Boring Marketing is Expensive
Being ignored is burning your budget.
When it comes to effective marketing, the worst case scenario is being ignored. Your target audience will most likely forget you unless you can stay top of mind and easy to find. But being ignored in the first place? You may as well burn your cash to stay warm.
The short and sweet version:
Boring is forgettable. Forgettable means less effective. Less effective means spending more to be noticed. Spending more to be noticed and still forgotten is wasted spend. Wasted spend means higher costs and fewer results. Spending more money on something you plan to waste with fewer results is bad business.
Boring is bad for business. Boring is expensive.
"Boring" doesn't have to be confined to describing creative or advertising. It’s not just adding a celebrity or stunt to your ads. How else can your marketing help your business avoid the trap of "boring?" First off, remember marketing is a lot more than just promotional advertising (sorry, Elon Musk).
If we’re focused on creating products and services that meet the customer’s needs, we should take into account what they’re interested in and how we’ll stand out from the rest of the market.
Marketing is understanding what people want and need, then taking to market products that serve those needs.
Below are some examples.
Start with the Customer
Many times, competitors are using the same imagery and messaging. Do something different. If you really get to know the target audience and understand their needs, you can shift their perceptions to stand out from other options.
Challenge: How do we create a brand strategy for bottled water that stands out in a large, crowded space that competes on price?
Boring Example: Drink more water to be healthy.
Exciting Solution: "Murder your Thirst" in a package that helps the target audience fit in at events, concerts, and parties.
Liquid Death Mountain Water took the time to know their audience.
Don't Blow Research
Speaking of target audiences, research is your chance to understand them more than themselves. Don't fart away your opportunity to interrogate the data and find something beyond the obvious. Here's an example for an often-overlooked product in the home – the bath fan.
Challenge - Why are consumers choosing low-end bath fans inferior to better products?
Boring: Cheaper fans are an easy choice for consumers. They choose them because of price. This option stinks.
Exciting: Women want to hide embarrassing bathroom noises. They welcome the noise for privacy. Let's add Bluetooth to our bath fans so they can control the sound inside the bathroom. And increase the price of high-end products by 20%.
“Boring is forgettable. Forgettable means less effective. Less effective means spending more to be noticed. Spending more to be noticed and still forgotten is wasted spend. Wasted spend means higher costs and fewer results. Spending more money on something you plan to waste with fewer results is bad business. ”
The Sound of Success
Speaking of sound, where did all the theme songs go? The jingles? Sure, it sounds old school. But we still hum themes from Mentos, Kit Kat, and McDonald's. Audio is a solid distinctive brand asset (DBA) that creates strong memories for consumers.
I bet you can sing what comes after “Ba Da ba ba ba …”
Challenge: You're planning a campaign that works across video, social media, TV, and streaming music platforms like Spotify. How do you tie them together?
Boring: Download cheap, royalty-free music. Most likely something with that awful "Stomp. Clap. Hey!" rhythm that even The Lumineers would be ashamed of. Why does everyone want to sound like a bank?
Exciting: Work with songwriters to create and produce music that's on brand, completely ownable, and stands out from the competition. It's less expensive than you think, if you’re not hiring celebrities. And music forms strong memories. Use it across all forms of media from visual to audible. And use it a lot.
“You cannot bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them into buying it.”
The Big Takeaway
When it comes to effective marketing, it’s important to stand out in the minds of your customers. Give them a chance to recognize you, a reason to remember you, and loads of consistency across different forms of media so you’re easy to find when they’re ready to buy.
Cutting costs and playing it safe are a good way to find yourself questioning marketing ROI, because you’re being ignored and wasting money.
