Guru-lised List of Marketing Tips

Ok, just a little rant on stuff that I personally feel from observed marketing efforts both by professionals and from some in school.

To make it a little different, I think I'll do it this way, starting from the bottom...

#5 Design well
Design is essential in creating the right mood and feel for the piece, be it a poster or website or video, but should be secondary to the information that the piece is supposed to bring across. Good design supplements the info by drawing attention to details the viewer should remember. Bad "design" for radio would most probably equate to those radio ads where you only remember the 2 irritating voices yammering about some car or condominium but you just can't remember which one they were actually trying to sell.

#4 More does not mean better, think different
More posters, more TV advertisements, more radio advertisements sadly do not equate to more sales. In most cases, viewers have been known to "switch off" their minds to the ads that come up too often. In a more school-based context, marketing is about 80% posters around school and 20% putting those posters up. It has become so saturated that a new poster becomes camouflaged in the pile of old ones. In such cases, it would be better to think of other more innovative means of marketing besides sticking to the old stuff or worse, more of the old stuff.

#3 Irritate the viewer at your own Risk
How many times have you sworn off a product just because its TV ad came with an irritating jingle. Or how about ads that insult you before they try to sell you stuff -- "You are fat and you need our help ...." Let's face it, most folks are already not too pleased with their lives as it is and anyone else rubbing salt into that is just being a glutton for punishment. 'Nuff said on this one.

#2 Pitch, pitch, pitch
Everything's an exchange and marketing is no different. Unless you're selling old stuff (which is a pretty bad deal unto itself), you gotta point out your differentiated value for your target audiences to see. And the way to do that would have to be short, simple and clear. In some cases, it trying to define the value would limit the marketing process so another option would be to invoke emotive value for people. This works great most of the time when coupled with social proof techniques like making a certain event seem to be "the one" that everyone cool is going to. That's when the house is going to get packed.

#1 Going Viral Rocks
So much has been said about this and yet so few are getting it right. In most cases, going viral becomes an accident rather than a plan. But in any case, planning for a marketing campaign to run on people power sure doesn't hurt and every little push in this direction would be a good one. Though I'm not too sure what would make good viral material, I'm guessing pretty much that controversial and ease-of-understanding helps.


And there you have it, top 5 countdown list which took much longer than I thought. Hope that has been a useful read for all you out there so be sure to bug me with comments if you have more inputs.