A Fresh Perspective on Interactive Marketing

Blogs, Twitter, facebook and other social media outlets are so well established in the marketing firmament that they’ve become “the new traditional” tools of the trade. Still, more adventuresome marketers have many creative opportunities to further differentiate themselves in the space.

Things to think about:

A Better Blog
Instead of making your blog an audience-agnostic repository for all things Brand X, pick a unique audience and create a theme just for them. It’s an opportunity to utilize bloggers in a fresh way, targeting an untapped audience and getting them excited about participating in something. Sony’s DigiDads campaign was so successful that it’s been written up in AdvertisingAge.

Next-Gen Specials
How are you targeting the younger generation with discounts and deals? While you’ll never get them to clip a coupon, 8coupons partnered with Foursquare  to make limited-time offers to potential customers in New York. (Foursquare users received automatic discount notifications when they were within a 3-block radius of an 8coupon deal, making the offers highly actionable). As more phones become location-aware, the opportunity for location-based deals is endless. And this story proves that an old-fashioned concept can work for today’s audiences – it’s all in the delivery.

Back-End Your Way into the Conversation
Doing something extreme can be a great way to get people talking about you. As part of their efforts to promote an upcoming season of Shark Week to the media, The Discovery Channel launched the Frenzied Waters campaign, which involved sending a mysterious package with creepy contents and cryptic messaging that sent people online to dig out the details.

Tweety-Pie
Twitter’s here to stay, so you might as well get friendly with it – particularly if you’re in a business that stands to be directly and potentially negatively affected by what happens in the tweetosphere. Even if you don’t believe Twitter Sunk Bruno, you could hold a pre-party party for your next event, with tickets available only on Twitter, or employ tweeting spokespeople. You don’t have to start big, or go big, ever. But factoring Twitter into the next campaign for your products or services gives you an opportunity to have a voice, and be the first one heard.

Visual Stimulation
The success of Instagram and Pinterest proves a picture really is worth a thousand words, and indicates a trend toward more visuals in social media platforms. Content is still important, but there’s a growing emphasis on “watching,” as more and more attention-grabbing YouTube ads (like Oreo’s Superbowl Ad  go viral. These ads tend to be shared a lot on facebook, so think about how broadcasting yourself can benefit your business.