By Henry Brown
All business owners know that to achieve success, they’re going to have to utilize marketing. This is known to be a proven fact. There are various forms of marketing such as radio, TV, social media, SEO, content such as blog posts, and so much more. These have been proven to work time and time again, and these are deemed to be the more “traditional” methods of marketing.
While these get hard praises from marketers and entrepreneurs alike, it’s also important to know that when it comes to marketing, you can do this in so many ways. Is there a right or wrong way to do marketing? While yes, there technically is, that shouldn’t push or dissuade you from wanting to explore other options in marketing your business.
While there are plenty of digital and non-digital ways you can market your business such as the help from SEO services or print ads, there are also traditional and nontraditional marketing tactics. Traditional marketing tactics are known to help, they’re even proven to help. But have you ever considered nontraditional marketing tactics? These are more unusual but that can help your business as well! So these are some effective nontraditional marketing strategies that can help your business.
Microcopy
Have you noticed that consumers are growing shorter attention spans? In the digital landscape, this is something that has been growing more over the years and TikTok has been an additional push to this. Copywriting has been one of the forefathers of marketing, and they’re something no marketer can deny.
While copywriting itself isn’t dying (still thriving more than ever), it is important to recognize the fact that even copywriting needs to keep up with the short attention spans consumers now have. That’s why microcopy could be an excellent choice. It’s hugely important for capturing an audience throughout various parts of their journey. You’re going to want to try to use this nontraditional marketing method for conversion such as engagement.
Educational courses
Educational courses are slowly making their way into a more popular nontraditional way of marketing. Consumers absolutely love content, but the best type of content is that which contains a value. How can a consumer gain from you? One great way would be through the method of education.
Consumers love to learn so what better way than to combine videos and enjoyable content. These education courses should be free as that’s going to be the optimal way to make conversions. So are these costly for the business owner? They don’t have to be. If you’re offering a course for free, then a platform such as Teachable won’t charge you.
Unboxing experience
As you may know, there are plenty of considerations when you’re an online business. If you’re selling a physical product, such as being an e-commerce owner then this is for you. Unboxing experiences are huge right now. While customers are not expecting an unboxing experience from businesses they purchase from, it massively helps. A lot of small-scale business owners are working more and more towards creating an experience when unboxing their products. If you go on TikTok, Instagram, or even YouTube, you’re bound to see plenty of unboxing videos.
Unboxing experiences is usually something that high scale brands provide, think about Dior as an example of this. While small business owners don’t have to emulate it to a tee like high-end brands do, providing some type of experience can help. This then means that nano influencers and average consumers will purchase your products for the unboxing experience but it can go as far as spreading through social media. This is a great method of the whole “word of mouth marketing”.
Streaming
Streaming can come in a variety of forms. Some workshops and webinars are done through streaming. There are a variety of platforms for this, but even social media sites also have a live feature too. Streaming is a nontraditional method that is slowly beginning to overshadow the traditional methods of social media marketing. It can be a great way to have a one-on-one with your customers and followers. This can even be a nice way to show off something like a tutorial, or the “behind the scenes” of what you do.
Forums
There are millions of forums online, some are very niched while others are just general. There is some debate on whether forum posting is an ethical way to market yourself. While this is a nontraditional method, some active forum goers do get pretty upset when there is self-promotion happening. This can even be said for Facebook Groups and Reddit as well.
While you could market yourself, you would have to be incredibly subtle about it to the point it’s not obvious it’s you. But then there are businesses who are on Facebook and Reddit for instance and they are there to directly be in contact with consumers to help out. So this nontraditional marketing strategy can be quite tricky to navigate, but you should also figure out if this would even be right for you.
Bonus tip: Try local marketing
Nowadays, most businesses will try to gear towards a larger audience that isn’t specific to where they’re located. This can be excellent as it includes a larger target. However, this doesn’t mean that the old-school methods of local marketing should go away. Local Search Marketing Pricing can significantly enhance your business and let those around you show support, but it even gives you the potential to take your business to the next level!
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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.
