Brighter Marketing

When it comes to innovation and creativity, you don’t always have to come up with completely new ideas often it’s just about thinking about how you can combine existing products or services into something new. Len Kendall posted an interesting blog post about Rollasoles, soft comfortable ballet pump type shoes that you can buy out of vending machines in night clubs up and down the country. It is a long time since I was out dancing all night, but I remember in the days that I used to try and stuff my size 8s into a pair of high heels I would hobble home, and on occasion be in so much pain that I would just walk home bare foot. I think I would have gladly paid a fiver to get some soft shoes to wear to get me home.

As Len points out…

“Shoes are not a new product. Vending machines are not new a new product. The combination of the two in a hyper-targeted market is a very new product.”

There are lots of ways that you can innovate new products and services  in your company, you just have to take some time out to think. When I was working for Integralis an IT security company, the directors wanted to promote our firewalls,  spam filters and other security products in a completely different way. So rather than just try and combine products we combined our products and services with other companies. We got in touch with an insurance company and a top law firm, then together we developed a Cyberliabilty service.

We provided the technical know how and products to combat hackers and spammers

The insurance company developed some Cyberliabilty Insurance that would protect a company against attack

The law firm provided advice on how to make sure your employees stayed within the law regarding the use of email and the web.

Together we had a much stronger marketing message and it meant that we could run Cyberliability seminars and develop guides that gave potential customers a more rounded view of how they could protect their IT and employee investment.

So take some time out to think how you could combine your products and services and innovate yourself some new ways of marketing the things you already have.