An Experimental Marketing Primer

Experimental marketing is one of those topics that many people talk about, but few can define. While it is one of the entrepreneurial buzzwords of the new decade, many business owners have no idea what it really means, much less how to apply the concept to their own enterprises. Here is a short primer on the topic, and a few ways that you can make this type of marketing part of your own business success formula.

Experimental Marketing Featuring iWearYourShirt

What is experimental marketing?

Experimental marketing is basically marketing outside of the box. The definition is constantly changing, because methods are only experimental until they become common. Facebook and Twitter were once sites for experimental marketing; now, they are proven strategies that are firmly in the mainstream.  New social media models such as Groupon and LivingSocial are still considered experimental.

However, what is normal in one industry might not be such in another. If you are using marketing methods that are not common in your industry, you could consider yourself a participant in experimental marketing. The key elements are originality and risk.

A good example of experimental marketing might be IWearYourShirt.com. For a fee, site owner Jason Sadler will wear your company logo on a t-shirt and interact with your brand on film. Sadler and his small team of four put videos on YouTube and also tweet regularly about their experiences. This method of marketing is highly unorthodox, but it has also been very successful. It costs very little compared to most conventional methods and it gets customers attention.

How can you use experimental marketing as an entrepreneur?

There are certain businesses that stand to win from experimental marketing. The first and most obvious group is that of businesses that are suffering from a lack of publicity and public awareness. Most experimental marketing campaigns get attention; this, in fact, is what they seem to do best. People are used to seeing typical forms of marketing and many filter them out as they go about their daily lives. Experimental marketing makes it past the filter because it is new and different.

When you are trying to come up with experimental marketing strategies, you must do a lot of brainstorming. The basic model is simple:

• Identify the brand personality that you want to promote. This is probably one of the most difficult steps. What kind of brand are you trying to present to your customer base? Are you warm and welcoming, or stylish and sophisticated? Are you wild and wacky or do you have a more conservative persona? The nature of your experimental marketing will be determined by the type of personality that will appeal to your customers. When developing a brand personality, make sure it is one that your customers will respect and be interested in.
• Identify a time and place where your target market is present. If you are marketing to a local community, this could be a town event. If your business has a large online component, then you may want to consider YouTube, Facebook, or another social media option. If your experimental marketing event has a defined time, plan this around the typical schedule of your target consumer base. For instance, if your market works full time outside the home, you need to plan for an evening or weekend for best results.
• Identify a method of getting the market’s attention in a positive way. Here is where you plan the actual event. This can be very easy or very difficult depending on your level of creativity and the types of constraints that your market presents. You may want to look at the experimental marketing from companies similar to yours for inspiration. In some cases, you may be able to borrow someone else’s experimental marketing ideas, although this rather defeats the purpose.
• Publicize ahead of time. If there is a temporal element to your event, you should make sure that as many people as possible witness it. Send out press releases and place notifications on your website, blog and any other internet presences. This can work best if you make sure there is an element of surprise involved. Make people want to tune in to see what happens next.
• Execute your plan. This step should be the easiest thanks to all of the good planning you have performed! Make sure you plan for all of the little roadblocks that seem to arise. Don’t let anything stand between you and your marketing plan!
• Make a record. Often you can get maximum mileage out of an event by placing pictures or video on the internet. This will allow a wider audience to experience the experimental marketing. If you have really thought outside the box in planning, you have increased your chances of going viral.

What are the risks?

We mentioned earlier that experimental marketing can involve a certain element of risk. First, these methods are by definition not tried and true. You simply don’t know whether or how your audience will react, although you can certainly make some educated guesses. In addition, these marketing strategies can take a lot of time in the planning stages. If they are not effective, then all this time has been wasted. If you do not know your market as well as you assumed, you may actually alienate customers. Last, there is always the risk of looking foolish. Although this is a small matter, it seems to be the one that holds many entrepreneurs back from trying experimental marketing measures.

Conclusion:

The major reason that experimental marketing is effective is that it gets the customer’s attention. We live in a world in which people are surrounded by marketing in most of their daily lives. At a certain point, people simply start ignoring it. In some cases, we actually become annoyed with the companies that are filling our lives with advertising. Customer attention and goodwill are limited resources, and companies are competing heavily for them. The more unique and unusual you can make your marketing, the higher the chance that it will reach your markets.