Five Ways to Harness Marketing Energy

Marketing can do amazing things for a business if the process is creative and innovative. Here are some simple techniques to add creative energy to all of your marketing efforts:

• Brainstorming: Think of 100 new ideas for marketing your business and then use the best 10.

• Analogies: Think of products that your product is similar to and tell the customer (or potential customer) why.

• Pass-along: Write a simple sales or marketing idea on a piece of paper or in an e-mail and then pass that idea along to someone else with the instruction that he or she should add to it or list another idea. Keep circulating the paper or e-mail until your coworkers or friends have helped you generate a long list of ideas and options to choose from.

• Question assumptions: Make a list of stupid questions and take the time to ask people what they think. “Why do you have to have branches to be in the banking business?” is a good example of a “stupid” question that may lead to a breakthrough marketing concept.

• Rewriting: Good ol’ editing and rewriting can lead you to better marketing communications. In fact, rewriting opens more creative doors than any other technique. Take a copy of a brochure and make yourself come up with five new headlines or titles that you can use for the cover. You’ll probably come up with at least one headline that’s much more striking and interesting than the existing one.