Rational Marketing

Forbes Magazine featured a story about some marketing ideas. Our favorite was to make your customer the star.

Using a classic cooperative strategy, you could create their marketing for them. If you provide services or products to other businesses, can you help them with creative marketing featuring your products. Do you sell framing materials to frame shops, create postcards featuring finished frames.

To feed egos of your customers, feature a few them enjoying your products and services. Make them look really good, help them say smart, witty things or touch on their vanity with great lighting, hair and makeup.

To draw your customers into your creative process, what about a creative writing, illustration or visual contest? The contest could be tied to something new like a product launch and the reward for submitting an entry could be a sample of the new product. Contests are also great opportunities for publicity and free media coverage. Since you really want to stay in touch with your current and past customers, sending them a postcard or letter explaining the contest accomplishes many goals at once.