to twist, bend, tear, stretch, add to, subtract from, combine or other wise modify them to work for us. We might as well face the fact that most of us are not marketing geniuses. In fact for most of us we don’t like marketing at all. We would much rather be creating than selling. The fact that we are creative can be a really big advantage for us compared to the average business owner. We are used to using our imagination more and that is exactly what we need to do.
Some years ago I developed a little mental exercise to help me come up with new marketing ideas. It isn’t really anything extraordinary and probably a good many people have used it before without ever giving any thought to it. He concept goes like this:
1 – Think of the most outrageous thing you could do to market your product.
2 – Take and write out all the aspects of this idea. Every little detail.
2 – Now Disregard the main idea itself because you probability don’t have the courage to do it.
3 – From what you have written down however figure out just how far with the plan would you really be willing to go.
4 – With these details you have the basis for your very own Thinking Out Of The Box marketing plan. All you have to do is refine it so that it is really feasible for your needs.
One of the best ways to get started here is to keep a little note pad handy at all time. Any time you think of a really crazy idea, write it down. You might not want to make the contents of the note pad public because some people may think you have gone off the deep end. You don’t want a paper trail just in case.
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