MARKETING - Duplicating Efforts

MARKETING

Duplicating Efforts

By Nikki Viljoen – Viljoen Consulting January 2008.

I am no expert on marketing – that said, common sense and logic must tell you that most marketing techniques have already been tried and tested through time.

I am pretty sure that many people will tell you that it is really important to be innovative and creative with respect to your marketing efforts.

To add to that I am also pretty sure that you are  hugely excited about your very new and unique widget and/or product, or if your widget and/or product is not new, the unique spin is on why your product and/or service is different and why people should be using your product and/or service rather that anyone else’s.

It is really very easy to get caught up in the hype and the emotional excitement of the whole thing, but the bottom line is that your focus should be on the results that come out of the marketing.

Whilst it is not a good idea to copy other brands out there (you won’t see Pepsi doing the exact same marketing as Coco Cola, for example), it would be a good idea to have a look at the basic idea of what your competition are doing.  Look at the structure of the marketing exercise and what kind of campaign they are using.  What does the advertisement do and who is the target market?  Is the advertisement appropriate to the target market and so on.  So you can use the same kind of formula as the basis for thinking out and developing your own strategy.

So the better idea for great marketing is not trying to ‘fry your brain’, to think of new and innovative ways in which to market yourself and/or your product, but to use the old and trusted methods of marketing.

Keep your focus on the results and choose a winning formula as apposed to a wildly creative formula as your marketing approach of choice.

Nikki is an Internal Auditor and Business Administration Specialist who can be contacted on 083 702 8849 or nikki@viljoenconsulting.co.za