In marketing, being creative is a big must. Business owners and marketers are always required to come up with new ideas to reach customers, promote the product, and make sales. However, the walk isn’t as simple as the talk.
Feeling stuck or in another term, creative block, is a common issue in marketing. To solve this problem, there are a few tips that you can implement to ease up the next brainstorming session and ultimately, bring out the best and fresh marketing innovation in your head.
Creativity & Innovation: Key in Marketing
In a world that’s constantly changing and growing, newness is highly expected by customers. Some people may prefer similarities and stability, but in running a business, it’s impossible to not create a new campaign when Christmas comes or a new product is launched, right?
There will be dilemmas on how to communicate the message, what medium to use, and where to distribute the information. Not to mention the demand for constant online posting and content editing is also a new challenge in the current digital-based marketing landscape.
This is why to break the creative block, there are multiple valuable tips that you can start using whenever you are expected to produce creative marketing innovations.
Implement the SCAMPER Technique
SCAMPER Technique is arguably the most popular creative thinking framework. The concept was popularised in 1971, and it has been used in many organisations because it creates a systematic thought process that covers various options for generating innovations. SCAMPER is an acronym that stands for:
- Substitution: what can be replaced?
- Combine: how can different elements be merged?
- Adapt: which aspects can be changed to fit a new purpose?
- Modify: what can be exaggerated or simplified?
- Put to Another Use: how else could this be utilised?
- Eliminate: what can be removed?
- Reverse: what can be reordered?
Here’s an illustration to make it easier to understand. Let’s take an example of the case of a particular landing page for a product that isn’t highly converting. The SCAMPER Technique can be used as follows:
- Substitute the headline by rewriting it with more emotionally triggering words.
- Combine image and video files into the landing page.
- Modify the product description section to be more concise and engaging.
- Reverse the order of product image and customer testimony sections.
Monitor the Current Trends
Trends in the market are always changing every few weeks, or even days when it comes to social media. Staying up to date with the latest talk of the town can be a good source of innovation. However, it’s important to understand that just because something is trending, that doesn’t always mean you should ride the wave.
If a new dancing challenge is viral on TikTok, learning the choreography and performing in front of your phone won’t do your business any good. Sure, it may boost awareness, but unless you run dance classes, the only impressions you will get are likes and shares, not sales and profits.
Not to mention if the trends aren’t suited to your branding. Some trends are only buzzing around a certain group of people, so if the core identity of your brand isn’t associated with the trends and your target customers aren’t the ones who relate to them, it’d be wise to not take the chance of damaging your business’ image.
Take Reference from Other Industries
Sometimes looking around to the other businesses can be beneficial, especially when it comes to finding inspiration for marketing innovation. Finding what succeeds in other industries and seeing if it can be applied to your business tends to be the unexpected solution that can work.
Keep Customers in Mind
Possessing a customer-centric mindset is important above all. Once your innovation deviates away from the customers’ needs and preferences, nobody will be hooked and lured to your brand. This is why being knowledgeable about the industry you’re in and the customers you deal with is so crucial.
Knowledge about customers is your primary weapon for creating a successful marketing innovation. Having a solid grasp of demographic information such as age, gender, and occupation can help you predict what kind of marketing program and communication strategy will be the most favourable and effective for them.
Continuous Brainstorming
Constant discussion is important for creative thinking. Having a group discussion not only sparks unthinkable ideas, but it’s also important to hear feedback and input from others.
A little insider tip for conducting a “wild” brainstorming session: ask the group an open-ended question like “What if…?” This one simple question will ignite a lively talk and debate that will end up fruiting a creative marketing innovation.
To Wrap Up
These are the 5 proven, effective tips that you can use to tackle creative block and generate marketing innovations for your business. Hopefully, the blog is informative and helpful enough to light up some suggestions on how to be creative in the challenging and dynamic field of marketing.
However, if you’re still facing the block and difficulties in initiating a creative marketing innovation, don’t let it beat you. It’s worth remembering that creative thinking isn’t that straightforward. The idea may seem simple and doable, but it can surely take the majority of your time, budget, and energy. Which is why…
Give us a holler now to have all the confusion and stress taken off your plate. Racket will happily be your reliable marketing department that delivers marketing innovations while you focus on other things that matter.