The Ins and Outs of Disruptive Marketing

You are just about to start your brand and you are trying to pin down who your ideal client is.

The most sensible approach is, of course to go for the people you understand and are comfortable talking to.  People just like you. That way you have some measure of grasp around what they are looking for (but do ask first and be prepared for surprises),.  More importantly you can talk to them in your messaging with the confidence and authority that only comes from talking their language.  Isn’t that sick ☺.

But lets look here about what you are actually asking your customers to do – you are asking them to switch brands because you believe they will be more suited to your products than the ones they might have been using for years.  I’m sure its true but they are going to need a lot of persuading because you are sitting outside their comfort zone and  it’s a big ask.

So ask yourself when in your life have you switched brands.?   For some of us it could be when those forehead lines became visible or when that silky smooth skin around your jowls started to flap….but there is more to life than the fear of ageing  and the time to ask a customer to change is at that time of life where for one reason or another their every day patterns and routines are being disrupted.

The perfect example of this is of course pre and post pregnancy products but teenage acne, marriage, divorce,  sweating profusely because they have taken up a new sport, going on holiday, going vegan or vegetarian, going back to work following raising kids, discovering they are not the gender they thought they were?  the list goes on and on.  The point is that if you can get to a customer during a life changing event you have much more chance of getting them to switch brands…and if you primarily selling online you only need to engage and make feel special a very small percentage of your reach to become successful.

Disruptive marketing is also about attitudes.  Where it was cool last year to be seen buying gold jars of creams and lotions containing bits of placenta the overall preference this year could be very minimal design around plant based products.  Like changes in clothes fashion as a supplier you cannot afford to sit on your laurels because this is a moveable feast but leveraging on changing attitudes (and better still creating them with your marketing) could take you a long way towards the new adopters.

Of course, once you have the new adopters on board you need to ensure that they will spread the word and that is a challenge but working on this creatively is far more interesting than banging your head against a wall trying to reach the same old people with the same old problems.  Chances are they‘ll  stay buying Clinique or L’Oreal anyway.