One of the most challenging ways of staying relevant to your market is avoiding commodification. This phenomenon is prevalent in the online marketing world: you offer an innovative product or service, you enjoy initial success, and everyone else follows suit. Soon your innovative solution becomes just another commodity.
To survive the online marketplace, you need to do more than present your business along with your products and services. Here’s how you can survive the online marketplace and maintain your relevance in your industry:
Change Things Up with Disruption
Maintaining your relevance in your industry requires more than just plain innovation: you need to practice disruptive thinking and apply it to your product development and marketing processes. In order to avoid becoming a commodity, you need to consistently find a way to develop your offerings in ways that your market does not expect.
Disruptive innovation should be accompanied by disruptive marketing. You should find new ways of communicating with your audience. Your strategy should revolve around one of both of these: catering to the needs of people not contented with current solutions available, and presenting solutions for an emerging market. Don’t be afraid to use different platforms and finding new ways of storytelling.
People Buy into People
Some businesses make the mistake of pushing their offerings to their market too hard. It’s important to note two things:
– The power of the market has already shifted from you to your buyers. This begun when the market became saturated with sellers offering the same things.
– People buy into people and personalities, not things.
You need to build your marketing campaign around being a relatable figure. You could be someone’s family member, a friend, or an inspiration. Give your business a face (a real person or an animated character) and highlight the best characters of your representative that are parallel to your brand message.
Another way (and the opposite of creating someone relatable) is to put a face on your product that every person wants to be. Stir the natural desire of people to be the best and present your business as the solution. A very successful example of this is the 2010 Old Spice commercial, which has become a viral hit online.
Pull at the Heart Strings
Creating a human element is only the beginning of avoiding being a commodity and being a key industry player instead. You need to stir nostalgia in your audience and create deeper connections with them after you establish that you have something in common. A good example is the recent Dove ad campaign:
We can help you develop an online marketing strategy that ensures you stay ahead of other players in your industry and your business does not turn into another commodity. Contact us today to get started, and keep checking back here for more tips to help your business be successful online.