How Disruptive Marketing Strategies are Changing the Industry
Disruptive marketing is much more than just a trend that brands follow nowadays. Disruptive marketing is changing the way people react to, understand, and accept companies and their advertising. From a business standpoint, disruptive marketing represents a key shift in an era where promotional strategies update as fast as the technology that carries them. However, from a consumer standpoint, all this change can lead to uncertainty and confusion.
To begin with, “disruption” is a word that has begun to do the rounds in many industries of late. Whether it’s the disruptive AI technologies changing the computing environment, or the mind-blowing transformations in the health and fitness sector, human beings are always looking for ways to change and evolve. Disruptive marketing techniques allow brands and marketing agencies to tap into this desire for change and implement it into their vision for long-term success. In other words, disruptive marketing is all about breaking the ‘status quo’, experimenting with new techniques, and challenging the traditional marketing approach.
It is seen that disruptive innovation makes something more affordable and accessible, which is why it is on the rise. The most obvious examples of this are technological innovations and smartphones, which have democratized data to the masses. Also, when Uber was founded, people scoffed at the idea of getting into a stranger’s car while the idea of AirBnB made people nervous in the same way. But today, they’re both ubiquitous parts of everyday life and travel. Hence, disruptive innovation often tends to raise many eyebrows in the beginning, but later gains momentum and success for all the right reasons. Though, one cannot deny that such innovations are often of low quality at first and hence require many iterations and improvements over time. Remember the iPhones — every new model is better than the last, but Apple doesn’t wait until they perfect every feature to release them. The biggest selling point of this is that disruptive innovations focus on customers. Business innovation and marketing crowds agree that businesses can only find success by fulfilling customer needs. Disruptive innovation looks at customer needs of the future, often filling them before customers even recognize they exist!
Making a successful strategy to work in any business needs a lot of hard work, research, and market sense. Let’s look at some strategies that have been proven effective in this type of marketing model.
Research
Before one can create world-changing disruptive marketing strategies, marketers need to know everything there is to know about the environment they are trying to transform, and the people living within it. There are plenty of ways to learn more about the trends in the industry with tools like BizStats and Think with Google. These tools will help marketers to begin assessing the gaps in the marketplace so that one can come up with an idea that’s entirely new. Going ahead, after knowing what’s happening in the industry, marketers will need to start stepping into the customer’s shoes. This is where the buyer’s persona will come in handy. Research states that 72% of today’s customers say that they expect their favourite brands to understand their expectations and needs. Exploring the minds of the audience and investigating any needs they might have that aren’t currently being served is the right way to go.
Honest and transparent
Businesses are now shifting from “producer-led” paradigms for sales, into “consumer-led” models. In other words, the customers have more power than ever before and hence can decide who they want to do business with from an ever-growing list of competitors. Additionally, they can research each brand they’re considering working with. In a world where nothing is “secret”, and everything is social, it’s important to make sure that brands can appeal to the new, highly skeptical audience. Marketers can no longer just push messages at the customers and expect people to trust them. Instead, brands need to build an affinity with their customers through transparency, and honest behavior. When looking for a way to launch disruptive marketing techniques, marketers must remember that everything they do should link back to their unique values and visions as a company. If something doesn’t work out, marketers need to be prepared to stand up and apologize.
Be different
Perhaps one of the most important things marketers need to remember while designing disruptive marketing campaigns is that while the aim is to do something that will help the brand to stand out from the competitors, it doesn’t mean that it should just be different for the sake of it. Disruptive marketing strategies should introduce the world to something that they’ve never seen before, but at the same time, give them something of real value. It should be relevant to the actual need of the consumers, and not a gimmick that would fail to satisfy the requirement in the long run.
Have purpose
A purpose-driven business is something that marketers want to achieve based on the values, and ideals of the target market. Standing for something that matters to the customer is one of the easiest ways to amplify the brand voice in this over-saturated marketplace. One must remember, taking a stand can help brands to rally for the community support of the customers, and create a sense of affinity.
Today’s business environment is a world away from what traditional entrepreneurs might expect. The strategy of hard selling is over, and today’s most successful brands are making their profits by speaking to their customers instead and developing stronger relationships with the people they want to sell to. In a world of saturation and overcrowding, disruptive marketing creates an image that can’t be easily duplicated. Even if someone else does try to steal the brand voice, it will always be the first person to disrupt the industry in a new and innovative way, hence, something like that makes the company impossible to ignore.
