Six things Gangnam style can teach you about SME marketing.
Psy pretty much defines his style by the fact that you can easily recognise it. Branding works the same way – whether your style is modern, fresh, controversial or bold – stick to it. Give your brand a tone and voice and organise all your key messages around your style.
The amount of little boys I have seen at the supermarket dancing like the little boy in Psy’s clip tells me that people recognise talent when they see it. More importantly they want to be associated with it. Recruit some splendid talent to work with you and share your vision – this will constitute internal marketing which will then lead to word of mouth for your company or brand. Surround yourself with a talented team and you will have the best brand advocates.
Markets are becoming more and more global and being culturally close minded will leave you behind and uninspired. Think of how you can customise your messages for different markets and employ people from different cultures to have a variety of perspectives. Successful businesses that are great at marketing are culturally diverse and develop awesome campaigns. Coca Cola and McDonald’s were culturally diversifying their offerings years before everyone else and gained the edge. So next time you see a spelling mistake or hear an accent, focus on the message rather than the little details – think 430 million views on YouTube for a Korean song that most people don’t understand. Yet they can connect to it.
Everyone in marketing is big about doing a competitive analysis and finding out all the strengths and weaknesses of the competition. Yes do that but be your awesome self and don’t worry too much. If you can do what you do really well and improve on it all the time – you shouldn’t be overly paranoid about what others are doing. Marketing can get old pretty quickly so instead of spending all your time worrying about what others are doing, work on making yours better.
Marketing likes Cool and vice versa. Gone is the era of doing business in a cold and unfriendly manner so never underestimate the power of being cool, friendly and engaging. Think of the marketing giants of the world – Richard Branson, Steve Jobs and Oprah, they all have this collective attitude of being up for a laugh, a joke or a prank. Don’t be stiff.
Marketing is like anything else it requires experimentation, planning and a touch of creativity. Integrate it with all your other business activities and set objectives for yourself. Don’t be overly harsh on yourself if you fail or if things don’t turn out exactly how you expected them. Aim for completion and not perfection whilst continually improving and you will destroy the joint.
Marketing Bee hopes that you enjoyed this article and that it gave you some motivation to bring some buzz to your marketing. It is with great pleasure that we are launching a new website shortly (linked for preview) and that we will be blogging more and more.
Thank you for reading and leave your comments below!
I hail from Mauritius, an idyllic island off the coast of Africa and moved Down Under as an international student. Being in a corporate job wasn't for me so I took my own path with $450 in the bank. I've always been passionate about SMEs and after seeing so many struggle digitally, I founded Marketing Bee. We are Australia's first cloud-based marketing department, providing digital production, social media strategy, web development and everything in between for our clients here and overseas.
Thanks Sharon, brilliant article. My 12 yo is already into the Harlem shake, so like Wendy, look forward to your marketing blog on that.