Video marketing strategies have moved front and center in most marketing plans, and disruptive marketing has grown in popularity.
The reasons for both are because people love videos, which has resulted in millions being created every day, and because getting through to potential customers can take some radical rethinking, which is where disruptive marketing comes in. Together, they work well.
Disruptive Marketing
According to Geoffrey Colon, a communications designer at Microsoft, disruptive marketing is defined as “the place where selling is dead, but on-going conversation thrives; where consumers generate the best content about brands; where people tune out noise and listen to feelings.”
In traditional marketing, companies develop products or services and then implement strategies to help attract new customers.
However, times have changed. In today’s world, consumers can drive a market, not just a business. Therefore, companies must tap into a market’s mood and provide what consumers want from products or services. This is where disruptive marketing takes its cue.
In truth, disruption is more of a business model than an approach to marketing. Most companies still tend to market through traditional strategies, which provide plenty of opportunities for rival companies to disrupt each other’s messages. However, consumers have become stubbornly resilient to shifting messages, thanks in part to increasingly crowded markets. To combat this trend, companies must innovate and pay attention to what consumers want and then deliver marketing that is good enough to attract buyers.
In disruptive marketing, companies have one of two goals. One is to design their products or services to match the demand of an emerging market. The other is to re-shape their existing products or services to meet the demand of potential customers who are unsatisfied with what they offer.
To utilize disruptive marketing, the first step is for a marketing team to develop a campaign with disruptive messages that either challenge the conventional thinking in an existing market or give life to a new one.
Companies who use disruptive marketing have to be prepared to change their business model as well as the products or services they offer and the marketing messages they present. Depending on the size of the company, this can be risky. However, maintaining the same business model over time can be even more risky.
For example, in less than a 20 year time frame, Kodak went from the fourth most valuable brand worldwide to bankruptcy. Why? Because they weren’t prepared for people to stop buying film and switch to digital photography. The market had been disrupted, and Kodak failed to adjust.
To learn more about disruptive marketing, please read Explore the Strategy of Disruptive Marketing.
Points of interest in modern marketing
Geoffrey Colon (referred to above) has helped many companies approach marketing from more of a design-centric point of view.
Here are some of his points of interest:
1. The world is about conversations, not narratives. “Too many people still think marketing is about talking, talking and more talking,” Colon says. “Amplification is overrated. The best marketers are the best listeners and observers. They pick up what people like or don’t like by being more of a beacon and radar receiver than a loudspeaker. They look at conversations about their competition and their line of business. They become knowledgeable about industries rather than simply about their own company.”
2. Think about how people behave (or rather misbehave) and realize the world doesn’t act or react in straight, continuous, or nonstop customer journeys, or at a set rate or scale. Many people think “disruption” is always centered on technology. Instead, technology is simply the tool used to deliver the experience. “Disruption occurs because people want solutions and disruptive marketers are listening in order to help provide that,” Colon says. “If you still follow the blueprint that marketing is a linear journey visualized as a funnel that inexorably leads to a sale, you’ve misunderstood how people behave and misbehave in our nomadic fast-paced interconnected culture. Also, just because people behave one way in one country or culture doesn’t mean they will behave that way in another. Marketers who learn this will have a distinct advantage.”
3. The best marketing is analog, experiential and in the real physical world. As Colon attests, too many marketers believe all they have to do is use Hubspot or Google Analytics and they’ll remain modern and do fine. However, people don’t live on the internet. “We live in physical spaces that can be shared amongst various digital avenues,” Colon says. “Tools are mainly useful as measurement devices. They help us get a handle on what may be happening online — but they are poor barometers of human behavior in the real world. This is why the best marketing takes place with tangible items that can be shared (vinyl, 3D printing, street art, videos) or amongst groups of people (conferences, events) that may be promoted online, but still take place in the physical realm.” Although we certainly live more of our lives online these days, we still crave shared experiences interacting live with other people.
In short, the best marketing is the least conspicuous attempt to influence others. It is based instead on listening, honest responses, transparency, and human interactions. At its core, “disruptive marketing” is a return to the personal with an online twist.
How Video Marketing Compliments Disruptive Marketing
As stated above, disruptive marketing is defined as “the place where selling is dead, but on-going conversation thrives; where consumers generate the best content about brands; where people tune out noise and listen to feelings.”
Video marketing excels at stirring emotions and arousing feelings. Videos are excellent for telling stories, and most people prefer watching them over reading words or looking at images that aren’t moving. In marketing, open and response rates are higher when videos are used, and videos have proven to boost conversion rates in sales as well. Furthermore, research has proven videos provide practically an unbeatable way for companies to share testimonials, launch new products or services, advertise locations and present branding messages to their most likely customers.
To learn more about video marketing and how we can help your company capitalize on the advantages of it, contact us today.
Having owned an advertising magazine in Utah, I’ve worked in marketing for over twenty years.
I started writing for MediaFast in 2014. The first time I held one of their video brochures, I thought something like, “Wow! This blows away our magazine and any other print advertising I’ve ever seen. This is like a TV commercial, and I’m holding it in my hands. Amazing!”
Since then, video brochures, video mailers and video boxes have become leaders in marketing performance. It’s a privilege to write about them. I also love MediaFast—with its top-notch product quality, industry leading customer service, and all of the wonderful people I get to work with.
