By Elli Bishop
Not every product is going to be as exciting as Google Glass or as mind-blowing as the latest Apple product.
If you’re stuck marketing a traditionally boring industry, you might not be excited about your marketing campaigns.
Marketing the Uncool
Pay Attention to the Latest Viral Content
By taking the cultural pulse of current Internet trends and taking them to the next level, GE used popular memes and web comics to build awareness about their projects.
Following the explosion of Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” comments on Pinterest, GE riffed on the idea, featuring Thomas Edison as the poster child for sustainable energy projects.
It paid off big time.
The campaign raised awareness about environmental conservation and showcased the company’s commitment to innovation in a fun way.
The Lesson: Follow suit by taking the cultural pulse of social media sites, and riff on popular memes of the day. A recognizable pop culture figure can give a brand massive trend appeal.
Educate and Entertain
Purchasing home security products isn’t exactly exciting, but no one wants to be the victim of a robbery.
By creating compelling content in “Six Things We Can Learn from the Victims of the Bling Ring,” SafeWise turned a dry topic into something worth sharing.
People came for the content and stayed for the products.
The Lesson: People search the web looking for answers, so why not entertain them along the way? If it’s not interesting, helpful, or entertaining, it probably won’t get shared.
Provide Real Value
Toilet paper isn’t exactly a topic for polite company.
Charmin took on the challenge of taking a taboo topic mainstream with some app-based marketing.
The Charmin Sit or Squat app app helps users find the cleanest public restrooms where ever they are. It created a dialogue about a product that you might not really want to talk about. The app is useful, and people will use it again and again.
The Lesson: Be helpful, even when it’s not directly related to your product. The app was successful because it gave people something they need: A way of finding a clean public bathroom.
Get Visual
Data visualizations have the ability to make any industry seem exciting, thanks to an eye-grabbing design, and important information. Take TShirtForum.com, a site dedicated to a community of t-shirt wearers.
For an incredibly specific niche and web community such as TShirtForum, a branded infographic packaged for social sharing drove traffic back to its website.
Even better, they introduced other t-shirt enthusiasts to a new forum.
The Lesson: A good design makes even the most boring facts and figures pop. Infographics turn important data into an easy to remember and interpret format.
Think Outside the Box
Put a little creative spark into your digital marketing by just thinking outside the box.
Smart content that provides real value, answers questions, and entertains while it educates, gives any business in any industry an opportunity to bask in the spotlight buzzworthy attention.
Image courtesy of Hubspot