Disruptive marketing.
What does that even mean?
While this industry buzzword may get thrown around a lot, “disruptive marketing” is a term with roots in innovation.
The whole idea of disruptive marketing started when forward-thinking individuals and companies challenged the marketing status quo by bringing together new ideas and strategies from outside the industry, effectively throwing “best practices” and “standards” on their head.
Of course, innovation and disruption are not new concepts in any field, especially not marketing.
Without this type of abstract thinking, marketing would fail to evolve and adapt as quickly as it does in today’s highly-saturated, noisy landscape...
Which is why it is important for marketers in all situations to constantly be trying new things, failing, recording learnings as fast as possible, and publishing their findings in order to cash in on those oh so satisfying thought leadership points. ;)
As the famous Ms. Frizzle from my childhood always used to say, “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy.”
She may not have been the safest teacher, but she definitely knew how to teach kids real life lessons…
When she wasn’t drowning them, of course.
Marketing is a Numbers Game
To be blunt, marketing is a numbers game.
And (s)he who uncovers the most effective strategy, channel, or technology stack wins—at least for a little while.
Marketers ruin everything, as the saying goes…
So, how can you succeed as a marketer in a world full of tactics, bad advice, scammers, and spammers?
- Know your customer, your audience, and your business
- Don’t limit your ideas to your industry—think like more than just a marketer. And...
- Acquire as much knowledge as you can from the people who have done it before you.
That’s why you’re here reading this anyway, right?
Right.
Here are 7 articles written by people in the marketing industry who know what they’re talking about, all of whom are attending HUG18: Disruptive Marketing as speakers, sponsors, or both.
Let’s get into it.
Disruptive Marketing: Strategy, Channel, and Technology
Strategy
Ah yes, strategy.
The overarching item that dictates how you get from point A to point Z in your marketing process.
And what does every good marketing strategy start with?
If you said goals, you get an A+.
Unfortunately, most people are terrible at setting goals, especially when it comes to social media.
If you’ve been foiled in the past by setting the wrong social media goals or not understanding how to properly track your metrics and KPIs for those goals, you need to read How to Set Social Media Marketing Goals by yours truly, published on the Vulpine Interactive blog.
In the end, whatever your goals for social media are, there needs to be a sound strategy (tactics and plan of action) to drive those desired results.
This post will take you beyond traditional goal setting advice and give you the deep, dirty details of how to look at social media from a marketing goals standpoint.
But, as we all know, marketing strategy doesn’t stop at goals.
There is so much more to uncover like understanding your target audience and figuring out how to get them to KL+T you (know, like, and trust) and want to purchase from you over and over again.
In this article from HUG18 keynote speaker Tim Ash, you will discover how Sitetuners teaches brands how to leverage psychology to remove barriers to high-ticket conversions.
If you run a company thatwho sells expensive items, Tim teaches you how that “the biggest barriers to high-ticket conversions are rooted in people’s psychological makeup.”
In his article, you’ll find out how to understand and address the underlying behavior and motivation of big-ticket shoppers so you can suss out a strategy to bring these potential customers closer to a conversion.
Channel
While strategy is the “how”, channels are the “where”.
Not all channels are going to be effective for all companies.
This is where research (and sometimes guessing) come in.
Most people will swear that email marketing makes them the revenue, so testing email as a channel is a no brainer.
But, building that email list is no easy feat.
One way to do it is to build a content marketing funnel.
In How to 10x Your Blog Subscribers, HUG18 speaker Bob Ruffolo from IMPACT shares 10 unique hacks for building your blog subscriber list.
But, just because you’ve got an email list, doesn’t mean it will be a gold mine for you.
What if people aren’t opening your emails? What if they just aren’t interested in what you have to say?
That’s why Tammy Duggan-Herd of HUG18 sponsor Campaign Creators wrote about 3 Insanely Effective Tactics to Boost Your Email Conversion Rates.
In this article, you’ll learn how to choose the right words to get people to not only open your emails, but to click on them as well.
Technology
Marketing technology is a booming business, and it’s easy to see why.
In fact, building the perfect marketing stack is a challenge for most companies because there is a tool for just about everything, and it’s relatively hard to avoid some overlap.
In this article from event sponsor Sitetuners, you’ll find out how complete your martech stack really is, and how to understand which capabilities you need to adopt in order to effectively manage your online presence.
But, even after you’ve got the basics covered, the vast landscape of martech opportunity is truly overwhelming.
It can be a real challenge to avoid SOS (shiny object syndrome) when there are so many cool, relatively unknown tools available.
Arguably the most “disruptive” marketing strategies and tactics are bolstered by the use of marketing tools that haven’t become mainstream yet.
As marketers with our noses to the grindstone, it’s hard to imagine that chatbots are still widely underutilized by many companies, which is why it is imperative for us to jump on the bandwagon before the tactic “gets ruined”—since marketers ruin everything.
In his post about chatbots, HUG18 speaker Sujan Patel goes into detail about how chatbots work and why companies should be using them for their marketing.
And Sujan isn’t alone in his musings on how chatbot integration should be a requirement for today’s marketers.
HUG18 speaker Marni Melrose touts the effectiveness of chatbots for driving massive amounts of engagement in her post How to Get 400% More Engagement from Facebook Messenger.
The possibilities are endless if you have the right set of tools!
Scratching the Surface
While this round-up may provide you with some insight to the current state of the marketing landscape, the truth is, we’re just scratching the surface of what it means to do “disruptive marketing”.
Fortunately, the road doesn’t end here if you don’t want it to.
HUG18: Disruptive Marketing is an entire day of workshops hosted and sponsored by the many names featured in this article.
You will have a direct line to get your questions answered, discover new, untapped ideas, and gain access to people and information surrounding the very topics discussed in this article.
If you haven’t been inspired to dig deeper, innovate faster and disrupt harder, you better be careful.
You can bet your competition will.
Save your spot! Join us April 12, 2018 in sunny San Diego for a full day of intense and actionable learning. General and VIP passes are available now.
Got questions?
Still have questions about whether HUG18 is the right event for you? Check out our last event recap for more info.
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