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Here are some controversial taboos you can consider breaking to spice up your marketing message.
Using Colours
You’re probably conscious of the impact of colours on your brand and marketing campaigns. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t get creative and be daring regarding your brand colours.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish one brand from another because there is way too much competition online. Therefore, it is getting harder for consumers to differentiate brands. You need to take calculated risks to differentiate your brand from the competition.
Take risks and try new brand colours. You may well uncover unexpected opportunities when you introduce new colours to your brand. Who knows, you might stumble onto something that appeals to your target audience.
Controversy Draws Attention
Another taboo you need to break in your marketing message is that of always playing it safe as a corporate brand so as not to draw undesired attention.
Take calculated risks in your marketing messages. Do something daring and outrageous that will draw attention to your brand.
Remember the photo of Richard Branson kitesurfing? That photo went viral and got people talking about him and drew attention to him and his brand.
Please, I’m not telling you to do something crazy and illegal that will get you arrested. Or something that will endanger your life or those of the public. Taking risks doesn’t mean being stupid.
Call out Your Competitors
Don’t be afraid to call out your competitors and poke lighthearted fun at them in your marketing message. Remember the Apple vs Microsoft ads of the early 2000s?
You need not do a TV ad to call out your competitors. You can do so through email marketing, social media. You can do so through your call to action in your print ads. Then you can also achieve it through your marketing strategy and even through your customer experience.
Call out your competitors to highlight your strengths in a creative, funny, and moral way. Calling out your competitors will help your marketing message to reach the heart of your target audience.
Copying Your Competitors
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let’s face it; the world is now a global village. There’s nothing new under the sun. Regardless of how remarkable you think your brand or marketing message is, it probably exists already.
However, this doesn’t mean that you can reproduce an exact carbon copy or plagiarise your competitor’s content. That’s illegal. Don’t do it!
Instead, you can take your competitor’s concept and do it better. Infuse your original ideas and personality into it and make it your own.
There’s always room for improvement. Strive to make your marketing message better than your competition.
The Internet has made it easy for us all to work together, share ideas and collaborate. But, have you placed yourself in a cocoon and not want to see what others in your industry are doing?
Then, you risk waking up one day to discover that you are left behind. Your marketing message and your entire business will be obsolete.
Change, they say, is the only constant thing in life. So you have to learn to let your company and marketing message move with the times.
Posting in Real-time
A few years ago, it was taboo for organisations to display content that was not real-time. Posting in real-time made it difficult for many businesses to produce content for their social media marketing.
Today, organisations have realised that there’s nothing wrong in introducing some automation (scheduling) to their posts on social media.
Do not automate all your activity on social media. That’s being lazy, and it will only end up making your social media marketing look spammy. It may even end up getting your account suspended on various social media platforms.
Over the past few months, Twitter has revoked the ability for users to post to multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. This decision is to reduce the number of spammy bots, accounts and content on their platform.
This move has made tweeting tedious for social media managers and agencies like mine handling multiple social media accounts. But it has also helped us to become more creative regarding our tweets.
Posting after Hours
In the past, it was the norm for brands being active on social media during regular working hours only. However, savvy customer-centric brands have realised that they must make themselves available for their customers 24/7.
You need to study what platform your target audience uses and when they are online so that you are available to them. Don’t make your customers wait until your regular working hours to get feedback from you.
Recycling Content
In the past, it was a taboo for brands to create and post content on social media that was not new! However, many brands have realised that it is not practical and affordable to produce only new content all the time. There’s no point to “reinvent the wheel”, as it were, all the time.
Remember that you are not merely producing content for content sake. Instead, you’re creating content to entertain, inform, and educate your target audience.
Therefore, some smart brands resort to producing evergreen content that they can recycle and repurpose in various formats. This decision is to help them to meet the needs of their target audience for fresh content on multiple platforms as and when required.
Bite-size Content
Another taboo you need to break in your market message is that of producing bite-size content only. Some experts claim that people these days are always on the go. Therefore, they don’t have the time and patience to consume long-form content.
However, the truth is that so long as you produce great content that entertains, informs and educates your target audience, they will consume it regardless of the length.
Google has realised that a lot of these bite-size content are link baits, spam and outright fake news. This discovery is one reason Google ranks quality long-form content high in their search engine results.
Producing great content requires enormous investments in time and money. Only organisations who have the genuine interest of their target audience at heart will make such investments.
Therefore, I challenge you to strive to learn what type of content your target audience likes to consume and focus on producing more of the same.
When creating content, please set the bar very high. Don’t just provide content for the sake of delivering content.
If you don’t have the time and skills to produce great content in-house, outsource your content production to me.
Time to Break Tradition
Are you afraid to spice up your marketing message just because you want to play it safe and abide by the ‘tradition’ that you inherited from your predecessors in the company?
Remember what I said above about change? Do you want to risk getting old just because you want to adhere to some time-honoured traditions in your business?
Are you afraid to use cartoons, drawings, and caricatures in your marketing message just because you’ve always used real photos? Do you like to use high-sounding words and industry jargon in your marketing message to appear ‘smart’?
Maybe it’s time for you to break these traditions and explore new opportunities. If you never try, you’ll never know.
Showcasing Your Peers
These days many people feel they are the smartest person in the room. People are selfish and want to keep the spotlight on themselves alone.
They don’t want to share the spotlight with anyone else nor give credit to whom credit is due.
Are you afraid of showcasing your peers in your marketing message? Are there other professionals in your industry who are doing some groundbreaking work that you admire?
Why not consider shining the spotlight on others from time to time? Who knows, they might return the favour too!
However, even if they don’t return the favour by showcasing you in return in their marketing message, at least you will exhibit leadership quality.
Remember one quality of great leaders is that they are not afraid to shine the spotlight on others!
Share Your Thoughts
These are my thoughts on controversial taboos you need to break in your marketing message. I’d love to know what you think.
Are you interested in exploring new opportunities in your company by breaking some controversial taboos in your marketing message? Follow me on Twitter @ademolaabimbola, let’s discuss it.
Disclaimer: If you choose to break any of these controversial taboos in your marketing message, that is at your own risk.
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