Would you recommend firing 60% of clients if you were asked what your next step was to increase revenue? What about grinding iPhones with a blender in the kitchen? No? How about sumo wrestlers who can dunk a basketball?
These tactics may seem absurd, but they have all led to huge business growth in their respective companies. In my book Unleash Revenue Growth, I give dozens of examples where lateral, counterintuitive thinking led to new customer growth, greater profitability, and ROI.
Here are three ways to use lateral thought in your marketing to unlock new revenue for your business.
Rethink your audience
Imprivata is a software company that specializes in security. Its initial target audience was banks, financial institutions, and healthcare facilities. The company decided to pivot after the 2008 financial crash and focus solely on the healthcare sector. This meant that 60% of the clients were fired at the time. This bold move allowed the company to become a leader in the ability to win new business. The result was an increase of 233% in revenue within six years.
Tableau Software’s data analytics and visualization tools make spreadsheets and databases understandable for non-developers. Christian Chabot, the co-founder, drove around in his early days trying to convince IT departments of the value of the software. He met dead ends after dead ends. The IT department used to be the gatekeeper of large organization’s technology purchases.
Chabot then rethought the audience he was trying to reach and tried something radical at the time. He bypassed the gatekeeper to go directly to the end users. This could have upset the IT departments whose products he was trying to sell. But the gamble paid off. The ability to convert complex data into easy-to-understand visualizations was a huge hit with business users. Tableau’s portfolio has more than 54,000 clients and has grown approximately 1,900% in the last six years.
Ask yourself the following questions when you consider your audience and growth opportunities:
What is your ideal client?
What audience segment has the most potential or is the most profitable? Would it be wise to focus on that one segment only?
What complementary markets should you target to expand your audience?
Are there any other departments, job titles, or roles that you need to target?
What regions are you able to expand into?
How can you add demographics incrementally to your target audience
Rethink your marketing strategy
It can be beneficial to change your marketing mix rather than focusing on your audience. Blendtec, a kitchen blender manufacturer with an engineering focus and a small marketing budget, was a company that focused on product development. The company spent its money on developing new products. George Wright, the company’s new marketing director, saw Tom Dickson, the founder, grind up a 2×2 piece of wood in one of their blenders to test the blade strength.
Wright realized he’d discovered something special and launched a YouTube series called “Will It blend?” Dickson was dressed in a white lab coat and blended everything from marbles, golf balls, crowbars, and video cameras to tire repair kits. The videos became viral. Consumer sales increased by 700% within a year-and-a-half of the original video’s release.
The New Jersey Nets, now the Brooklyn Nets, had been in a state of disarray for a long time before Jon Spoelstra took over as president. Fans were apathetic. Sales of tickets and sponsorships are in the gutter.
So, Spoelstra rethought all the marketing the team was doing, as he explains in his book Marketing Outrageously. First, instead of encouraging fans to come to games to see the Nets, he started marketing the other team’s superstars–something unheard of at the time. He also turned basketball games into events for families, where entertainment was the main focus. His entertainment engine would fill up the time available whenever there was a player’s break. In the second half, for example, he had basketball-playing Sumo wrestlers run up and down the court wearing their mawashi, delighting the children in the stands. Spoelstra said that sumo wrestlers are more popular than players. What was the result? The result?
Ask yourself these questions when you are evaluating your marketing mix:
What is the best-performing element of your marketing mix at present? What can you do to increase their effectiveness?
What is the lowest 20% of your mix? How quickly can they be eliminated?
Which options are the most beneficial when brainstorming?
What are some outrageous ideas to explore?
How will you implement your new marketing elements?
Rethink your Future
Even if your marketing mix or target audience is not adjusted, there is one thing that is certain: The market will change. Successful companies are able to adapt and rethink.
Think about Research In Motion’s Blackberry phone and compare it to Apple’s iPhone. Apple transformed the mobile phone industry after Research In Motion stopped innovating. Apple is one of the world’s most valuable companies, while Blackberry is a mere afterthought.
Rand Fishkin, co-founder of Moz, began by offering web design services. Like Apple, he iterated with time. He grew his SEO expertise when his clients began to ask for SEO help. The company became a hub of SEO information. Later, he realized that his software for SEO analysis was the most valuable aspect of the business. This led him to transform Moz into a software company. A tiny Web design company has become a $42.6-million software business.
Amazon is another company that has grown by evolving its brand. Amazon began by selling online books. Amazon then expanded its product line to include music, DVD/videos, and software. It also began selling gift items, home improvement products, games, video games, and other merchandise. Amazon now offers just about everything you could imagine.
The company also developed the Kindle Reader, which spawned a whole new e-book market. Amazon’s smart speaker, the Amazon Echo, was its first foray into voice-activated devices. Amazon Web Services is a cloud storage platform that alone generates more than $12 billion per year. Amazon is a great example of growth that comes from constant change.
Ask yourself these questions when you think about the future of your brand:
What major changes do you see in the market today?
What new products or services would you offer to your existing clients?
How can your expertise help you to expand into new markets?
Have you developed a process to plan the long-term future of your company?
What will your business look and feel like in the next three years?