After School “Snacks” to Fuel Your Online Marketing Creativity

Growing kids require food snacks midway through the day to keep going.

Growing businesses require marketing snacks midway through the year to push through.

You know the standard marketing to-dos for your business. But do you ever feel inspired to get creative? Whether your answer is yes or no, this post will help fuel that creativity with some snackable marketing ideas to give your business a boost.

1. Hit the streets.

Standing out online isn’t easy. Sometimes the best way to get noticed is to take your marketing efforts to the streets, literally.

Get out the craft supplies and create some magic.

This tactic is especially great for local business. Real estate agents: encourage walk-ins by advertising your listing with a well-sketched sidewalk placement throughout a neighborhood. Insurance agents: promote a special sign-up offer by posting a flyer at the nearby hardware store.

Whatever your forte, some thoughtfully creative marketing can go a long way.

2. Prepare a webinar or podcast.

Positioning yourself as an industry thought leader is one of the best ways to promote your business. Thanks to podcasts and webinars, you can do so right from your desk! Whether you host your own free webinar, partner with a related business or appear as a guest on a well-established podcast, these online forums have huge appeal. According to Apple, there are roughly 250K registered podcasts on iTunes with a cool 1 billion subscriptions.

3. Send b-mail.

Direct mail is certainly more costly than email marketing, but the returns can be great if you’re strategic.

Instead of simply mailing a printout of your products and services, why not try sending a package with a bit more substance? B-mail, or bulk mail, is in essence an envelope stuffed with a gift. Extending a small token in this way is likely to increase your open (and response!) rate.

The fun part is coming up with different items for corresponding industries. A branded calculator for mortgage brokers, a USB charger for the real estate agents, the possibilities are endless.

4. Use gamification in your customer loyalty programs.

All customers love rewards. Whether you’re an automotive shop that gives the 10th oil change free or a salon that wants to encourage your most stylish clientele to ‘check in’, loyalty programs and Gameification apps are a seriously fun marketing idea. It gives users another opportunity to engage that’s exciting and affirming.

Foursquare is one of the original and most famous apps that beautifully fuses gameification with a unique customer loyalty program. Whether you pick gameification, customer loyalty or both, try implementing one of these effective tactics as part of your marketing strategy.

5. Host a contest.

Humans are visual creatures. We’re looking at you, 700 million+ Instagram users! If you’re hungry for engagement, satiate your appetite by hosting a photo or video contest.
They’re easy for your followers to enter and will provide you with a healthy dose of user generated content you can repurpose for future marketing campaigns.

6. Create an infographic.

Want to generate a piece of marketing collateral that is likely to get shared at 3X the rate of your other visuals? Say hello to infographics. These visual-informational sources are powerful tools that can disseminate a ton of info about your brand in a digestible format.

If you don’t have a dedicated graphic designer on staff, consider a free tool like Piktochart.

7. Generate your own memes and GIFs.

You can’t scroll through your social feed without fielding an endless supply of clever memes and GIFs. Entertaining memes are a tongue in cheek way to have your customers chuckling all the way to the register.

Create your own with easy to use platforms like meme generator and giphy.

8. Launch a quiz.

Men’s and women’s magazines have been capitalizing on this trend for years. Whether you want to help clients discover which paint color matches their personality or test their legal knowledge on your criminal defense blog, it’s an easy way to come up with viral content that offers your target audience a fun way to engage with your brand.

Tools like qzzr will help you get started.

Wrap-up

With a well thought out snack pack of creative marketing ideas, you can give your business the energy boost it needs to finish the year on top. Need a hand with your online marketing? We’re always here to help.

Updated 8/22/17; Originally published 9/8/16.