Positive word of mouth remains the most effective marketing tool available. Somebody purchases a product or service that they absolutely love; goes on to tell friends, family, and co-workers; then word spreads, sales increase, and everybody’s happy.
That one person acting as the starting point doesn’t even necessarily need to buy the product or service. They could have read an interesting article or blog post online or in a magazine, seen a demonstration in-store, or seen an advertisement that caught their eye.
But how do you accomplish that? We live in an age where people will DVR or download TV shows just so they can watch them later without the hassle of commercials. Ad block web browser add-ons are among the most downloaded tools on the Internet. People regularly skip over ads in newspapers and magazines by habit. So how do you get them to pay attention? How do you stand out? The answer, is by being creative. By coming up with something new and inventive that people will have no choice but to take notice of.
By now most of the planet has seen the ad for Old Spice body wash, titled “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” Its depiction of actor Isaiah Mustafa seamlessly transitioning from one locale to another while addressing the audience (with his now trademark “Hello Ladies”) and touting the virtues of Old Spice body wash has become permanently ingrained in pop culture, and is made all the more impressive by the fact that the entire commercial was done in a single shot, using only a single piece of CGI (for the shot of the falling diamonds with the body wash container rising out of them). It became (and remains) one of the most quoted television commercials in history, and spawned an entire marketing campaign centered around the character that included several more commercials, an online campaign in which the titular “Old Spice Guy” responded to Twitter messages via Youtube, a Christmas campaign, and even a series depicting a one on one face off between the Old Spice Guy and world famous Italian model Fabio for the title of, well, Old Spice Guy.
The entire campaign was new, it was creative, and it got people talking. A lot of people. While the ads themselves were heavily pushed on television and online, it was the word of mouth from people who had seen the original ad that pushed it from just another funny commercial to a permanent fixture of pop culture. And it did so because it was creative.
This is the sort of creativity that you need to channel when building your Personal Independent Earnings. There are over 7 billion people on Earth, all looking for a piece of the PIE. It’s up to you to make yourself stand out in that massive crowd. Don’t rehash the same old things everyone else is doing. Everyone else is doing them! Be fresh, be new, be exciting. Get the old creative juices flowing, and show those 7 billion people something they’ve never seen before. Grab their attention, and never let it go. Make sure you’re offering something that is universally needed, exciting, and easy to share – once people get a handle on that, they’ll spread the word faster and more effectively than any marketing you could do.
This isn’t to say that traditional marketing has no value – people can’t talk about your brand or business if they aren’t aware of it – but really grabbing the attention of people and getting them talking about your opportunity is critical to success in home-business ownership.
